Fair to say its been a good weekend................no its been a bloody fantastic weekend!! The foundations for the great weekend were layed on Friday morning. We'd paid to have some scans and blood tests done privately at the Alexandra hospital in Cheadle, naturally after our problems last year we are constanstly on the look for reasurance regarding Debbies pregnancy- well the appointment went very well indeed with the test results all coming back perfect, still a long way to go but boy do we feel alot better about the journey ahead!! So to the weekend, and for the first time in weeks im finally in a position to put some serious hours in. So to the cash and the grind. Played around 5,000 hands Saturday / Sunday and well it was a weekend of pretty pain free poker, no real headaches, no truely painful badbeats, just nice simple winning poker resulting in a rather tastey upswing...............quality time = quality poker!!!!!! It was also the last week to qualify for the WSOPE main event on Betfair (have i mentioned that the qualifying for this years WSOPE as been nothing short of a joke?). Not wishing to spend any of my hard earned cash on the $500 entry fee i enter the very last $30 super turbo, 70 runners 2 tickets. I make the final table as the short stack..............within 5 hands i had 50% of the chips!!!!!!! Love to say it was down to my world class poker, but the facts are i won 3 races and had AA twice, and with the blinds being so high it was all all in or fold poker. So to the $500 event, 180 runners with 5 seats up for grabs (so another $10k overlay on top of last weeks $50k). 5,000 chips and a good blind structure the game was set up for good poker, not that you'd know it as we lose 10% of the field within 10 minutes!!!! Seriously, what are these people doing????? For the first couple of hours i just stuck around the 5k mark with no real hands, then BOOOOOOM i go on a heater and before i know it im in the top five with 50,000 chips, and thats where i stayed until the final table, then it went a little off track!! Totally and utterly card dead im forced to sit it out while everyone around me seems to be winning at my exspense. We lose a couple of players and are down to 7 with 3 of us the short stacks, me being the shortist off them all. With blinds at 2500/5000 and me on just 25,000 and the other two short stacks on 60,000 it wasnt looking to good, then i get it in with AQ v A9 and win, the turning point, the hand were you could hear the moans and groans from the other players!!! We then lose one of the short stacks whos taken out by the chip leader. With the 3 other big stacks nice and safe it was obviously down to me and the other short stack, i grow some balls and push all in with J9, then K9 picking up what are at this stage massive pots, but more importantly i pick up a chip lead over the other short stack, i just need him to make a bad move!!!!!! Well he does he pushes all in with 109 and gets called by A5, flop 2 3 4 !!!!!!! Yes!!!!!!!!!!! turn 5......................river A...................i dont even see it, im still slapping myself on the back when i realise theres still six of us left......runner runner to split the pot , how very f**king sick!!!!!! F F S !!! The next hand he pushes with A10, runs into 77 and hits his 10 !!!!! Ive gone from thinking ive won a seat, to being a massive dog in the space of 2 hands!!!!! Amazing what can happen in the space of 2 hands, as the same fella gets it all in AGAIN, this time with AK v A9 against the chip leader, i feel the pain as a 9 hits the board and holds up, and i my friend win a $20,000 package to this years WSOPE main event.................the year of the strumm is once again on the move!!!!!!! Its true, even after a serious lack of sleep im in a very, thats a very very good mood this morning!!!!!!!!!!!