In my first tournament back from hiatus (okay, I’m not including Mohegan Sun), I made yesterday’s final table of the $1k event at Harrah’s.  Pretty nice, but I finished with a thud.

In one respect I am very happy, because I managed to finesse my way there.  I never had a commanding stack at any point in the entire tournament.  I also survived a really nasty rivered two-outer that left me crippled just before the bubble and rebuilt everything from there.

On the other hand, the final table itself was very disappointing.  I came in 6th in chips, and despite drawing the worst seat at the table, I felt confident that I could find some good spots and do some damage.  The lineup of players who made it there wasn’t too impressive.  Still, it didn’t happen for me.  I held nothing but dirt the entire time, lost the first significant pot I played, then waited a long time to get my money in.  When I looked down and saw two kings, I reshoved it on pocket tens.  One player announced that he had folded a ten, but that didn’t stop the case diez from falling on the turn.  Even had I won the hand, I’d still be pretty short.  Just not a good day. I finished 8th for $5,300.  So it goes.

That runs my total final tables for the year to five, which is a respectable number considering how much time off I’ve taken.  The bad news is that my gross earnings is a rather paltry number in light of the five final tables.  I’m like the Knish of tournament poker, I guess.

Back to the grind…