Artichoke's

I've been slacking on posts, so I will make a solid effort to keep up from now on. I figure every 2-3 days is a good goal. I know barely anyone reads this but perhaps that will change with time, and with posts.

On the Artichoke Joe's front, I made a return with Rod 3 weeks ago. It had been a while because after our last stop there we decided to take a break from the tournament. Limit tournaments are a different beast and we both had some pretty ridiculous beats there. But I managed to talk Rod into going and after playing no hands the blinds are at 30/60 and I'm in the BB with A7o. I push all-in after a late position raise. I think I'm on my way out when a 7 falls on the turn and all of a sudden I have some chips to play with. I think somewhere along the line I get a low pocket pair which I raise with as we are 4 handed and of course get callers. I keep firing and keep getting called down by one guy who pretty much calls anything, it's limit after all! My 55's hold up and all of a sudden I find myself the chip leader. The thing with this tournament is that obviously AJ's wants to finish it as soon as possible so the blinds jump from 60/120 to 200/400. And of course I have to post the first BB. UTG raises to 800, SB goes all-in and I bow out with J4o hoping to get this heads up and just go all-in till I can regain a chip lead or bust. SB manages to stay alive and I push all-in in the SB and finish a disappointing 3rd place after getting so close to my first win ever at AJ's. It's a winner-take-all single table tournament so $200 is up for grabs. I did get a freeroll and the following week (Tues May 10) I returned with Rod again for my freeroll. Nothing Doing. I'll probably go back sometime but Rod is done with that tourney after too many bad beats and no freeroll. The upshot is that I have 700 points for the FreeRoll tournament in September. It's slightly above average, most people have 500 (you get that for coming in 1st/2nd in any of the tourneys and then 100 points thereafter). So hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in some more points before then.