Welcome to my game, I'll be sucking out later

Tonight I hosted my regular Sunday night tourney, only this time, I had blogger company. Poker Poison made the trek from Parts Unknown to play in my humble low-buy-in affair. Seventeen players, and we were off...

Unfortunately, the draw didn't quite work out, as I prefer to be at the same table as the new players - and we had two this evening besides Yosoy. All the first-timers were at the red table, with me at the black. After getting aces, then queens in the rebuy phase, I was insanely card dead. It seemed like every sixth hand, I'd look down at a K, then a 6. Foooooook!!!!! (fold)

Down to the final nine and short on chips, I had just passed up two chances to jam preflop, with KJo and A5o. On the KoJack hand, I noticed two players look very interested in the hand, so I folded in a pot that was folded to me. One had AJ but would've fallen to my turned trips. For the A5o, the hand was raised and called already before it got to me. Certainly, I was dominated, right? I figured as much after a guy behind me called too. Then silently swore as the flop hit... A-7-5.

Then, the blogger vs blogger action. Yosoyveneno shoved her smallish stack all-in and it was folded to me. At this point, I was on folding tilt, saw that ace, ignored the offsuit 4 kicker, and called. For less than Yosoy had. I was *that* short. 2100 in my stack, with the BB at 800, perhaps?

She had black nines. Hellmuth loves black nines. Yosoy didn't after the ace flopped, but she didn't say a peep about my bad-hand-turned-good. Acting unlike Phil, I'm sure, by taking her beat in stride. I tried really hard to gift her some chips when she was running low, but failed. My ace held up. A class act, that Poison.

On the very next hand, an awful-but-unpredictable player limps in, and I jam with JJ. Because, hey, I'm on a rush! Albert gives me credit for something moderately decent and folds KQs. The limper calls without much hesitation with 66. There's a K on the board by the end of it, but no 6, so I double up. Again. And just like that, I go from almost dead to having a useful stack of chips. Rise, Lazarus, rise!!

I managed to parlay those chips into a money finish. Poor Yosoy's final all-in was called in two places, and her AJ was beaten.