Third freezer from the right

I managed to win one of The Group tournaments on Stars last night for the second week in a row, which vaults me to the top of the totally meaningless leaderboard. For those of you keeping score at home, that's 5 wins, 4 second-place finishes and 4 ignominious bubbles in 19 tournaments since we began playing them in March.

Last night, I stayed patient while the deck stayed cold. I finally caught some cards and mounted a nice comeback against Chris's and Karl's big stacks after eliminating DougPoker with pocket 9s. A straight on the turn sent Karl and his pocket queens to the rail in third place and provided a 14K to 9K advantage over Chris at heads-up. My Q-J knocked out Chris's J-4 on a jack-high flop to end it a few minutes later. (Congratulations to Chris for his first Group tournament cash.)

These Group and blogger tournaments have done much to hone my game over the last six months, teaching me important lessons about the twin virtues of patience and aggression. The competition is far superior to what's encountered in the smaller buy-in MTTs I typically play and has given me a renewed sense of confidence needed to wade through those 1,000-plus player fields. It seemed to apply in Sunday's blogger freeroll.

I'm still waiting for a breakthrough in the two of the popular weekly blogger tournaments, including the new Monday at the Hoy and The Mookie. (I do have a handful of cashes in the WWdN.) Finished a frustrating sixth in last night's MATH. I got precious few playable hands in that one, too, and only managed to hang on as long as I did because of a classic Q-9 vs. Q-10 Riverstars suckout against Katitude.

But with blinds at 200/400/50 and a stack of just over 3K, I opened for 1,200 with K-J suited hoping to steal. A big-stacked Iakaris came over the top and, feeling fairly pot-committed, I called off my last 1,800 hoping the luckbox would deliver. The flop gave me my jack, but unfortunately, it hit Iak's A-J harder and I was gone.

Congrats to Iak, a Canadian refugee and fellow Cleveland blogger, for his second-place finish and my tablemates for producing some of the most bizarre chat ever seen in an online tournament, blogger or otherwise. Think frozen, encephaletic cats. Extremely funny stuff. Well worth the price of admission.