A Sick Week

One line is fine, right?

Goosebumps and chills in just one leg were unusual first symptoms but that is how it started. The headache and sinus pain soon followed and I knew my fate: COVID.

My wife had tested positive a few days earlier and been pretty much bid ridden since, and now it was my turn. We still had a few tests left over from back when COVID testing was a thing, although it doesn't appear to be a thing anymore, the government advice on the matter is now simply "stay at home if you're sick" which seems like reasonable advice for any illness. 

I called in sick to work the next day. The chills were no longer restricted to the one leg, full on flu symptoms now, all over. My levels of wellness/sickness varied throughout the day, wrapped in a blanket, if I didn't move and the drugs had taken affect, then I was kind of ok. And a bit bored. What to do? 

Poker. 

Short stack ninja all the way

I fired up the laptop and perused the schedule. I have struggled in recent months (maybe longer) to find my stride in poker, I like to play tournaments but the rest my life doesn't really like me to play tournaments. But here I was, with nothing else to do, the world of poker lay in front of me. I selected a 'Omania' $16.50 pot limit omaha hi/lo tournament and the 'Big $3.30' no limit holdem on Pokerstars. The Big $3.30 was uneventful and short lived, however, after 4 hours of play, I finished third in the Omania, for a nice cash 10 times the buy in. Obviously biased by the result, I really enjoyed it, I honestly can't remember the last time I had 4 hours straight to play a poker tournament or equally even lasted 4 hours in a poker tournament... 

Now I had the bug for it. 

The following day I was not well, at all. I had only managed about three hours of sleep, and in the morning I was shivering and cold, but drenched in sweat from the fever. I couldn't decide what to do for the best; stay wrapped up in bed? go for a shower? eat something? take medicine? It took a while for the competing demands to sort themselves out and lying in the foetal position won out for most of the day.

The day after was much better, I was still ill but had returned to a place where medicine actually seemed to make a difference. With a lot time on my hands, I had scrolled through hours of social media and couldn't help but see the hype building for the huge $10million GG Masters. I gave the satellites on GG Poker a go, without any success. However, after a few ill fated attempts at the GG Masters, I was inspired to try my hand at the Pokerstars special Anniversary Sunday Millions. I've never been a fan of the satellite trees on Pokerstars, it always seems to be 1 seat in 20 moving onto the prize or next stage, one in 10 at best, whereas other sites it's generally 1 in 5. Maybe it's all the same in the end but winning two 1 seat in 5 satellites seems more achievable than winning a single 1 seat in 25 satellite. Anyways, I stumbled across a $5 satellite for $20 ticket to the $215 event, and that was the most appealing tree structure I've seen on Stars so I went for it. And what do you know? I'm now registered for the $7.5million Anniversary Sunday Millions. 

Returning to work, catching up on the literal hundreds of emails, and all the problems that come with it, my poker tournament days were behind me once again. Until that was, PokerOrg slipped into my DMs, as I'm led to believe the kids say. They had been giving away 50 tickets to the $10 million GG Masters on Twitter, for a simply follow and retweet, and I had won a $150 ticket! If I have any poker strategy worth listening to, it's that you should get yourself on Twitter and enter the frequent poker giveaways that many sites have to offer, there's massive value to be had for doing very little.

Alas, very little is what I got playing the GG Masters. It was one of those tournaments where you are card dead for a long long time and you know that the first time you get a decent hand, you're out, and then it happens. After mid position min raised, next to act called, I shoved 9s from the button with just 12 big blinds left and the original raiser called with 10s, eliminating me midway through Day1B. I guess it's onto the Sunday Millions.

All in all, a pretty sick week.