bad beats and variance

Sorry for the lack of updates, everyone. The client I'm using to post from my phone stopped working and my last update didn't get posted.

I got back from the dinner break with about 14K in chips, blinds 300-600 with 75 antes. After a few hands, it got folded around to me in the SB, and I look down to find AQ. I raise to 2300, SB makes it 5300. My options are fold, which seems very weak in this situation, heads up. So many people play Ax strong in this situation and you will get reraised with AJ or worse, KQ, etc, quite often. The second option is just call and see a flop. The problem is that this option puts over 11K on the flop, and with only 8K remaining in my stack following the preflop call, I would be pot-committed (maybe? opinions?). So I rejected this option. Which left re-ship, which I did. He instacalled and I knew I was in big trouble -- and he had the bullets. I think this hand was definitely a cooler, but perhaps I should have gotten away from it. So my final position was ~550th out of 2700 players.

Anyway, I left the casino and was going to not-play-poker for the rest of the night. But I passed by the satellite room and they were about to start a $225 HORSE satellite to tonight's (Sunday) $1500 event. I decided to give it a go. I started off great but eventually busted out of the satellite. Dejected, I headed back into the casino. I was going to play the "World Series of Poker Final Table Bonus" table game, but the table was crowded, and so instead, I sat down at a Let It Ride table. After ten hands or so, I hadn't gotten any cards. Then I looked down at a new hand and squeezed out Ad....Kd....Td. With three cards to the royal my heart started racing and I stood pat. (For details on how Let It Ride works, check out http://casinogambling.about.com/od/othergames/a/LIR.htm )

The dealer's first card was the Jd. I showed the table my hand and we began chanting for the Qd. The dealer flipped it over, and...it was....the...

queen

of

DIAMONDS!

We all started screaming (I think my tablemates were almost as excited as I was), as I had just won $50,000!!!! After a half-hour of administrative BS, I walked away from the table with a stack of $1k chips, a stack of $500 chips, $37500 altogether after taxes were automatically withheld. (In case you're wondering, the casino's biggest chip is a $25K chip. However, the casino manager explained to me that for them to pay me with that, they would have had to order a "fill" of those chips for the table, or $500K, and they obviously don't do that for security reasons.

Anyways, I put $25K in my casino account, went and registered for the main event (and today's HORSE event), then, on my friend Ed's suggestion, took $1K to the Craps table to try to give some of the money back to the casino. I failed miserably, going on one of my best shoots of my left to walk away from the table with $4K. Anyone seen the movie Vegas Vacation?

So this was the win of a lifetime..... all because I'm too bad at poker to lay down AQ heads-up in the Small Blind.