I loaded myself onto the tiny 15-seater Cessna in Champaign, Illinois and headed to the east coast for the first time since I left New York City five months ago. I wasn't going back to hit the bars in the West Village though, and in fact wasn't even heading to NYC, regrettably. I was bound for Connecticut and the felt battlefields at Foxwoods Casino. I was determined to try and leave my mark on the tournament scene, and hadn't done so yet in 2005. I had one big problem staring me in the face, er, wallet, though; I had only brought about $6,000 and the events I wanted to play in were going to run me about $17,000. Even by fuzzy math standards, that just didn't add up. Regardless of that fact, I had decided to make my way with just the $6,000 on this trip. It would be a challenge, as well as good fun to try and pull it off.

My plane landed and I picked up my rental car and headed into the dark Connecticut night. It was a little bit of a drive to the casino, so I began planning my attack. I figured I would hit the cash games hard to make up the difference between what I had and what I needed. If I was lucky maybe I would win a seat to the main event and that would solve most of my issue right there. When I pulled into Foxwoods though, I quickly realized that there might be some added difficulty: every game had a list anywhere from 1-2 hours long to get into it! Hmmm…

I decided just to pay my buy-in for the next day's event ($2,000) and get some rest. I then hopped back into the car and drove another couple of miles to my home for the next week or so, the Hilltop Inn. That's right, I was rocking the Hilltop to save some cash. It had to be done if I had any hope of scraping together the money to play all the events I wanted to. The hotel actually turned out to be perfect for what I needed, and came equipped with a real authentic Connecticut village just two miles away! After having lived in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles the last couple of years, this seemed like some sort of alien land to me. It helped my preparation though as I went running before the events, through the village, thinking about my game plan for that day.

The day of the $2,000 event didn't go exactly as I had planned and I ended up going out after a few hours. Never really picked up any hands though, so I couldn't feel too badly about my exit. I ran into my good friend, Liz Lieu, who had also gone out unceremoniously that day, and we ended up hanging for the rest of the trip. There really weren't many pros playing the smaller events other than us, so it was certainly nice to see a friendly face. She would prove to be truly invaluable later in the trip.

After my exit I headed up to the cash game to see how brutal the wait would be. Unfortunately it was the typical 30 names on the board ahead of mine. Thankfully I had brought my laptop with me to the casino today, so I decided to set up camp right outside the business center and pirate their Internet signal on my machine. I ended up having a great session and took down about $3,000 playing $30-$60 on PokerStars. Alright, I thought; if I couldn't get into a live cash game then I would just play online in the casino. Kind of like going to a sandwich shop and ordering a pizza, but it was working for me so far.

The next day there was no actual event so I decided to just play in the satellite for the $10,000 main event. It was a brutal day as I went out 12th, while they were awarding 11 seats. To make matters worse, I had some joker who had won a seat come up to me immediately after and say, "Well, you just never know. I was down to 1,100 in chips a while back, and now I have a seat!" Clearly not what I wanted to hear at that moment.

After disposing of his body, I headed back to my hotel and beat myself up for not being able to close the deal that night. I decided not to let it ruin my drive to pull off winning a seat though, and instead let it fire me up more. One way or another I was going to play in the main event. With my cash whittled down to only $3,000 now, I really needed to come up with some creative ways to make some cash. So I did what every young poker player does when the going gets tough: I headed to cyberspace.

The next couple of days were all day sessions on the "tables". My back was sore, my shoulders were aching, and my eyes were burned, but by the end of the second day I had made another $7,000, which brought my online total to a whopping $10,000 in just a few days. The only problem was that I needed to convert this money to actual cash, and quickly. Re-enter Liz…

She swooped in and I transferred her $10,000 in PokerStars dollars for $10,000 in cash. Problem solved. Life was good, and I owed Lizzie a huge favor in the future. She had really saved me there.

The next day I laid down my $5,000 for the event, and was greeted with…more disappointment. I just couldn't seem to ever really get started in either of these events so far. I was proud of myself in the sense that I outlasted about 3/4 of the field, though never getting above 7,000 in chips, when we only started with 5,000! Wins are rarely made of stories like that though, so I was ousted right before dinner. On a brighter note, Liz made the final table and took down 5th in the event. That's good karma at work if I had ever seen it.

I decided to try my hand at another satellite for the main event, which was just a few days away now. I was determined to win my way in this go-around. There is just something to winning a seat at one-tenth the price that makes it more satisfying. Yeah, something like you can play and still get to eat that day.

My second satellite began slowly and I was scraping to get some chips together as the blinds raced up. Luckily, aggression is rewarded in poker and I am nothing if not hostile on the tables, so I was able to pull off some hostile steals. I ended up fighting my way to a nice finish this go-around and took down one of the 23 seats! I was never really threatened once we got about halfway through the field and I was ecstatic to have achieved one of my goals on this trip.

With much of the pressure off, I was free to just play some poker the rest of my time at Foxwoods. My cash more than had me covered now, despite the concern when I had arrived. We did have one more off day though before the $10,000 event started, so I jumped into one more satellite. I wanted to keep myself sharp and didn't want to play too much limit poker before the no-limit event.

I ended up winning another seat that day and now was really free-rolling. I made another $10,000 for the trip right there, after selling the seat to a friend, so I was feeling content. It really was a great feeling to come up to Foxwoods not knowing if I was going to be able to pull the money together to play in all the events, and then finding a way to make it all happen.

I wish this story had the fantasy ending of me taking down the huge win at the main event, but alas, this is poker and it often doesn't come with the storybook ending. My K-K ran into my opponent's A-A early on in the event and I was crippled from then on. I managed to limp along for a while, with David Benyamine finishing me off after I took a poor stab at stealing a pot away from him. All in all though, the trip was a success. I fought my way to some nice wins, won a couple of seats, and solidified my belief that I can battle through whatever gets thrown my way in the poker world. The moral here is for you to keep your own head up when the circumstances are looking daunting. That, or make sure that Liz is around somewhere close by to save your ass when you are in trouble.