Around 11 months or so ago Full Tilt decided to close my online account due to alleged multi-accounting because my backer logged in from Malaysia while I was in the middle of five tournaments! We got the money back, but the timing couldn’t have been worse as I was just finding my groove online with two consecutive 750k guarantee cashes and three locked up FTOPS seats.

My backer and I moved on, but haven’t played online since with any real purpose (with an occasional $50 deposit here and there chasing bonuses and promotions). With The Race To 10k heating up and my increased involved in ChipMeUp I decided that I needed to get some money online to dabble back in the 12-tabling of old!

With US$1,000 on Full Tilt and people snapping up my stakes on ChipMeUp, a steady stream of deposits came trickling into my accounts. Consequently I decided to try and get most of them into my PokerStars account after reading an article in the recent Bluff USA edition about satelliting to the WSOP via the PokerStars Step Satellites. These Step Satellites are basically a series of SNG’s starting as cheap as $7.50, where the first / final prize is a package to a desired tournament; and in this case the 2009 World Series of Poker.

So far I’ve been somewhat successful cashing at a rate of 55% reaching a single Step 3 (sigh – busted early when I ran second nut flush into full house and then A♠ K♠ into Kings and eventually pushed with A-9 and lost a flip), along with a handful of Step 2′s after 18 games.

PokerStars Lobby
PokerStars Step Satellites Lobby

People say that playing online can be a real grind and I definitely agree. Accordingly I’m only loading a few tables at once and only playing when I feel in a good mood. I have to admit that I’m playing these SNG’s (disregarding how easy people say the first few steps are) really well, making very few, if any, mistakes so far. Hopefully in the coming weeks I can start to pick things up and make that $2,100 Step 6 and take down an entry into my second WSOP!

* * * * * * * *

I decided to sit down and watch a movie the other night and settled on Step Up 2: The Streets from the limited collection Foxtel was able to provide to me at 3am. Basically its a sequel to Step Up about some kids that dance in crews and basically bust some cool moves.

I’m not going to bore you with the plot and how the two main characters fall in love in the final scene, but instead show you the coolest part of the movie (in my opinion). Adam Sevani plays Robert “Moose” Alexander III, and for his portrayal was praised by The New York Times as being “the baddest nerd in movie history”. In the following scene he busts out a freestyle dance to one of my favourite songs on the steps of his school – whether you think its lame or not, for us old-timers some classic Michael Jackson at the end blows the scene up!


Moose Stair Dance

I think nearly everyone that will at one point read a word on this site probably can’t dance (just like me), but you have to admit that there is some appreciation for these hip-hop / crank / RnB / freestyle dancers that can just pull moves whenever they want to put us non-dancing robots to shame!

Yeah, your eyes are probably rolling at how lame you think it is that I like a ‘dance’ movie but don’t worry the Joe Hachem Deep Stack Series starts on Sunday, so it will be back to poker from here on in!