A great few days

Starting with Thursday, I finally got the official call from the company, and they offered me The Producers tour for the next year! I've been assuming that I'd be getting the call for a couple weeks now, so it's a huge relief to actually just have it over with. I'll be starting rehearsals in the city August 28th and living there hopefully until we leave Sep. 14th for the tour. Unfortunatly our first break is only for a week and it isn't until May. Long time, yes. On the good side we'll be having a lot of week long sitdowns, so Karen can come out and visit. Also, we'll be doing alot of cities that I didn't do on Oklahoma, like 6 weeks in Canada, which I'm really excited about.

Friday was great because I only had a morning show for a school group, giving me my first Friday night off since January! Having no show until Saturday night, I took advantage of the situation and went to go see The Wedding Singer in NYC. Kudos to Karen for getting us the ol' Student Discount for $26, and front row to boot! She's so awesome!

The show was ehhh...could be better. Lot of really easy 80's jokes that, in my opinion, were just results of lazy writing. There were basically no setups to the jokes, just really obvious references to song lyrics and pop culture. (Ex. A wall street scene, buisness exec says "Seriously, is anyone ever going to pay $3 for a cup of coffee?" Immediatly followed by "NEW Coke? Buy as many shares as you can get your hands on!" Ugh...)

Saturday I came home in the afternoon and met up with Phil for a delicious lunch at Fridays. He told me that the card club he works at had a Freeroll tournament at 4. Not having a show until 830 I decided to check it out. You get T2000 chips for free, and there's $20 rebuys for the first hour, blinds are 15 min long. I rebought right away and paid $5 for another T500 to go to the "dealer pool", a sort of pretip for the dealers. So basically I started the tourney with 4500 chips. I had my chips all in at one point with KQ vs. AK and 55. The flop came K83, then 8 8...whew, split pot! When Phil was dealing, I limped with QT on the button and flopped top two pair. I bet the pot of 3000 and got one caller. The turn bricked and I moved him in for 7000. He did the "look at the clock and 'I want to go home anyway'" routine and called with KJ for an open ended straight draw. Phil smashed a 9 on the river for me to leave me short. I was able to steal some pots and not really see showdowns and get back up to 11k. I did a double add on for $40 and jumped up to 17k at the break. Soon afterwards, we made the final table and they posted the prize breakdown: $755, $455, $310.

Just like the books say, things tightened up considerably as everyone was frightened to put money in the pot. I stole some pots as there was 6K just there for the taking each time. I stole about 3 times and then there was a raise to 13k from the chipleader directly to my right with the blinds at 1k/2k. I find AA and decide to move in for 31300. Folds around to him and he makes the fastest call with 33. I win and double up. It's at this point that I realize with these chips and the other people's styles, I have to get really unlucky to LOSE this tournament.

Same sort of situation as before happened again. There was a raise preflop and I get Kk this time. I move in again and he calls with KQh. I win that one too and we're down to 9. This helps the image even more, because now they've seen the cards I've had and any raise will be respected. I steal a bunch more pots and when we get to 5, a player decides to ask for a deal for 4th and 5th. $50 off the top 2 spots to go to them. We all agree and have now made the money. I could care less about anything but first though. I knock out the 5th place person with AT against his QJ preflop. Then I get the 4th place guy with 77 vs. his A9. 3rd place is also knocked out by me with T6o on a TT5 board. We both checked the flop. A K hit the turn and he checked so I bet 10k, he went all in for 23k, I called and he had Kx. Now heads up, I had about 146K to 100K. The blinds were 5k/10k now, but I had a small dilemma. It was 7:30 and I had a show in an hour. I still had to get home, change and get to the theater in an hour from 109 in Lindenhurst/Deer Park area. I offered a deal of $620/$500 in favor of me which he decided to "play a few more hands." I lost 2 of the next 8 hands, both preflop, and increased my chiplead due to his ability of calling 25k preflop and then folding on whatever board I bet. When I had close to 200K the other player asked if I wanted the deal. I knew I had him on the ropes but I wasn't in the place to argue, seeing as I had to go. I accepted and claimed the $620 prize, my biggest tournament win to date. I tipped the dealing staff $40, roughly 6% of my winnings, leaving me +$515 for the day.

Like I said, a great couple of days...