That’ll be me in January.

For the past two weeks I’ve been playing “Step” sit ‘n go’s on Pokerstars in vain effort to win entry to the Pokerstars Carribean Adventure (a.k.a. the PCA, a.k.a the WPT Bahamas), which begins the first week of 2008.  The Pokerstars Steps are a series of one table tournaments, starting with Step 1 ($7.50 entry) and ending with Step 6 ($2000 entry) with the winner of Step 6 receiving entry in the $10,000 tourney along with a free week at the Atlantis.

I have had relatively little trouble breezing through steps 3 ($82) and 4 ($215), but every time I’ve reached step 5 ($700), I’ve stumbled.  On Friday, I had won yet another step 5 seat when I decided it was time for a break.  I decided to take the weekend off and return to the steps today.

So it obviously came as a bit of a surprise when I just discovered that the Pokerstars PCA Steps have been shut down for this year.  The PCA doesn’t start for another five weeks, so I’m not sure why Pokerstars would kill the satellite action this early.  I suppose they have reached their quota–they might have a finite block of Atlantis rooms set aside or something.  For the record, Pokerstars has already assured me that my $700 step 5 ticket will be redeemable in some other kind of satellite tournament in the future.

This means I will likely freeze my ass off right here in New York for the entirety of January 2008.  Since I am sticking to my super nitty plan of only entering $10,000 events via satellite, there will be no Bahamas for me.

On the one hand, I am not especially phased by this.  Loyal readers will recall that I was less than impressed with the Atlantis in January 2006, so I can’t say I was dying to return.  On the other hand, because the PCA is the online poker player’s Mecca, my absence this time around is a minor blow to my ego, reinforcing the fact that I’m not a bigtime online baller.

So it goes.

Meh.