World Blogger Championship of Online Poker Today!

The finale of this year’s World Blogger Championship of Online Poker kicks off this afternoon at 3:00 p.m. Eastern time. Gonna be watching this one closely.

I say “watching” rather than “playing,” ’cos while yr humble gumshoe tried his best to qualify -- entering three of the six preliminary events -- he ultimately failed to land a spot. The first two I entered were hold’em events, and in both cases I gathered a modest-sized chip stacks early, then made questionable plays to go out right around the middle of the pack (i.e., around 280th out of 560 entrants or so for both).

Then came the 8-game mix event on Friday, the one I like to call S.P.L.E.N.D.O.R. I struggled through the first six levels (2-7 limit triple draw, limit hold’em, Omaha/8, razz, stud, and stud/8), and was sitting with 1,800 chips or so (down from our starting stacks of 2,500) when we began playing no-limit hold’em.

About four or five hands into the NLHE round, I was dealt pocket deuces in the big blind. The player in the cutoff raised to 90 (three times the BB) and it folded back to me. I called. The flop came . I checked, my opponent bet 150, I check-raised to 550, and he called. The turn was the , and I went ahead and shipped my last 1,200 or so. My opponent quickly called, showing . The came on the river, and just like that I hit the rail, one of the first twenty or so players to be bounced from the tournament. Didn’t even make it to the PLO round!

Oh, well. At least I didn’t have the winning hand, then watch the pot get shipped to my opponent. Like happens to some people.

As yet another (not insignificant) consolation prize, I am now free to help out with the live blogging of today’s event over on the PokerStars blog. Scanning the list of the 369 players who made it to the final, I’m seeing a number of familiar names. I’ll be following all of youse. And you may achieve even more fame to go along with your fortune, as we’ll be posting regularly all day about the happenings at today’s event.

Some sweet prizes are there for the taking, starting with the 46th-100th place finishers (who each get a Step 3 ticket), moving through the many tourney buy-ins (from $109 on up to $1,050) for those finishing 7th through 45th, and culminating with some even bigger entries into the Spring Championship of Online Poker (the SCOOP), some European Poker Tour trips for the second and third place finishers, and the top prize of a trip to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

Best of luck to all my blogger buds! Make me proud.

Or, at the very least, give me (and the rest of us) some good blogworthy material!