[Dodgey]

Thanks guys. It was damn good fun winning the second seat. Cake rocks ! - you get about 50-60 unique players (looks like more - like about 80 or 90 but that's people busting out and rebuying in the 1st hour). You get a lot of maniacs trying anything to double up so you you just sit tight and wait till you hand is loaded and call them down. After the 1 hour mark - no more rebuys - you grab your add-on (2.5k chips) and then the game settles down, with about 40 people. 7 Seats for grabs so it's not hard work.

All this for 14 gold chips. I had 3 left so I did 3 SnGs for gold chips and got mine up to 14 - then entered again, 10 minutes after reaching 14 gold chips :-) - the Gold chips SnGs are mega easy - people don't take it seriously as it's just loyalty chips. Little do they know how much they are worth ! :-)

At the final table (10 of us) I was sat with about 24k. Everyone else had between 40k and 90k , the average being about 50-60k. So I was not in a good spot. After one failed attack I was down to 18k. The only other weak people were two chaps with 24k and 22k. The blinds were 1000/2000 with a 200 ante. Nothing to get frightened of with 18k (that's the key - don't panic).

The game was MEGA tight. Only 3 people needed to bust out for the other 7 to get a seat. As you can imagine, there was a LOT of folding, with the chip leader collecting all the blinds and antes. Not a problem. Let him have them! Just don't want them going to the other weak guys.

I knew I was in trouble. One low stack bust out and that left everyone else but me with loads of chips. I sat there and worked out that 9k would be the minumum I'd need to have in the instance I got a strong hand. I knew if I pushed I'd almost certainly get called by two people hoping to catch a panic Ax hand out - and two people calling me would mean $27k plus any limpers' chips and antes - enough to be back in the game. So I waited, and waited, and waited, down to about 12k and I landed AQ off on the BB. Someone raised ahead of me, I re-raised, another went over me. All-in. 2 callers. Perfect! - Just what I wanted. I got called with two mediocre hands (can't remember) - and spiked my ace. Now back to 42k.

The rest was easy. Two people with less than 20k so I waited for them to make a mistake and get into a fight with someone else. At one stage I gambled 10k on a steal (I needed the chips to be fair) and it worked.

Shortly afterwards I got AQ again and the flop was xQx. I check raised - held my breath as he pushed all in and bingo - was up to 111k lol. I didn't NEED to make that move but I was convinced I had the upper hand and you can't run when you are sure about something or you'll never know what to do.

I remember actually making a calculated decision to gamble 20k at one stage - I knew that my remaining 40k if I lost would be enough to blind it out, so I went ahead - and won.

A very tacticaly final table.

I can't help thinking that the same tactics 2 days ago would have won me a seat at the WSOP. Maybe. But then there were no short stacks and I was sure I'd won the hand that cost me the game. I knew I had to do something as no one was calling anything unless they had top pairs.

Hindsight.. hmm. :-)

Go to Cake. I've always sung it's praises on PKRNation.com . I'm a very average player, and I can win 2 wsop grand final seats in a week... at no cost.. says a lot :-)

p.s. The seat I won is to the final game to win a WSOP 12k seat - I haven't won the $12k WSOP seat .. yet.. thought I'd say as my previous post does not make that clear.