I hate to bump my football entry so quickly, but last night brought some breaking news.

Yesterday I had my finest day of online poker ever, and I’ve commemorated it by translating this blog entry’s title into computerspeak.  For those of you who don’t speak that language, it translates roughly to:  “Go me.”

A quick recap:

At 4:30 pm, I entered the Pokerstars Sunday Million, a $500 tournament, and sprinted out of the gate.  By the first break, I had a massive stack, which is very unusual for me.  I continued building my stack, and by 5:50 pm, I was sitting among the top 10 stacks in the field. 

At that point, I had a decision to make.  I had planned on entering the Full Tilt $750,000 guaranteed, a $200 tournament, at 6:00.  But because I had such a big stack on Pokerstars, and since I’m not a terrific multitabler, I was inclined to focus on the Pokerstars tourney alone.  But while weekends were made for Michelob, Sundays were made for online action.  So at the last second I decided to enter the Full Tilt tournament and play it on autopilot while the Pokerstars tourney was in the foreground. 

I ended up getting quite deep in the Pokerstars tournament while barely paying any attention to what was happening on Full Tilt.  I was vaguely aware of the fact that I was running very good down on that second screen, but all my energy was focused on a very tough, tricky table on ‘Stars.  Eventually, I busted out of the Pokertars event in a disappointing 90th place, which was good for a profit of over $2,000.  At that point–which was over 5 hours after it kicked off–I finally began to take a serious look at what was going on at the bottom of my monitor on Full Tilt.  I was somewhere around 20th place with roughly 150 players left out of 3,800.  Yes, I somehow accomplished this by playing like a robot.  Evidently my autopilot function was operating at peak capacity.

Three hours later I found myself at my first “Sunday Major” final table, in 2nd place in chips.  The final table didn’t go as well as I had hoped, however.  The short stacks repeatedly doubled up while my chips were whittled down.  Still, I played some pesky poker and hung around, finally busting out in 4th place, which paid a handsome $42,000, easily surpassing my largest prior online score.  Although I felt I could have done a bit better at the final table, a $44,000 payday is nothing to sniff at, and I was appreciative of that fact.

Even at lower stakes, I find online poker to be way more intense and stressful than brick & mortar poker.  So when the Full Tilt tournament wrapped up, I was still really wired.  Amazingly, it was only then that I suddenly realized that I hadn’t eaten since around noon–about 15 hours earlier.  Because it was now around 3:00 am, and further because I am a schlub who keeps nothing edible in his apartment, and finally because I had just won quite a bit of money, I decided to give myself a little treat.  I took a cab all the way down to East Houston street to my favorite 24-hour pita joint, Bereket, and helped myself to some doner kebab.

The meal cost $9.50.  Transportation there and back was $31.00. 

Well worth it and delicious.