[DoubleG6]

This is the first of what I hope will be many entries in this my daily poker journal. Although mainly focusing on poker, I intent to also include many of my personal thoughts and experiences along the way.

I would like to share my experience at this years WSOP in Las Vegas, a trip which I took last weekend with my long friend "Shake n' Bake". We had not planned on attending the WSOP frankly because our bankrolls did not permit us to play as freely as we would like. Nonetheless, Shake was on vacation and I had managed to convince my wife to give me a weekend pass to Las Vegas with promises of millions when I returned. So we sped our way through the desert and arrived at the Rio a little passed midnight on Saturday morning. The plan was to win a satellite and enter the 2nd chance tourney held daily in hopes of cashing and in turn buying into the $2k main event Pot limit holdem tourney at noon.

Walking into the Rio's Amazon room where the WSOP was being held felt like an accomplishment on it's own. I had finally fullfilled a promise to myself to advance further in my poker hobby and take a shot at the big tournaments. I knew however that it was an uphill battle and that my measly $2k bankroll wouldn't lasts too long unless I had some success. I was truly in awe being in the same room as my poker idols. I had passed Kathy Leibert and Miami John Cernuto in the hallway and did not think I would see any more pros this late at night, but to my surprise, THEY were all there. I felt as if I had passed through the castle gates at Disneyland, but instead of Donald and Goofy, there was Esfandiari and the Unabomber. I joined the rail as we watched Mortensen and Juanda battle it out with 3 other pros at the high limit 2 to 7 triple draw live game. In another corner of the enormous room, satellites were being held, and opposite that were the tournament tables.

After walking around for a while stargazing, Shake and I decided to join the thick of things and buy into a $125 single table sat.. From the first hand I somehow felt that this was not gonna be easy. This is how it went:

$1k to start and $25-$25 blinds, Shake limps in early with 2 other callers. The button makes it $175 to go and Shake is the only caller. The flop was A J 10 rainbow. Shake checks and Button goes all in. Shake goes into his think tank as he always does regardless of the situation. He glances at me, shrugs and says "Man, I should've never played this hand". He called and turned over A J for top 2 pair. To our delight, the Button showed A 7. As a began to THINK of how Shake could lose the hand, a 7 peels off for the turn. I stared at Shake as the river was dealt and a familiar look came over his face, a look that I've seen many times before when we're heads up and I knew what the card was without looking. There are few worse things in poker than your opponent catching running 7's to beat you in the first hand of the first satellite on the first day of your trip after driving for 4 hours straight. From that point on, I declared war on button boy. We were not going down without a fight. This is the WSOP man! and this lucky bastard wasn't going to kill our buzz.

A few levels later we were down to 4 of the best when I locked horns with Lucky Bastard: $50-$100 blinds I was BB with 55 and Lucky was UTG and raised to $300. All fold and I call for the flop. 5h 7h Qs looked good to me so I figured I would checkraise. Lucky bets $350 and I bump it to $900. Lucky quickly sets me all in like I expected and I threw my last $475 in the pot. Lucky showed Q J and I took it down. Next hand, I polished him off with my K8 vs. his 96 and sent him packing. I called Shake and gave him the good news. A few hands later I got all my chips in w/ 10h10d vs. AhKs. 4hearts on the board crippled me big time and I had to go all in with Q J vs. J 4. 4 on the flop ended my shot at glory. A consolation to this satellite was that the chip leader offered the short stack a great deal when they got heads up, but the short stack was stubborn and battled out a win. Good for him I thought, I probably would've taken the chop if I were in his shoes.

Beaten but not broken, Shake and I decided to get some breakfast and regroup. There was lots more poker to play and lots more goals to accomplish before we were done. Next time, I'll talk about our live game play and our experience at the Palms Casino NLHE Summer series tourneys.


- You will conquer obstacles to achieve success -

- Fortune Cookie-