So this ended up being one of my worst tournaments ever :/
Very first hand I had AJ and the flow came J88. I bet and got called, the turn was a Q, so I bet again and got called again. River came a Q and I checked, he bet and of course had KQ.
A little later I had AA, I raised pre-flop and had 2 callers. On the flop of Q72, I bet and got called. The turn came with a 10 and I bet and got called. The river came with another Q. I raised and got re-raised. I called, which was stupid. He had 22 for a full house. Lame.
At this point I was down to a quarter of my starting stack. A little later I finally got a good hand (KK) I doubled up, but was still in last. A couple hands later I got 99 and a flop of 10 8 7 was a good spot to shove and I got called by Q 10. I was about 40% to win on this one, but of course I didn't hit anything and I was out.
That is poker, but definitely about the worst luck (and a little bad play) that I've had in quite some time.

Tonight I'll be playing in the Madison Poker Championship. I qualified a few weeks ago, but I'm excited to have a chance to win a seat at a larger buy-in tournament. There will be 36 players and the buy-in is $50+$5. It will be a normal tournament with the payouts, but first place will also get a buy-in to a larger ($1,000-$2,500 I'm not sure) tournament plus airfare and hotel.

I played in another $50+$5 qualifier for the Madison Poker Championship tonight. There were around 75 people that started and the top 10 places paid. I started off with 2 pretty bad beats my AA got busted by KK and then a few hands later I busted my QQ against 99. I rebought and hung in there for a while, getting lucky myself a few times. We were down to about 20 people or so and I was pretty short stacked got my chips all in with A3 against A6 and hit a 3 on the river to suck out and double up. The very next hand I wake up with AdQc and still being a short stack end up getting it all in. The villain had AK. I flopped a diamond flush draw, but no Q or diamond comes on the turn or river and I'm out in 20th.
It was still fun, but the pair vs. pair and the overpair losing so much just hurts. There were about 6 hands that I saw pair vs. pair and 5 of those times the lower pair won. Crazy.

Last night I played in a $50+$5 qualifier tournament at Ho Chunk in Madison, WI. It is a qualifier for the Madison Poker Championship on March 23. The top 2 places get a spot in that tournament and the winner of that tournament gets 1 $2,500 buy-in to a tournament at Foxwoods casino plus airfare and lodging.
This is the first tournament I have done at Ho Chunk Madison. There were 41 entrants and 13 re-buys, so the prize pool was $2,700. The blind structure was pretty good, so I was patient. I got lucky when I was in 7th of 8 remaining an doubled up. I ended up losing heads up, but I still got second, which qualifies me for the final and $675.One other thing to note is that this casino doesn't use live dealers, they use the PokerPro tables. It was a strange combination of live and online poker. It was nice that it moved much faster than a live dealer and that you could see the exact standings, chip counts, etc.
I'm definitely going to keep playing these tournaments when I can. Thanks for all of the encouragement!

I've been working on building my bankroll from nothing (again) on Carbon. I won $1 in the fun steps at the beginning of the month. I haven't been able to play too much, but I've just been playing the $.50 SnGs. I'm up to $10. I'm hoping to keep that moving up.
I haven't been able to play any good freerolls, but hopefully I can play the Spring Series this weekend. I was registered this past weekend, just not able to play :(

I ended up getting off work a little early yesterday and went to the last tournament in the Winter Poker Open at Pala Casino. It was a $4,000 guarantee prize pool. $60+$15+$10 buy in. There were only about 40 people that played so there was some very good overlay. I was patient and built my stack up, but got pretty short stacked with my AK vs. QQ. At this point there were about 18 people left. I ended up getting lucky a couple times and doubling up twice. I made the final table and outlasted a few people. Once we were down to 6 people we decided to chop so we each got $666.67. This is definitely the best week I've had in poker ever.
Now that I have a bankroll, I'm going to try and play in some tournaments back home in WI. There is a tournament series that is going on that I would like to play in where the winners of the weekly tournaments play in a final tournament for a buy-in and travel costs to a larger tournament at Foxwoods. I would love to take that down.
Anyway, just thought I'd share my crazy poker week. In between my poker tournaments this week I've worked between 13-15 hours every day, so I was pretty exhausted at this last poker tournament.

I'm in California for business for a couple weeks and I decided to see what poker action was here. I found the Winter Poker Open at the Pala Casino. The only event I could enter was the NL Hold Em survivor event today. It was a $100+$25+$10 buy in event. I asked before I came out how many people they expected to play and they told me 40-80. Well there ended up only being 9 people (probably since it was at the same time as the Super Bowl). In any case 3 people ended up rebuying, so the total prize pool was $1200. Since the number was so few the payout was going to be $500 to first and second and $200 to third. When we were down to 4 handed, we were all pretty deep stacks and almost even all the way around, so we all decided on a 4-way chop, so we each got $300. This was fun and a nice little $165 profit for me.

This weekend I'm excited to finally get back to playing in the poker.org games, but it will be tough as my wife is out of town and I need to watch my daughter while playing. If I time out a few times, I apologize in advance. I also have a ton of work to catch up on, so we'll see how this weekend goes.
Good luck at the tables!

I've been thinking about this for a while and I'm going to save up some money (from poker games if I can) and go to a WSOPC event near me in a few years and play as many of the tournaments as possible. If I do well, I will take my winnings to the main WSOP in Vegas.
If I end up not winning anything, I would have lost a few thousand dollars, but have had the time of my life.

I've been off my game lately. I was pretty disappointed about Hero Poker going away. I forgot I had a bankroll on Juicy Stakes, so I've been playing there, but I've made some bad plays and lost most of that. I need to really focus on some freerolls on one site and build a bankroll back up.