I headed into Crown early today . . . well early for me as it was just after Midday . . . to take care of my poker urge.

I sat down on a $2-3NLH table with my $200 and turned it into $302 in about thirty minutes after making two-pair against two players. Peter Aristidou and George Cotaidis were cashing out and asked me join them for some lunch before they played the PokerNews Cup Super Satellite at 2pm.

The Super Satellite was a direct satellite into the PokerNews Cup Main Event with a buy-in of $70 with $50 rebuys. I sat down with $300 worth of $25-denomination chips just in case I felt like getting a bit crazy with the rebuys.

I was in for one rebuy before slowly chipping up nicely before being rivered in a huge pot by Karl Krautschneider when he made a flush against my top pair. Once the rebuy period had ended I decide to do a triple add-on for $150 to see my stack soar to around 9,000 from the original 1,000.

From then onwards I played fairly solid poker before being moved to the feature table with just twenty of the original forty-two players remaining. I then lost the majority of my chips to an old Asian guy when I turned the nut-straight in a raised pot and he turned a flush.

Both Peter and I made the final table along with the old Asian guy, Joe Cabret, cash game player Crazy John and a handful of weak players.

I offered an Insurance Swap with Peter whereby if one of us wins a seat then we pay the non-seat winner a sum – in this case $250. Peter turned it down, and we went straight into the final table with myself sitting fairly low on chips.

I lost a key flip with nines against King-Ten and was left with just one big blind. I waited several hands until finding sixes in early position and managed a near triple. Eventually as play hit six-handed we made a deal whereby the $1560 put away for forth was split $560 for fourth and $500 for fifth and sixth. Being the shortest of the players I was happy to agree, and getting the insurance for my efforts so far was better than a kick in the ass.

With nothing really to lose I started getting really aggressive shoving at any chance I could get to add to my stack. I built it up to around 30k with blinds at 3,000-6,000 as we lost the old Asian guy in fifth. I continued my aggression – especially pushing on Crazy John’s big blind – until the action was folded round to me in the small and I sweated a red Ace. I moved all in and Crazy John instantly called turning over fours. I peeked down to see another red Ace and was more than ecstatic at the possibility of locking up another seat for the Main Event.

Alas . . . not one, but both of the fours would land on the flop and turn to see me bubble for a seat yet again – but at least this time I would collect some money for my efforts.