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.

Table 1, Seat 9

Fortunately no one famous I recognize at the table. I was somewhat looking forward to watching them see right through all the players though, including myself.

Results from Day 1 (not me)

Looks like the final chip counts are in from Day 1. 201 entrants, with 116 remaining. They had to play extra time to get the numbers down to a managable level for Saturday (Day 3). Today, 225 players (including yours truly), for a total of 426 entrants. That's a pretty sizable field to get through, and some pros have busted out already. It looks like they'll need to get the field down by 1/2 or more today so wish me luck! :) The official chip count can be found here:

Official Standings after Day 1

Addicted

WARNING: Little poker content

It's 12:30am the day of the big day and I'm here updating the blog because I found out I actually have wireless internet access from the hotel room. Speaking of the hotel, it's huge, has a mind blowing aquarium, beautiful weather and people, and food is really really expensive here. Although after spending some time here, the $9 USD I paid for coffee, juice and a danish seemed like a real bargain. The main thing that blew me away was that the restaurant we had dinner at tonight had not just one, but a page full of wines over $10,000 per bottle.

PokerStars has really treated the player very well. They threw a great cocktail party the night before to open things up, and when we got back to our rooms we found a huge tote bag crammed full of goodies for everyone. Who knew they made a PokerStars teddy bear or PokerStars luggage tags? They've even embroidered our names on the bag.. luckily real names, but screen names.

On to poker.. the first night was super satellite night, where people could enter a tournament that would pay out entries into the WPT tournament. It was $200 plus rebuys and it was somewhat of a surprise to me that the room was almost full of super sat players. They ended up payig 17 seats - so over $136,000 in the pool for a super sat. Not bad. Other cash games and small tournaments started up, but I vowed not to play until the big event to keep myself from tilting before I even started.

Apparently there was a big pent up demand for poker from hundreds of internet starved players. Later on that night, when I was walking back to my room, I passed by a bar where they had wireless coverage. It was full of glowing laptops, more often then not open to PokerStars or Party Poker. Should I have expected any less?

Today I played poker groupie and hung around the room to get a feel of what was going on. I managed to recognize quite a few pros playing today - John Juanda, Moneymaker, Raymer, Kathy Liebert, Hoyt Corkins, Dewey Tomko. Managed to get a few pics without making myself look like too much of a dork. I spent most of my time wandering around the resort and eating, so for real poker updates, see the official blog: http://caribbeanpokeradventure.blogspot.com

Enough for tonight, I'll try to keep everyone posted tomorrow.

Me with the guy from the sign 

The poker room 

Cocktail party, Dan Goldman (PokerStars VP) speaking 

View from my room 

Celebrity watching

I'm on the Atlanta-Nassau portion of the flight now. I feel like such a poker groupie by getting excited when I spot Josh Arieh and John D'augustino on the same flight.

T-3 and counting...

Only three days left before I leave this ice coated wasteland that is West Waterloo. The "first day" of the tournament has been split up into 2 flights. I've been assigned to the second one, which means I'll have all of Thursday to start getting nervous before I being play on Friday. All the big names of poker look to be there, some notables that are beginning on my day include Barry Greenstein (one of the biggest cash game players out there), Chip Jett, Daniel Negreanu (2004 Card Player Magazine player of the year), Erik Siedel (you may remember him from Rounders - although he only came in 2nd the World Series that year), Juha Helppi (won a WPT on season 1), Phil Ivey, Josh Arieh, and 170+ other assorted fish. There's 360 entrants now, but I would expect a few more since they are holding satellites on Wed and Thurs.

PokerStars has also decided to um, copy me and they have their own offical blog coverage of the tournament here at http://caribbeanpokeradventure.blogspot.com/

To get ready for the tournament, I practiced in the $200 weekly tournament at PS today. According to the law of averages, I'll probably win the WPT because the best hand I got was AQo and competely missed on the flop. Ended up going all in with 78o vs 77 and went out in 1148th place out of 2386. Bodes well. I'm due!