Just Getting Started
The World Series of Poker has begun. We had our first big buyin event yesterday. The 40k NL Holdem event. The Rio was able to get 201 of the most recognizable poker players to shell out the 40k for this star studded event.
My starting table included Daniel Negreanu, Dario Minieri. Jeff Lisandro, Phil Galfond, and Dale Pinchot. Each player started with a stack of 120k. I was able to pick up chips in a few small and medium size pots right off the bat and I was pretty close to chip lead in the tournament all the way through the dinner break. By dinner, I had 400k which was fairly close to the chip lead while avg stack was about 160k.
After dinner I was able to chip up to about 475k when the most interesting hand of the day came down. Blinds: 1200-2400 300 ante. Mike DeMichelle raised utg+1 to 6700. I called from the cutoff with 44. Heads up to the flop. Mike had about 500k also. We were both near the chip lead in the tournament as avg stack was about 190k. Flop 466 2 hearts. GIN FLOP! He leads out for 15600. I quickly raise to 40k. He thinks it over for quite a while and reraises smallish to 95k. At this point do give him credit for aces or kings. Mike and I have played quite a bunch of poker together before and I have noticed he doesnt play nearly as aggressive against me as he does other players. He is also not the type to fold a big pair here so I figure if I min raise back here to 150k, with our stack sizes, he might just push the remaining 325k and then one of us will be a huge chipleader with close to a million in chips. So I do the min raise to 150k. Mike goes into the tank and comes out after about 3 mins and just calls. Turn card is the devil. Turn is a 6. Mike checks. Now I figure I can either just give up here and lose the pot or turn this into a bluff and just hope he finds a way to fold thinking at this point if I bet again with our stacks that I must have the flatted him with the 56s or the 67s. I would have played those hands the same way with our stacks. So I fire out 125k on a last ditch attempt to win it. Mike check raises the balance. I light my two fours on fire and am left with 200k. Uggh! I end day one with 238k. Avg is 271k. 89 players remain.
The VIP Players Lounge:
Each 2 hours in the tournament today we had either a 20 min or 30 min break. Plus dinner break which was 90 mins. So each break a group of 5 of us would rush to the lounge to play Chinese Poker. This was a real good way to break up the monotony of the tournament. The contingent included Doyle, Eli, Hellmuth, and Matusow. This will most likely be the normal routine for all the big tournaments this summer. The lounge is extremely comfortable with butler service, computers, tvs, food and drinks. It is very secluded as you need an invitation to enter but at the same time right outside the lounge is the complete zoo atmosphere of the WSOP. Its like half bat cave, half country club.