I have tears in my eyes. Seriously. Honest-to-goodness, stunned-to-the-bones, jesus-h-fucking-christ tears in my eyes. It was only a free-roll. No money on the line and no cash prize-pool. Just an entry in a WPT satellite. Level 6 and I had done OK up to this point. I'd loosened my opening standards a bit and limped more in an attempt to lose as little as possible in the early rounds. I decided to try passive/aggressive in these rounds - passive pre-flop on marginals, aggressive post if I hit the flop. Yes, that is ridiculous, I know, but it was working. I took a couple of pots clumsily when I really had no idea where I stood. I laid down JJ when an ace hit the flop, but took a pot when the JJ paid me another visit a couple of hands later. The hand immediately following that got me the pot again after calling a limp pre-flop with A7 - the flop paired my 7 and was top pair - top kicker, I raised and was called. The turn was a blank and I pushed. The guy folded. This gave me the table chip lead going into Level 5 and a greater than average stack and a ranking of #208 out of 2178 remaining. And then Level 6. Blinds are 100/200 and I'm looking at AA under-the-gun. I raised to 450. One guy calls the rest fold to the big blind who pushes in. I paused while I wrote the action down, and then called all-in. The other guy folded and our cards flipped over. He had AK. Over 10K in the pot. I said, "Sweet." The flop had two suits matching his K, then the turn matched as well, I mumbled, "No spade on the river..." My wish was granted when the queen of clubs came off. But I didn't see that my aces had been ambushed by his made strait on the river. The pot was pushed to him and I blew up in a puff of cartoon smoke. Stunned and staring at the screen, tears in my eyes. Honest-to-goodness, stunned-to-the-bones, jesus-h-fucking-christ tears in my eyes.
