Effortless Win.

Sometimes you don't even have to be awake to win in poker. I was playing a PokerStars freeroll for their Weekly Round 2 tournament last night and stayed up way too late. It was getting on to 3 AM when I decided I really needed to go to bed and sat out when the tournament went on break. But even without me being there I still managed to break the top 100 and win a ticket for the Weekly Round 2. Of course there is the little fact that I had a stack of something like 113 thousand chips at the time, still a bit above the average stack. So even without me physically playing I was still technically active in the game and this apparently proved more than enough chips for me to make it.

People have actually done this kind of thing in the real world. The late Stuey Ungar collapsed in his hotel room during the 1990 World Series of Poker Main Event as the result of his cocaine habit and was unable to return to the table. But his chip stack was so big that he still managed to come in 9th and win more than 20 grand before being blinded and anted out.

Addenda: I finally got around to checking the e-mail that PokerStars sent me for placing in the tournament this afternoon. I came in 76th out of 12 thousand. Perhaps if I'd stayed up to keep playing I would have come in higher. But it's just as likely I would blown it and not picked up a ticket at all.