It’s the run-up to a new poker year, with the Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic just around the corner at the beginning of March, and my poker purse is looking a little strained. I’ve already had inquiries from two friends about WSOP plans and frankly, I’m not sure it’s going to happen this year unless I pick up the pace a bit. The droughts feel even droughtier when you’re not playing as often.

So I did play a bit more live this month, all at Portland Meadows because of their Mixed Game Series. I made three of the games on two days, busting way early in the Big O (I was not re-buying) on Friday night.

The Big Bet Mix Dealers Choice game went better but I barely made the end of registration (still an improvement on the Big O). I hung around the club to wait for the PLO Big Bounty tournament in the evening, and once again failed to make the end of reg. All in all, a disappointing showing.

I’d opened the month with a couple of Beaverton Quarantine online games (and I played another after getting home so early after the Big O tournament). I picked up a few bounties, but didn’t even make the entry fee back for one of them. Four games, four losses, with a slight offset from the two bounty games.

Played six tournaments with the Chainsaw Poker group online, Omaha Hi-Lo for one, a PLO Hi-Lo, and four HORSE tournaments. Min-cashes in the PLO and one HORSE.

Wrapped up the month with another excursion (well, a couple) to Meadows. They had a Friday night satellite to their $500 entry Big Stack Freezeout tournament, and I took a shot. $80 (including door fee) seemed like a great bargain, even though I haven’t been playing a lot of No-Limit Hold’em.

I had a good start with a player in middle position making a raise when I was on the button with aces. I 3-bet him and he went all in with kings. The board rollout quads for me. I never got near my target stack for a satellite, but it was a standard satellite, not a Milestone, so I just had to stick it out.

My stack limped along at around 10bb most of the last half of the tournament, then after about 4 hours we were suddenly down to the final table of 9, with one person not getting anything. I didn’t catch exactly what was happening, but I heard that the player in seat 9 had somehow made it to the final without realizing they were playing for a seat into the next day’s tournament. I was in seat 3 in the small blind on the first hand, and when there were several limps ahead of me, I just folded. The flop was 973, seat 9 blasted off when it got to him, and he was called by the big blind. Heads-up, seat 9 had top-top (A9) but BB showed 73 and the race for seats was over just like that.

Sadly, it was all for nought (apart from the $75 cash payout that went with the satellite seat that almost covered by entry and door fee). Carl Oman ate my lunch several times during the day and I busted in round 8. Though I was glad that I made it past round 4 or 5, I was still rather disappointed that registration was still open when I was knocked out. The final prize pool ended up being an even $100K.

Coming up for me this month, a couple of live home games (finally pulling my chips out of the garage to lend them to a friend); the Chainsaw Series of Poker, a series of online non-NLHE tournaments; Final Table has a special $20K GTD tournament on the 21st; then on the 23rd I need to make a choice between the Final Table Deepstack or a Portland Meadows Big O Special. Then it’s whatever I can get to for Chinook Winds the week after that.