On the night of the 26th we went to Dave Colclough and co's 'mansion'. What a ridiculous place they are living in! A huge pool, ten-pin bowling lane, full size poker table, fully equipped bar and too many other features to mention. Upon leaving, whilst waiting for a taxi outside someone was cracking jokes. I was thinking to myself he's quite funny, then I think he looks familiar, eventually I realise it is none other than Norman Pace of 'Hale and Pace' fame, yet another celebrity jumping on the poker bandwagon.
Ten minutes after this I'm back in The Rio and getting the lift to my room. There's one other person in there, again a familiar looking figure. This time it's Tony Cascarino! (left) We have a quick chat, he is here to play in the Main Event, I compliment him on his book (which is an absolute must read by the way). He seems pretty down to Earth, will keep an eye out to see how he gets on in the Main Event.
Wake up on the 27th, Diceman Green and 'Noseyboy' from Crypto are off to The Bellagio to play the daily $1,000 tournament. After threatening to play this for the last month I decide to take a stab, and am very glad I did. Playing poker in The Bellagio compared to The Rio is like eating in a quality French restaurant as opposed to a soup kitchen for the homeless. In The Bellagio the chairs are comfortable, the cocktail waitresses provide excellent serivce and are aesthetically pleasing, the dealers are competent, and the playing cards are excellent quality. All features which are sadly missing in The Rio. Plus you get 5,000 chips with blinds at 25/50 and a 40 minute clock, a perfect structure I think.
The day I played there were 432 runners with $126k for first place. I don't recognise anyone on my table apart from Frenchman Pascal Perrault on my immediate left. Contrary to some others, I actually like the way he plays, apart from some moves he makes with small to medium pocket pairs which are either genius or madness, I can't decide.
I get my 5,000 up to 9,000 when I get moved to Peter Costa's (right) table with some big stacks on it. I get the lot in with K-Qs in late position and short stack, who has blinded down from 12k to 5k, calls instantly on the button, oops. He flips A-Ko, and the flop comes a rather pleasing K-Q-5. Have I sucked out for once? No, not a chance as the turn and river come Jack, Ten for his backdoor straight. I build back up a bit then lose a race to exit in 120th. Disappointing. Again.
That night there is a Cryptological welcome party, completely naff, have to listen to the owner/president of Cryptological giving it the company spiel and this is followed by an Elvis impersonator, how imaginative.
So the next morning I am playing the WSOP Main Event for the first time. I get down to the arena ten minutes before start time and have a look over at the people sat at my table. I quite like the line-up as it includes three Party Poker qualifiers, one in Full Contact poker gear, and a bloke in a Hawaian shirt. Hardly concrete evidence I've got a soft table but the signs look good!
25/50 starting blinds, 10,000 chips and two hour levels. Before the start I was thinking this is going to drag on for ages (14 days in fact), but I was actually enjoying myself and didn't get bored once. Maybe this was something to do with the fact that six hours in I was table chipleader at the dinner break with 33k. And this was all after I could, maybe should, have been knocked out on the fifth hand of the day...
So the first four hands everybody is folding instantly, very much appears people don't understand implied odds and aren't too interested in taking flops early. On the fifth hand I get 5-5 in mid-position, I make it 125 after it's folded to me, immediately the guy on my left confidently reraises to 400. I'm thinking A-A or K-K here, he seems too confident to have A-K or a smaller pair and he instantly folded the first four hands. So obviously I call. The flop comes down A-7-5, I check call his 400 bet. Turn is a 6. Again I check, he now confidently fires 1,000. I now think it's definitely A-A, but I call anyway. River is an 8, I check and luckily for me he checks behind and indeed shows A-A. So somehow I only did 1,800 chips on the hand. After this I am feeling a bit sorry for myself, basically thinking what a stitch-up, how can I run so bad in every WSOP I've played. Although, in hindsight the river card saved me a lot of chips as I'm sure I would have made a crying call if he bet the river.
Anyway, long story short, I ended the day with 43,625 chips, 118th out of 781 remaining runners from my start day. I don't want to write about any key hand analysis/strategy as there is a good chance some players I will be playing with tomorrow could read this after whacking my name in Google. This is possible as the table redraw was done at the end of play. Players on my new table include Richard Brodie (the original author of Microsoft Word), Tony 'The Animal' Ma , who has won two WSOP bracelets and almost $4 million, and An Tran, who's been cashing in tournaments since 1989 and has one WSOP bracelet.
One thing I will say is that it's the longest day's live poker I've ever experienced, six two hour levels were played, starting at midday, and taking into account the breaks and end of day shenanigans with bagging up chips and the table redraw, it was 3.30am before I escaped the cardroom for a few of beers with a couple of fellow Betfair players.
Unfortunately many of the Brits out here busted on their first day (as did almost 2/3rds of the field), but must make a quick mention of Richard Gryko who managed to amass an obscene 128,000 chips on his first day and is surely now going to be a massive runner.
A few amusing stories floating around, one is that a well-known Betfair player trousered a $25 Main Event tournament chip from his own stack to keep as a souvenir! Dubai had swapped a percent with him, his face when he heard this story was an absolute picture!
Diceman Green had a stab at the major Sunday tournaments yesterday. He was going ok after doubling up in the Betfair 50k tournament when he was moved to a new table. A message then popped up saying he was unable to play as someone at the same table was using the same IP address. So obviously another player at his table was also in The Rio, Martin watched helplessly as he blinded out, unable to play. This sort of thing would never happen at the dice table.
So a day of rest and relaxation for me today, I recommence play today (Aug 1st) at 12pm local time (10pm in the UK), with blinds at 250/500 and a 50 ante for the first two hours. Plenty of play with a 43k stack but, as I know all too well, this can be a sick game and it only takes one unortunate hand for the whole thing to go pear-shaped.
