Finally Broke the JokerStars Jinx

For years and years, I've done nothing but suck major hind tit at JokerStars, my least favorite poker site. In fact, for the last couple of years, I've subsisted there pretty much solely on an occasional sponsor transfer into my JokerStars account, which I manage to stretch out for three months before I donk it all off, just in time for another sponsor to step up.

I've never really took it as "mondogarage sucks at poker" (even if I probably do), because I've had my share of success at Bodog, and even at FTP, I've managed to cash about 6x as often, even playing more high variance Omaha tourneys, and am lifetime ahead there.

Until tonight, the best I'd ever done is a 57th in the Sunday $10+1 $100k guarantee (shows how long ago that was, at least over a year), and I think I took down a $4/180 once, and I did once take either 2nd or 3rd in a HORSE MTT for some sorta decent holla dollas.

Well, tonight that finally changed, when I managed to take down a $3 Turbo Triple Shootout, besting something like 728 other players to score my first real BOOOM on that sickest of all sites.

The one odd part of the tourney was that each of my first two shootout tables was just about the very last one to finish of its round. In each case, I played slowly and patiently (for a turbo), managing to steal just enough to stay in the top 3 until I could get a hand big enough to take someone out with. Also in each case, the heads up felt a lot shorter than the final three, but still took a good 13-14 hands.

Anyway, the chips were obviously even going into the final table, being a shoot out. The final table was pretty tough -- I don't think there was an elimination for the first 20 or so hands, which strikes me a lot at what was at the end a 1-table turbo SNG.

Another round of patience and chipping up helped me get to heads up with my 2nd massive HU chiplead of the tournament:



Fortunately, heads up didn't last too long in this case, when my opponent (who'd played pretty strong for the most part) open shoved from the button when I was holding KK:



And that was that.



Does that fully restore my faith in JokerStars, or did many years of variance finally catch up to me in my favor...um....ONE TIME. You be the judge.



Still, not only did a victory here feel GOOD (and was my 2nd MTT takedown overall in September), the payout actually added about 450% to what my mini-me JokerStars roll was. Gosh, I don't think I've ever had a roll on JokerStars that even matches the payout of this tourney. I'll try not to donk it all in one place.

I'm still not going to run up for HPT, since the $340 qualifiers are starting to wind down, and frankly, I don't see how I can find the time to get up to Blackhawk this week...such is life.

Good luck, all!