I played the 10M guarantee on Stars last night. I normally don't play mtt's, but I was coaxed into playing this one. It was actually a lot of fun and I think I played really well. That said, i didn't have too many tough decisions, and got pretty fortunate in some key spots, so it wasn't too difficult to play well. I ended up making a pretty deep run coming in ~1700th out of over 60k runners. Toward the end I wasn't getting many hands, and ended up having to 3bet shove A5s with 8bb's, only to have BB reshove w/ AK and my run was over . Ended up netting me about 11bi's for my limit for 7hrs work, so not bad .

The tournament started at 2:30am for me, so I knew it would be a long haul. I went out before to stock up on sugar in case I needed a pick me up. (the nuts were in case I needed something besides pure sugar)



My family was having their Christmas (only time ppl could get together), and I ended up chatting with everyone throughout the morning/night. It was kind of fun, but they also don't understand poker so they thought I was nuts for staying up. They all thought I was such a slacker and that I should do some work (in a joking way).... kind of hits point 3 in BW's latest blog.

It was around 7-8am when we were approaching the money. At that point I knew I had to make it, or I would've spent 5hrs grinding for nothing... which is exactly why I quit playing mtt's long ago. I had a pretty good chipstack and didn't do anything stupid, so I was able to skip on in.

I busted out around 10am, climbing a few spots on the money ladder, and was finally able to get some sleep. Cleaners pounded on my door at 1:30pm, but I was too tired to let them in. Ended up sleeping til 7pm, so my sleep schedule is all kinds of F'd. I'm going to try and sleep around 4am tonight, but not sure if that will happen.

Wednesday I have my final Thai class before a two week holiday. They are also throwing a lil Christmas party on Thursday which should be good and awkward. It's hard for me to converse with them, I don't really want to tell them I play poker since it's "illegal" here. They've started asking me a lot more specific questions about work, what I do with free time etc. My replies are usually along the lines of "I don't work, just party".

I'm choosing not to play today because I need to get back on my ~4am-1pm sleep schedule (yes, i need 9hrs, Matt can vouch for that). I should be back to the normal grind tomorrow, and still be on pace for platinum star. I realize it's not a huge deal to get there, since it's the end of the year. However, I'm on pace, and it will be nice to have the extra .5 fpp multiplier going into next month. All the VIP freerolls are on New Years Eve, so I doubt I'll be sober enough or even at my computer to play those.

I will end this as it's getting fairly lengthy. I was feeling a bit down on poker, since I put in some decent volume, and have been pretty much breaking even. This MTT score has put a lil pep in my step though, so hopefully I can turn this around and finish 2011 strong!