back from the brink, baby!

back from the brink, baby!, originally uploaded by Bluemomar.

here tis. it took him 6 hours to take this one down. it's been a while since he took down a big one and he needed it in many ways--hot cash infusion, big confidence boost, and nothing is as sexy as a guy who just won a cool, quarter-of-ten-thousand-dollars in a single shot. i tried to stay up to watch him, but i seem to still be recovering from the creeping crud and am exhibiting a preternatural ability to sleep like 18 hours a day. so i went to bed and told him to just yell really loud (not a problem, as he is given to poker related outbursts anyway) if something good happened. as i was drifting off i heard an exuberant "WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOAMILLIONCHIPS!!!!!" i mumbled "goodjobhoney" and rolled over to pass out. some time later, i'm not sure how long, i heard a much longer victory song/dance being performed in the living room. at that point i was sleep-immobilized, but the door to the bedroom flew open and he declared that they had reached an impasse and decided to chop when it got down to three dudes (this is where they pool the top three prizes and split the money kinda based on a points system of how many chips each one has--his take was about $2500.) he said if we didn't need the money (and as much as possible) so badly that he would have seen it through to the end and tried to take down the crazy player who ended up in first, but he didn't want to risk walking away with only $1500. it's like doyle says (and this is one of my favorites): tournament poker is really a lottery, it's just that more skillful players have a lot more tickets. does it sometimes make me hella nervous that our livelihood depends so heavily on a lucky turn of the cards? sure, but it's so exciting when we are literally down to our bottom dollar and things come out okay. w is a clutch player and i had a good feeling about it when i went to bed last night. of course, i've had good feelings before that didn't come through, so i am still thanking our lucky stars. good juju!