[AndysDaddy]

After getting my first cash a couple of weeks ago in Vegas, I went on a business trip to Belgium. When that was over my wife and I took the train to Paris for a few days. Being the sweetheart that she is, Donna gave me the OK to go play in the 4PM 100 Euro tournament at the ACF Sunday.

We started with 88. I doubled up early when my pair of threes flopped a full house. Some other guy kept betting and I strung him along by just calling. He went all in on the river and threw his hand away in disgust when he saw my winner. Nothing very exciting happed for a while, and I tread water for about three hours. Unfortunately, the blinds kept rising and I found myself getting short with about 30 players left (9 places paid). I managed to win a big hand as a slight favorite (my 55s vs AK) and I snuck into the last table (10 players) as the second shortest stack. The smallest stack busted out on the first hand and I was guaranteed to win money in my second straight tournament.

I kept nursing my short stack, capturing a few blinds, and winning some small pots, but we stayed at nine for a while. Finally one guy busted out, and that seemed to open up the floodgates for a while. In the next half hour three others went bust (one poor sod losing with tens to my aces) and we were down to five. One player had about half the chips and the rest of us were pretty even. I kept my head above water until I almost went broke with QQ versus my neighbor's Aces. That left me with 600 (the average stack was over 30,000). I was all in in the small blind, and managed to triple up with a rivered straight. The next hand I more than doubled up again, this time when my K,10 hit a King on the flop. A hand or two after that I doubled up again when I get AA for the second time. I managed to survive into third place.

Things got bogged down at this point for about an hour. I won some and lost some, but finally busted out in 3rd, paying $1,045 Euros (that's about 1,300 US dollars). Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about the result. The only downside is that going that deep took way longer than Donna was planning on when she let me go out. Oh well, the (now) free Paris trip will placate her, and now we'll spend the rest of our time doing the touristy things.

Obviously, the back-to-back caches is just varience, but I will credit Sklansky's TPFAP for improving my tourney game considerably in a short amount of time. I definitely recommend it.

Oh, and I'll add a proxy brag for my buddy that put $20 down on Zach Johnson to win the Masters. Paid $800 - not a lot by balla standards, but its a big enough number for me and my friends.

Cheers