Ship Heartland Poker Tour Seat

Might be getting the hang of this live poker thing pretty quickly. After another weekend of basically not playing (besides 150k, in which I got absolutely nothing going), went back to Majestic last night and played a $450 qualifier for the Heartland Poker Tour. 65 people, 13 qualifiers. 10k starting chips, didn't get anything going for awhile, then found kings, then starting picking off pots at a tight table. Everything was going well, up to about 26k, limpers to me with AK in the bb at 500/1000. I raise to 7k, figuring I'll pick it up right there, donkey calls. Flop A 8 2, he's got 12k left, turns over set of 8s. Ugh. Got down to about 5k, couple of shoves to get to 11k, but next blind level was 1000/2000. Shoved 11k utg with 10 8o, got called by 5s (clearly this guy is not grasping the concept of the satellite), 8 on flop, I flip so good right now I should teach flipping lessons. Then ran KK into QQ when I was up to 32.5K, easy from there for the $2200 seat.

So there are 3 day 1 sessions: Friday night, Saturday 9 am (egads) and Saturday night (5 pm), I've got Saturday night. They're taking 210 max for each day one, and we play 10 levels (40 min levels). If we're not down to 70 at that point, play down to 70. Day 2 is Sunday down to 6 people for the final table, which is Monday. 15k in starting chips, so we'll definitely get to play some, much more than I'm used to online obviously. If the quality of players in the qualifier is any sign, that has to be a good thing. This will be my first live tournament with a real prize pool since the $1k WSOP event I played since 2006. I sat down and Dutch Boyd was on my right, and Eric Froehlich was on my left. And I thought, hmm, this really isn't the draw I wanted. Then I overplayed my aces and went broke in twenty minutes. And then got so drunk I don't remember anything after dinner. It was a hell of a day. Whatever happens in this tournament, I'm guessing my day won't go exactly like that.