Breakthrough at Bellagio

This afternoon a bunch of us played in the Ultimate Poker Challenge $340 event down at Binion's. I played my best crapshoot tournament game but took three horrible beats and exited just in time to get over to Bellagio for the $1k nightly event. I siphoned my way down to 2000 from the 5000 starting stack before winning three huge, hysterical pots to become a force. There were some choppy waters from 27 players down to the bubble at 10 players but at the final table everything went well for me. We chopped with five players left with me slightly behind the chip leader. I walked away with 19.6k - my first ever cash at Bellagio after several blown chip leads and a couple dramatic bubbles - which was just less than second place money. I was the best player of the five remaining and considered rejecting the deal but first was only 10k more and 5th was only 4.5k so I decided to take the cash and lock up my second winning trip to Vegas in a row after the first six or so all ended in the red.

Some of the hands that went down today were incredibly bizarre and hilarious, but it's 5:26 AM so I'll try to write about them later. Tomorrow is NFL Sunday and the main event starts Monday.