Chopped Salad

Well, Dan was still alive at the second break, although he was down on chips to about 2800. All the players started with 3000, and with the blinds and antes creeping up, Dan found himself with about 7 times the blinds. He had raised all in with Aces, and the big stack at the table insta-called him. Then he promptly turned over the remaining two aces. He and Dan chopped that pot. Shortly after that, Dan had AT and had raised, and made a decision to call an all in by someone that had pocket 7s. Dan had the player covered, and his raise had committed him to call the player after the player went all in. Dan flopped an Ace to take the lead, but the board ended up with the A-2-3-4-5 for the wheel, and the two of them chopped that pot, too. Had Dan won those two hands he would have been near 11,000 in chips, instead chopping those pots got Dan basically nowhere.

Dan did find himself at the same table as Barry Shulman for a brief time. Dan was moving from table to table quite a bit. His starting table was in the area that is being used by the Rio for cash games, so they break those tables down first to make room for the cash game players. The first couple of times Dan got moved he kept staying within that section of the room, so he was getting moved very quickly.

Ultimately, Dan's day came to an end when, with a short stack, the table folded to him and he moved all in with AJsuited on the button. Unfortunately, the small blind called with pocket Queens and then the big blind raised with AK, so Dan was basically drawing to the straight, flush, or multiple Jacks. The Queens held up, and Dan was eliminated in the tournament.

I will be starting the tournament Day 1B on Sunday. The seat that I drew for my initial seat was: Amazon Room Blue Table 6, Seat 7. Hopefully, I will fare better than Dan. The tournament officials were telling the players on Day 1A that they would play down to 225 players or through Level 10, whichever came first. It appeared as though they would be down to 225 well before they reached Level 10, so that means that Day 1B will have to play until whatever time Day 1A got finished.

I was able to get some pics of Dan and some poker pros (as you may have seen already), and I also played some cash games while Dan was in the tournament. I had a losing session where I lost $132 over 5 hours over two different tables (one down $300, the other up $168), and then later in the evening Dan and I went over to the Wynn to play the cash games there. I did manage to finally book a winning session there as I won just over $400 during a 5+ hour session. I really think I needed to have one of those so I would feel mentally prepared for tomorrow. While I play in the WSOP Event #2 Dan is going to play in Caesar's Mega Stack opening event, so I do very much want to report at least one good story tomorrow if not two!