I've finally won a tournament on Stars! I decided to play the $8.80 marathon at around 9pm last night thinking that a couple of hours and making the money would be good. Had to have an early night as I was up at 6:50am to take the parents to the airport, but some 6 hours later and I'm still in and have not only made my first Stars final table proper, but managed to get back from being short stacked with 5 left to level with the other two when there was 3 left where we did a deal and split the money evenly but played on for the win which I'm delighted to have won.

I played with a bit more of a positive attitude, almost 'playing to win' and made a few calls that perhaps I'd have passed not long ago. There wasn't many, but there were a few key points where I doubled up after pushing instead of folding after missing the flop which came in handy and I only really took two knocks, but I was covering my opponent easily otherwise I'd have avoided the confrontation I think. The first one I didn't think I was going to come back from. With 30 left, I raised with AT to be called by the BB, who then checked the flop so I made a continuation bet that basically implied I wasn't folding and would call anything he did. He pushed and turned over a straight draw which puzzled me a bit - I couldn't work out the logic of checkraising on a draw when it was clear I wasn't folding for the extra it cost to call. Anyway, I had a gutshot that would have beaten his high st, but he hit the low card for the straight and I was down to 30th out of 30. He then typed in "Sorry man" which is slightly patronising as he's clearly not sorry and said that "I usually lose out on the river", well I'm not surprised checkraising on a crappy straight draw. I just can't figure out what he though I was on apart from a steal, but what did he think he was ahead of, he only had 9 high.

Anyway, thankfully I did make a comeback, then on the final table, I took a knock with AJ against A3 but came back again. I was sitting as the CL with 6 left and in the big blind then UTG pushed all in for 455k. I held AK and obviously should have called, but the blinds were only at 8000/16000 and it was out of character for him. Not only that but 455k would have left me in a critical situation so I wimped out and folded. He claimed to have done it by accident and was thankful I didn't call, he had JT. The way I'm looking at it now is that I was only 60/40 to win anyway and could have easily lost. Had I not won the comp, I'd have been regretting it now! LOL

Ship the win, my first on Stars and a lovely payday too. I've uploaded the HH to Here if you are in need of something dull to watch, although it's missing the last few hands for some reason.