Time for today's update...
First, an addendum from yesterday: I forgot to tell you guys I bumped into Isabelle and we chatted for a few minutes. She's playing on Monday and was headed to "the mountains" today, to get away from everything for a bit. I told her to drink lots of water.
I played online for about an hour today, four tabling $2/$4 NL at Full Tilt - Four tabling on my laptop is not particularly fun, btw. I needed to play one more day (earning 200+ points) this month to qualify for their Gold freeroll next month, so I figured I'd get that out of the way today. After some sick hands, I ended up down a bit, but no worries. At one point, I flopped a set of 7s on one table and trip 9s on another. The set ended up losing to a flush and the trip 9s lost to the oh so annoying bigger full house, when the board paired the overcard (99T flop), which my opponent was naturally holding (AT). Ah yes, I do love the three outers.
Anyhoo, back to Vegas. The first thing I did today was go out and buy some new shoes. I got a pair of Merells that I really like. I had never even heard of them, but they are apparently very popular. They are sneaker style shoes, but made for hiking, which I fairly often back home. They are waterproof and also designed to keep your feet cool... they fit me better and cost less than all the other brands I tried on, so I'll be wearing these for duration of the Main Event. Comfortable shoes are a MUST.
After my big shopping spree, I headed down to the Rio and once again missed Zybomb, even though he was there. Dude's avoiding me, me thinks. In the UB VIP Suite, I got to talking to Krazy Kanuck (one of the UB Pros) for a minute... just small talk about when we each play (both tomorrow), etc. Anyhoo, it turns out his girlfriend Monica (I met her in Aruba and the Bahamas) won the $1000 tourney at the Bellagio last night! Well, she was part of the final chop anyway, pocketing over $37k. Nice! As I was congratulating her, Phil Hellmuth came over and hander her a pile of casino chips. I guess she's playing so good lately that he wanted to buy 20% of her. That's got to be pretty flattering. She won her way in on UB after winning an $11 qualifier to a super satellite. Well done!
They had the Amazon room (that's the name of the HUGE room where 2200+ people play poker) closed off to spectators today... well, sort of. You could get in if you waited in a huge line - no thanks. I walked to the front, told them I was going to play in a cash game, and got right in. I went to put my name on the list (even though I didn't know if I'd actually stick around and wait to get called), and instead of writing my name down, the girl with the pen pointed me to a table a few feet away. FINE - I'll play. No sooner did I buy in for $500 than did the Main Event players go on break. Steve (aka stolz in this forum) called me and told me where he was going to eat. I finished the orbit and left to join him and Linda for a while. I wasn't planning on eating, but Linda INSISTED (and I'm not even kidding) that I eat half of her sandwich and a bunch of her fries while Steve was telling me all about his day. These are seriously two of the coolest, nicest people I have ever met.
I stuck around for 45 minutes or so and then headed back to my cash game. No huge hands today, good or bad... I did miss one monster draw for a big pot, but I also got paid off when I was holding a nut flush with a five card straight on the board. Don't you just love when your opponent leads out at the river when you are holding the nuts? I actually did a little acting before raising his $50 bet to $150, and sure enough, he paid me off. I didn't play all that long, because I wanted to get out of there early and get a really good night's sleep tonight. I finished the session up $30. Ohhh - look at me go! First 2 bucks and now 30! I'm a machine.
I guess that's about it for today's update. I'm just getting caught up online right now, and then it's off to bed. As everyone knows by now, I start playing tomorrow at 12:00 (3 PM ET). I won my seat back in NOVEMBER of 2005, and all the waiting is finally over. I'll be text messaging Robbie Robb with updates throughout the day (mostly just chip counts as my stack changes significantly), and he'll be posting them here. Based on the number of people who will be playing, I highly doubt CardPlayer will be running my chips counts, but you never know... if I end up at a table with a big name player, you may see my name there, but otherwise, I'm thinking the updates from RR will be about it.
I'm not setting any specific goals for myself tomorrow, other than to play he absolute best poker I can play. And for what it's worth, I am totally ready. I'm feeling really good, which is very important going into a big tourney like this. Of course, even when you are feeling good, you can have a bad day (see Hellmuth today), but that's beyond your control.
Anyway, I know I just said I didn't have any specific goals for tomorrow, but I guess I do have one: I want to survive and make it to Day 2. I'd like to have about 45k chips at the end of the day, but that's not a "goal" - just something I'd be pretty happy with.