HugePoker

Those of you who followed the live updates website know that day 1 was a serious roller-coaster for me. In fact, I had a great first level, faltered in the second, sailed forward in the third, crashed badly in the fourth and staged a partial recovery in the fifth. If I could have just played every other level and sat out 2 and 4, I’d be sitting on 80,000 chips for day 2. But at the end of the day I more than doubled my starting stack while half the field went broke, so I can’t really complain.

I remained at my starting table from noon until half past midnight, a half hour before the end of the night, at which point I was moved to a new table and (uncharacteristically for me) had no drama in the final hands of the night. But there was plenty of drama at the starting table, some of it involving me and some not. I dropped a few chips early, seeing flops with decent hands but not catching anything or raising preflop and then giving up the hand. In the first 20 minutes I dropped from 20,000 to around 19k – not what I’d hope for, but nothing to worry about. Then a hand came up that would set the tone for my first level: I called a raise from the big blind with J-T-suited, seeing a flop of Q-T-8, giving me 2nd pair, a gutshot and a backdoor flush draw. My opponent seemed like a guy who would always make a continuation bet, so I checkraised the turn, figuring that I might well have the best hand but if I didn’t I had a lot of ways to improve. When my opponent called my checkraise unhappily I wasn’t sure which of those possibilities was more likely. When a blank hit the turn I fired again, perhaps unwisely, and my opponent made another sad call, this time seeming resigned as if to say “if you’ve got me you’ve got me, but I’m not folding this hand”. So that seemed pretty bad for me and I was ready to give up on the hand and lick my wounds when another Ten hit on the river giving me trips. I was pretty sure I was up against AQ, and I was pretty sure he would call a reasonable size bet, so I fired 2500 chips and he sort of shrugged and called. I tabled the J-T and my opponent looked puzzled, then alarmed, then incensed as he turned over his A-Q to demonstrate how lucky I had been. He started laughing and ribbing me about how bad it was to “chase”, and it didn’t seem like the time for me to articulate a distinction between semi-bluffing and chasing so I just threw up my hands and said “Yeah! That was pretty lucky for me, huh?”.

I proceeded to have three more hands in which I caught the winning card on the river, each time making two pair to beat an opponent’s higher pair, each time eliciting comments and raised eyebrows. In my defense I can only say that in none of these hands did my opponents do anything to drive me away, so they really only have themselves to blame, and also “Yeah! That was pretty lucky for me, huh?”.

On the final hand of the level my right-hand neighbor called my under-the-gun raise (I had Queens) and we saw a flop of K-K-7. Not a bad flop for me – sure he could have a King, but he could easily have AQ, AJ, AT, JJ, 99 or even QJ. I want to find out where I’m at so I bet the flop and he calls and I’m getting a little nervous. When an Ace falls on the turn I’m ready to just fold since even the lowly QJ has just passed me by, but my opponent checks to me and I try to make it look like I’m thinking about betting but then check behind. Guess what card comes on the River? Yep, I’m a lucky bastard … Queen on the river for Queens full. My opponent makes a large and ill-advised bet of 4500. I can’t be remotely sure that I have the best hand – there are hands he could have been trapping with that would give him a bigger full house – so I flat call and am relieved when he says “your King is good”. I say “I’ve got better than a King” and he says “better than a King?” incredulously, trying to piece together what hand I could possibly have not involving a King that would be better than a King (Aces presumably), and when I turn over my Queens he throws his cards (hard) into the muck and storms out of the room. More accurately he storms away from the table until he meets the horde of players trying to get out of the Amazon room to go on our 20-minute break (it took up half that time for us to get in and out of the room, and the other half to wait through the bathroom line – break time at the WSOP is one of those rare scenarios in which there are always massive lines at the men’s room and women can just breeze in and out).

There were a lot more interesting hands, good and bad, in the next eight hours of play. I’ll try to write some more later. Suffice it to say that those first two hours I established a very *special* image at that table, and in the ensuing levels I tried to take advantage of that, sometimes successfully and sometimes not so much. I flirted with the 50,000 mark, then melted down to 22,000, and then recovered in the last level.

I made it through Day 1. I’ll have 41,900 chips heading into Day 2 on Wednesday. That’s nothing to celebrate about, but it’s nothing to sneeze at either. I’ll have a healthy if not intimidating stack, and now I just have to wait for them to publish the table assignments so I’ll know who the other players and stacks are at my table. Now I’m going to sit by the pool…

-huge