I almost quit my session and would have been forced to let my stacks blind out this morning... I had woken up late and been grinding for about 3 hours when I got some really sharp, cramp like pains in my stomach (kinda what I imagine labour to be like if I was pregnant, i'm not though). Combined with the fact that I've got this god damn cold as well, I was pretty much ready to lay down, curl myself up in a ball, and go to sleep. I decided to take some Nurofen to get rid of the pain and "alas, it worked!". This week has been pretty annoying in that regard. I started the week with the stomach bug, and straight after that I got this cold. Given that it is the first time I have been involved in a PLB contest, it has not been a good way to start the month, I really wanted to start by grinding hard and getting some results under my belt. Lot's of other things going on too at the moment, with the free video I made posted in 4 locations and having to respond to questions, trying to get started on some new videos, all of the social media updating I have been doing, blogging obviously, and then there is trying to be a good father and partner as well... Being sick certainly came at a bad time...

Nonetheless, today was a very good day in the end. First, let me take you back to early September where I was 2/14 (over 5500 runners) in the Bigger55 on a Sunday on Pokerstars (almost $40k to the winner), and lost AA to KK to the chip leader to final table bubble in the most brutal of fashions. Even though I am a huge believer that the past is the past and that is where it should stay, I won't lie and say I didn't think about that incident a little today when I managed to take down the Big 55 for $18.3k. Sure, it wasn't the Bigger55 (lol), I will have to save that for Sunday, but it felt very nice to take down a big daily tourny for the first time. I went into the final table with a pretty nice chip lead that I saw whittled away quickly when I lost QJo to JT on JxxJT, as well as losing the next three all-in pots vs the short stacks which consequently left my stack moving like a yo-yo. Fortunately, the late game was quite soft once the other known regular (Zackattak13) busted in 10th place, so while I was failing in the all-ins, I was accumulating otherwise. I finally found some traction when I got AA to hold vs Q9s and got myself back into the top spot. From there it was relatively smooth sailing until I played my big pot 3-handed with QTo vs J8s on T98r and managed to get a sick hold and essentially the win.

It was a nice way to start the month and hopefully I can carry some momentum from it into the rest of the month. Funnily enough, this tournament also put me over the 200k VPP mark for the year. While it is disappointing to be in November with only 200k VPP after starting the year with the goal of Supernova Elite, we can't have it all, and this is one of the sacrifices I made when I moved to MTT's. The 200k milestone bonus ($2.6k) was a nice little addition to my day though!

Hopefully it can only get better from here, and that can start with my health fixing itself up (please). Tomorrow I am going to get up early to play the Quarterly $1million freeroll on Stars (don't forget this people!), then will be off to play a small live tournament in my local area. Hope you guys are all playing and running great! I will leave you with this video I came across on facebook which is absolutely amazing and inspiring...

Matt (Follow me on twitter @mjw006)

Jason McElwain