Lodge Results for Sunday 01/22/06 - Week 11 - 1st Place!!!

At last after weeks of trying I have finished first at The Lodge. About 85 players were signed up and it took 5 hours to run. It started out good with me winning the first hand with KK and taking about a T60 pot. Picked up another small pot and then got knocked down when my A10 got beat by two pair. After a couple of orbits, I was down to T83 with 60 players still in. Things then began to change, the blinds were at 10-20 so I had to push to get my stack back up. I started to get good cards and after a few double ups and triple ups, I was up to T1400 with 12 players left. Then came by biggest hand of the night. I am one behind the button and I see KQ of hearts. Everyone has folded to me and I call the blind which are 50-100. The button folds, small blind calls and big blind checks. Flop comes A85 of hearts so I have the nut flush. Small blind pushes all in and I see big blind pushing his cards in so I go all in, however he says he hasn't made up his mind so I pull my chips back. I expect him to fold especially with 3 hearts on the board, but he calls anyway. Small blind turns over J of hearts and a blank and big blind turns over an ace. I happily turn over my flush and triple my stack. We are now down to the final table and I am 2nd biggest stack. I relax and watch the small stacks go down and we are down to 3. I am middle stack at that time with big stack having 50% more chips than I do. I take a chunk of his stack with QQ against his Q10 and he is elimated by the other player.
Now its heads up and we are even so I expect a long battle. We traded chips for 20 minutes and then after a few losses he had me 3 to 1 and I needed to double up quickly. I get the opportunity and I am up by one chip (T500) when I get A2 of hearts. He calls and I check and the flop comes A83 and I bet T2000 and he goes all in. I call and he turns over 10 4 of spades and does not catch any cards and I win.
What I didn't realize about this particular day is in addition to the regular prizes that The Lodge gives away, 1st place also gets a seat into the True Texas Poker tournament with T.J. Cloutier on August 20th. 1st place in that tournament gets a $10,000 buy in to a tournament of their choice and gets to play T.J. heads up for $5000. Also the final table will be televised.