Out of Sunday Million in 28th

Sigh. It's like a bad, recurring nightmare in 2007. Everytime I get a whiff of the real money one devastating hand comes up to take me right out of contention. I was chipleader with 94 players left, and I was around 5th in chips with 38 players to go. At blinds 50/100 thousand I raised QxTh on the button to 270 thousand of my 3 million chips. The BB defended and had about 2.1 million which was slightly above average but good for a top 10 stack. The flop came Q95 with two hearts. The guy checked, and I bet 380 thousandish. He raised to 900 thousand, and after time banking for 30 seconds I shoved for his last 900 thousand. He called with 98. The turn was a 9, and the river was not a Queen. I felt like I was in such great control, and I was really getting stoked about potentially making the final table and hopefully winning the 190 thousand. I'm not complaining about the beat though, I won 3 coinflips, so I am supposed to lose a hand like that eventually. It's no fun if it's easy, but it certainly is painful when I keep getting close over and over again. I earned just 3500 or so for my time. I was crippled to 800000 and hung around another orbit or two before being eliminated 28th out of 6800 or so players. Congrats to Scott "BigRiskky" Clements for winning the event. Sicko. It was a losing day overall though, as I didn't have any other cashes. I finished 6th in the inaugural winner-take-all 20 man 5200 dollar buy-in tournament at Stars. The final table was recorded and will be replayed on PokerStars. It might be worth watching. I was very short stacked at the final table though and had to play extremely nitty because I couldn't open a pot. It'll still be fun to watch. I intend on registering for classes at The University of Alabama via the internet tomorrow. I'd like to be packed up from my condo in Vegas and on the road back to Alabama by Wednesday, because, it turns out that it is December now and Christmas is almost here.

Also, good luck to friends of mine Erick Lindgren, Ryan Daut, Raymond Davis, Jimmy Tran, and Peter Jetten who are all still in the final 18 and in contention for WPT Five Diamond's 2.5 million first prize.

SS