Dinner break, day 1

16975 in chips (started with 10,000). Blinds going to be 150/300+50 ante. We started the day with about 260 people and are down to 190 I think.

I was really nervous and it showed at the beginning. I was hoping people would mistake it for shaking hands = big hands.

It was during the first level I managed to get most of my chips. First 4 out of 5 hands I had Ax and had to fold since I was in mid/early position. However, on the fifth hand, the x was a T and I was in the big blind. One limper to me. Flop comes AKT. I bet, limper calls. Turn brick. I bet, limper calls. Same on the river. I think I was too cautious here, and just bet a small fraction of the pot. Limper calls and turns over AJ and I win the first pot. It turned out this guy won his way in via the rebuy sat last night and was terrible. He shortly got crippled later when he called a check raise all-in with A9 and the board 578. Like the guy next to me said, no one else here could have made that call. I have 12k or so.

7th hand of the tournament. Folded to me on the button, I look down at pocket kings. Raise to 200. BB reraises to 2000. I start panicking about busting out on the 7th hand of the tournament, so I call. I decide to see if an A comes on the flop. Flop comes T84. BB bets out 2000. I start to think.. does he have aces? Does he have aces? Argh.. I don't know how long I took, but it must have been 3-4 minutes. People started asking how long we could wait to think.. you can think for as long as you want, but someone can call a clock on you. Then you have 1 min 10 seconds left to think. Anyway, I decide screw it.. if it's Aces so be it. All-in. The guy thinks for a sec, then says i'd have called if you didn't do through that acting job. He folds and gets really pissed off. I wasn't acting though, I was seriously just not wanting to bust out so early. I caught up to him later and he said he had QQ and figured the only thing he could beat was JJ. Good laydown on his part. So I end up with 16,000 or so.

From there not much happens... up and down between 12k and 18k. A really young kid who won't tell us his pokerstars name builds up a stack to 25k or so with really agressive play and really good cards.

On the third level or so, I get AQh in the cut off. UTG raises 3x BB. He's pretty tight so I decide to call and see a flop. In retrospect, a really bad idea. Flop comes Qxx all black. He bets about 1/3 of his stack for 2000. Man.. I hit the flop and I think I make an too tight laydown. I'm happy with my 16000 and don't want to turn it into 10k. Too tight? Probably, but ah well.. probably should have reraised pre flop or something to see where I was.

Anyway, Gloria was nice enough to bring me dinner. Time to eat and I'll check in after the day is done.