Unix is a World Series Angel!!!!! and Mad is the Sitges Satellite Tourney winner!

What a great day of poker Easter Sunday was!

First and most importantly of all, Unixangel, aka wonderful, beautiful, super-talented Lina Olofsson - the PokerStars nordic blogger - won a seat to the World Series of Poker main event in a $650 PokerStars qualifier!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Go Lina!!!!

I rail-birded my fantastic friend until around 2am where she had worked her way up to 28,000 - about 10,000 over average. She had Shaun Deeb on her table for ages but despite his ultra-cautious play, he eventually got busted. Lina, meanwhile, was playing like a demon and I just knew if she focused, she could do it.

Lina was already super-excited having won THREE seats to the qualifer already. She had sold one and had another in reserve (always good to have a Swiss account!!!) and the seat she was playing last night she'd won in a $3 re-buy tourney.

There was absolutely no doubt in my mind she could do it, but both myself and Dilba, and about a dozen other mates, were furiously MSN'ing her all evening to tell her to CONCENTRATE and FOCUS! In fact, she only went all-in once - with QQ against AK - and played position the whole tournament. What a genius!

WELL DONE LINA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The other great news is that I won the Sitges Satellite tournament!!!! 555 euros. Yee ha!

The tourney was a shoot-out event with eight satellites held in people's houses or bars around Sitges since January 27th. The winner of each went through to the final and I won the first one. The final itself - with more than 1,000 euros in the prize pool - was super-tense and at one point - as we neared the end of the one-hour re-buy period, I thought we might have a fight. Tempers were definitely fraying - and not just at the edges.

Once re-buys were over, the casualties were pretty rapid. The last four were Elske (horribly short-stacked), Richard (chip leader, and playing brilliantly), myself, and Margarita who rarely knew what she had but sucked out on the river over and over again ("Oh, do i have a flush??")

Elske was absolutely terrified of being bubble girl and managed to survive numerous all-ins (including a split pot where the table won with an Ace on the river) while Richard slowly seeped away almost his entire stack in a series of horrible beats against super-lucky Margarita. He and Elske were about level when they both went out in the same hand - but Richard had 400 more chips so took 3rd while Elske was the reluctant bubble.

With Richard out of the way, I wasn't too worried. Even though Margarita had 80% of the chips, I love heads-up and she didn't know what she was up to. Bang bang bang and I was chip leader in no time. The final hand I had AQ and raised it up pre-flop. The flop paired my ace and Margarita's 9 so I raised again and Rita called. The turn brought rags so I raised Margarita all-in. The river paired my Queen for good measure. Yee ha. Game over.



The other good news is that lovely Neil Channing made the final table yesterday of the Irish Open and is MASSIVE chip leader.

Easter Sunday rocks. xxxx