Go Sweden!

PartyPoker had a freeroll (NL THE) this Sunday for Swedish players only. A sweet deal, only players playing from Sweden and it was a... $50,000 freeroll. Holy schmoly, and apparently they had run ads in two large newspapers

2800 registered, 220 paid. From $10,500 for first place to $35 for 220th. Ten thousand five hundred! $1000 for eighth and so on.

After the usual few hundred had fallen out in the first fifteen minutes (a standard freeroll behavior, all-ins aplenty, double up or bust) it was very tight poker for everyone. Blinds stealing, check-raising and premium hand against premium hand. I managed to pull off a real doozy, had QJs and it became a three-way all-in against AA and KQ, I think. A queen on the flop and a jack on the river and I'm table captain.

Stack dwindling and finally when the big blind comes to me it takes a third or quarter of my stack. Ace Three of spades, all-in. Nope, I'm up against AA. I manage to hit a three and an ace but as you can see this was no good.

Out at 369th place. Not in the money, but we verified in a poker forum that in addition to the $50K prize pool there was a gift (most probably a chipset) to the top 500. So now I'll have three :-).