My basic game plan on Day 1 of "Flop set, bust donk" turns out to not work as well when you don't flop 6 sets in one day. I basically was miserably card dead almost the entire day and watching my chip stack slowly but consistently decrease. Fortunately, Brandon Adams doubled me up in the last level of the night and I finished with 112,900 which leaves me in fine shape for Thursday. Here are the few interesting hands I can recall:

Hand 1: 250/500 a50. Folds to me on the button and I make it 1500 with K7o. Both blinds defend. Flop K62r I check behind. Turn Q they check and I bet 3000. SB calls, BB folds. Turn K, check I bet 6500 he calls and mucks.

300/600 a75: I'm fairly certain nothing actually happened.

Hand 2: 400/800 a100 I open to 2400 in MP with 99. Young Scandi on my left who likes to call and then fold when I bet the flop calls and mman_status makes it 9200 on the button with only ~15K more behind. I eventually decide to fold as much as I hate it since Mike is usually very solid, but I can't help but feel like a pussy. Mike told me had AA at the end of the day though, whew.

Hand 3: 500/1000 a10. OK so I'm down to 95K here coming back after dinner break and in this level I really start to bleed them off faster. I open J9s in the HJ, scandi calls again and mman_status calls in the SB. Flop K65r, well I think this is way too good a flop not to bet so I fire 6500, scandi folds and mman shoves so I lose 10K this hand. The rest of this level not much happens. I see a few flops here and there and miss and check/fold. One of my raises gets repopped and I'm down to 60K by the end of the level.

Hand 4: 600/1200 a200 I open 55 on the button and scandi on my left repops me. This is the first time he has reraised preflop the whole day but I still feel like he is fos. I eventually decide not to tilt shove. Then I open KJhh in EP a few hands later, the SB flat calls and JasonGray in the BB reopops. I know he has a monster so I obviously fold, but I'm visibly getting upset with how my day is going as I mucked pretty angrily. The thing about me is though that I don't really tilt like other people. I'm aware that my image is now terrible and no one is going to give me much credit. When I tilt I actually end up playing nittier since everyone seems to expect you to start overplaying your hands and spaz off your chips to them. I'm not sure how much my "tilting" has to do with what happened in this next hand since Brandon Adams is pretty insane to begin with but it's possible it has something to do with it.

Hand 5: I open AJs in MP to 3600 with around 50K more behind. Brandon Adams calls in the SB. Flop AJ9 two diamonds, he checks and I bet 6600 which he calls. Turn Td, not exactly my favourite card. He checks and I have a decision to make. The T shouldn't really have made his hand. He's certainly capable of floating the flop with KQ but it's not a likely holding. It could, however, have easily made him a worse 2 pair. It seems very unlikely that he has a flush. Most flush draw hands would also have a pair or straight draw of some sort on the flop and he would have played those more aggressively on the flop almost always. So unless he has something like 86dd, 56dd, or 57dd he shouldn't have a flush. With that decided it's now obviously extremely likely that I still have the best hand so I need to bet for value and to protect my hand. Of course with so few chips I can't fold to a checkraise so I have to be willing to commit my stack vs a raise since he could checkraise me with a lot of worse 2 pair, semi-bluffs, and possibly other stuff. So I make what I guess is actually a really easy bet of 15,600 (I should probably actually bet a lot bigger), he moves me in relatively quickly and I shrug and call. He says "I don't have much" and I table my hand. "Ya, I'm dead". He doesn't want to show his hand but he's required to in a tournament all-in situation so he's turns over his A6hh. Lucky for me since the river is the 8d.

I won and lost a couple small pots after that and finished the day with 112,900. Hoping for the super soft Day 3 table draw as I'm pretty sure my table today was likely the toughest in the entire tournament throughout the last half of the day. I recognized 3-4 people as very solid players and the other guys were not playing poorly at all either. In the World Series of Poker main event on Day 2 that's just extremely unlucky.

Mike

Day2a: Report 1: Day 2a: Report 1

Day2a: Report 2: Day 2a: Report 2

Day2a: Report 3: Day 2a: Report 3

Day2a: Report 4: Day 2a: Report 4

Day2a: Report 5 (end of day): Day 2a: Report 5 (end of day)

Alright, I finally get to play Day 2a tomorrow. The UFC was awesome to go to live. We saw 2 really just sick fights. We arrived a little late and the first fight we saw was the war between Cole Miller and Jorge Gurgel which ended by submission with only 18 seconds left. Just crazy. And of course the main event was insane. The atmosphere during that fight was just electric from start to finish, it was awesome. I really didn't have huge expectations for the card coming in, and while the fights in the middle were pretty boring overall it was a great night. On Sunday I decided to stay home and grind online tournaments. The day was going catastrophically as I had not managed a single cash and I was down to only the last tournament of the night, the always tough Stars $200 rebuy. Things started going right in that tournament though and I kept picking up hands when short stacks pushed and holding against them. Before I knew it I had a lot of chips at the final table. At the final table I again got lucky in a few key pots and got heads up with a 2:1 chip lead. As always though everything just went wrong heads up. I got behind in chips but clawed back to even when the big pot happened.

10/20K he limped the button and I raised to 60K with KK. He called and the flop came J65. I bet 80K and he called. The turn was an 8, I checked and he bet 160K. I shoved for 400K more and he thought a while before calling with QJ. River Q, sigh. 2nd again, but 31K is obviously still a good score.

Today I stayed home and relaxed. Went for a swim and played online a bit more. I luckboxed a big stack in the 100r on Stars but in consecutive hands I lost KK vs JTo aipf and then KQ vs AQ on a Q-hi flop against the same guy to bust 12th. So tomorrow is Day 2. My table draw seems relatively mediocre. The only player with a lot of chips is on my direct left, a Scandanavian sounding name with 83K. Solid online players mikeymer and SBRounder are also at my table but with only a little over 20K in chips each. Recognizing 2 players at your table as solid players this early in the tournament seems rather unlucky, but if the other guys are bad the table draw should be alright. None of the others seem to have any live results so that's probably a good sign. You should be able to follow my progress all day at PocketFivesLive, PokerNews, and of course my voice blog updates over at TwoRags. Hopefully I can pick up right where I left off on Friday!

Mike

Day 1 went really well for me in the main event. I won several big pots mostly by flopping sets and finished the day with 104,425 chips. Early on I was trying to get involved a lot and I was fooling around with limping in a lot of pots. It's not something I've ever really done before but I knew my table was never going to break and because of the structure I'd probably be playing a lot of the same people all day. I wanted to establish a bit more of a passive image so that my raises would get more respect in the later ante levels as well as encouraging the rest of the table to limp a lot as well. I guess the idea is to just outplay people postflop since most players in the main event obviously play pretty bad, especially with deep stacks. I also ended up picking up a lot of smal-mid pairs which I will just limp with as a standard play a lot of the time anyways to make sure I get to see the flop and try to hit a set (when I'm not in late position). So somehow I had established some goofy limpy image and people were rarely raising my limps, except one fish who liked to raise 7xBB. After having just limped/called a 7xBB raise with 77 and check/folding when I missed this hand happened:

Hand 1: 50/100 I find KK in EP and limp. Robert Varkonyi on my left limps and fish raises to 700 again. I make it 2200 and fish calls. Flop Ks 5s 4s. I bet 3200 fish calls. Turn 6c. I bet 10K fish calls. River Tc. I go all-in for my last 2000 into the 30K pot. Fish folds. lol. 32K after this hand.

Hand 2: 100/200 I limp 88 UTG. Folds to a tight player in the CO who raises to 1200. I call. Flop J87 two hearts. I lead 2K, he raises 5K, I make it 12K, he calls. Turn J. Damn, that might kill my action. I move all-in for his last 8500 or so. He thinks it over and calls with QQ and I hold. I have around 53K here or something.

Hand 3: I open limp KTo in MP. I don't really know what to say about this play, I just kinda decided to stick with the limping thing but it seems pretty ridiculous. Button makes it 800 and he's tight so I definitely have to fold, but the BB who is big fish calls so I decide I'm getting a good price to call, especially since the button has over 40K in front of him and the fish is a fish. Flop QJ9 (obv). Checks to button who bets 1600. Fish folds and I make it 6100, he calls. Wow, he really might have a set here which would be a huge pot. Turn 8 killing my action since I'm pretty sure he basically never has a T himself. I bet 10500 because I can't let a set peel a free card and he folds.

Hand 4: 150/300 Same tight guy from hand 3 opens UTG to 1200 and I call with 22 in the SB. Flop 632 (you might be noticing a trend). Check, he bets 1600 I make it 5100 but he folds. 71.5K at dinner break.

Hand 5: 150/300 a25 Folds to a seemingly decent player in MP who opens to 1K. I make it 3K in the CO with KK and he calls. Flop KTx two spades. He checks and I bet 4K. He shoves ~12K more and I call about as fast as anyone has ever called. He has JJ for some reason and I'm over 90K.

Hand 6: I guess I should include one hand where I don't have the nuts. Really bad player from Paraguay limps in EP as he often does. He is basically a huge call station and has never folded A-hi to a flop bet ever. He has limped AK/AQ and peeled a 743 2-suit flop several times. it's hilarious. I raise to 1200 in MP with 99 and he calls. Flop K52 with 2 hearts. He checks and
I bet 1800. He calls. Turn Q chk/chk. River 4 he bets 2500 I call and A6 is no good.

Hand 7: 200/400 a50 A young guy who is playing pretty tight except he's constantly opening UTG, but he's opening to 1400 so I kind of think he's not just stealing he just happens to only get hands UTG raises to 1400. He has 12K or so I think. I find JJ on the button and flat call. Flop J22. lol. He bets 2800 I call. Turn J (lol) he checks I bet 4200 and he folds. I found out later the player in this hand was MSNL poster ParlaySlow.

Not much else of interest happened and I finished the day with 104,425. I play Day 2a on Tuesday. In other news, huge congrats to Tony "Bond18" Dunst my housemate for finally winning a live tournament and getting out of hole. He won the $3K Bellagio Cup event for $193K, and timex doesn't even get all of that! It's unfortunate that we lose all the jokes about how he's lost $100,000 of some 18 year old kid's money, but really it was about time he broke through considering the amount of live tournaments he's played. Today I'm going to UFC 86. I will probably play the $3K at Bellagio tomorrow, though I might just stay home and grind online or do nothing and complain about how hungover I am all day depending happens after the fights. Oh yeah, because I was one of the chip leaders throughout much of the day I got a decent amount of media coverage. PocketFivesLive were following me as always, but also PokerNews and PokerStarsBlog were following me a bit. In particular here's a nice little update they wrote about me on the latter.

http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/2008/07/2008-world-series-sirwatts-is-lord-of.html

Mike

Day 1b First Break Update

Day 1b Second Break Update

Day 1b Dinner Break Update

Day 1b Late Break