Won't be quitting my day job

Tonight I decided to try my hand at real-money online poker for the second time. My previous attempt, almost exactly two years ago, cost me my $50 investment over about two weeks. But I'm a little older and wiser now, and lately I've been finding the fake-money game less challenging.

I figured it was time to give the real-money thing another shot.

So I grabbed my credit card and plunked $20 into my long-dormant real-money account. They make this process so fast and so easy that I balked twice before I actually paid up. It felt vaguely criminal.

Once the misgivings were set aside and the money was deposited, I promptly entered an 18-player sit-and-go tournament for a $5.50 buy-in.

First thing you notice is how much better the competition is. Even at the five-buck level, people know what they're doing. Come to think of it, maybe the people at the five-buck level are the toughest to beat. What kind of cheap bastard spends two hours grinding it out just for a shot at a top payout of 36 bucks? Other than me, I mean.

Whatever the case, it's a great deal harder to separate these people from their real money than it is to pick off the hapless fish in the fake-money barrel.

Here's a quick account of how things went for me:

• won the first two hands dealt, eliminating two players and jumping to first place


• took a beat for about a quarter of my stack, dropping me to fifth


• flopped full house on 39th hand; beat opponent's three of a kind to regain lead


• finished fourth overall, for a $9.00 payout after 128 hands

This earned me all of $3.50. Hardest $1.75 an hour I ever made, but not a bad start for a cheap bastard.