As you may be aware now, I have been grinding MTTs over PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker for some time now.

My concentration has been purely on Monday’s with the occasional random night grind throughout the week, and although it has been a fairly breakeven experiment, I’m very happy to still have my account roughly in the positive over the three sites.

Today however saw me complete one of my online poker goals in reaching a Monday morning final table in the $11 (1r1a). As I made the money, it was the lone table I had remaining after going 12/35 across all three sites (Full Tilt Poker 7/12, PokerStars 5/17, Absolute Poker 0/1). I had received a couple of ridiculous bad beats, but was hoping that this last tournament was going to see some run-good motor its way through to potentially a $6,000-win!

With around 130 to go (guaranteed ~$50) I opened J♠ 10♦ and continued on a 10♠ 2♥ 9♦ flop before being raised when the turn landed the J♦. I shipped, he snapped it off with K♣ Q♥, but lightning on the river of the 10♣ saw me soar up to the top of the leaderboard.

I made a retarded fold with bottom set with around eighty left after I folded the flop in a multiway pot after the blinds bet, raised, re-raised and shipped their stacks all in. With thirty-four to go I folded Jacks to Kings and Queens to see me slip down to be in twenty-third position overall before rocketing to seventh in chips out of twenty when my 9♣ 8♣ got three streets of value on a 6♣ 8♦ 5♠ 4♣ 7♥ board.

After knocking out Carter ‘devinr12′ Gill I soared to second in chips with two tables to go when my flopped bottom set saw third pair stack off to me on the turn as I reached the final table grouped in the middle. I chipped up against the fish when I cold-called Ace-King from the blinds and got only one street of value against his Ace-high. From then on it was all a disaster as I went from holding one-third of the chips in play five-handed to be out in fifth for a $1,482 payday.

And before you ask if I donked it off, this is how the hands went down. I lost Q♦ Q♥ to A♥ 3♣, A♣ K♦ to A♠ J♥, A♥ 10♠ to 9♦ 9♣ and then A♦ 10♥ to A♣ 7♣ all-in-preflop to bust out in a disgustful fashion.

Without doubt I’m happy at collecting the biggest score of my MTT career resurgence, but was just extremely disappointed at falling in fifth instead of taking out the title like I believed I should have.’

Hopefully this bankroll boost combined with some new found confidence will see me continue to grind up the stakes while also being in a position to take a shot at the upcoming ANZPT Perth and APT Philippines.