First off, I want to thank FTR and all FTR forum members. The information on this site has raise the level of my game and is largely responsible for helping me achieve my goal of playing in a major tournament.

Background:
After playing many (lost count really) $3 rebuys and $12 freezouts sub-qualifiers, I won and played in 4 $100+$10 main qualifers for the Party Poker Spring Poker Festival in Vienna. In each of these there were about 120 entrants and only 2 guaranteed packages or 1 package for every 65 entrants whichever was greater. I improved in each tourney with my final showing in 8th place. Got busted out badly when villian caught his river card. Ouch. I was about to give up on this tourney, but then I noticed that Party was having a finale with a buy-in of $325+$25. This one offered 1 package for every 20 entrants. So I played a sub-qualifer and made it into the finale. There were 46 entrants and I fought my way through and won a spot!!!

This tournament is a good deal for me since I live in Vienna and get to keep the spending money and accomodation money. That $2300 itself is my biggest win ever and that doesn't even count the €3000+€150 main event buy-in.

Overall goal for the 5-day main event:
1) Win tournament. (gotta think big, right?)

Goals for getting there:
1) Stay calm.
2) Be patient and don't rush things.
3) Don't play like a complete donk.

I will post some more info about the tourney and structure when I have some more time. The main event starts Monday, March 12, and I plan to update this post with my experiences. I really enjoy reading about other people's live tourney experiences, ie. Michael1123's WSOP recap from 2005. An old one, I know, but still a great read. Hope you all enjoy it!