Strong Start at the WSOP!

 Hey everyone!

My first post from Vegas is an exciting one for me.  Warning: It got a little long, but I bolded the basic points so you can skim if you want.  I hope you enjoy it!

Saturday
First things first:  I arrived in Vegas Saturday night at around 7 Vegas time, so I headed straight to our room at Polo Towers, which turned out to be pretty sweet.  Big master bedroom with a King+ bed, living room with a pullout couch, solid kitchen, and big bathroom.  It is definitely more than I expected from the timeshare that we got a pretty great deal on for the week.  Here are a few pics of the room:

So after I checked in and put my stuff down, I had a couple hours before Cliff got in, so I did the only thing I could think of: go play poker!  I played for about 2 hours at Aria before Cliff called and said he was on his way to Polo and took a small loss.  Even so, it felt great to be back at the poker table, and I was now even more excited for the summer than I already was.  After Cliff got in, we headed over to the Rio, as we had both decided to play in the World Series of Poker event the next day!  It was going to be one of the biggest tournaments of the summer, so we decided to take a shot at the $1,500 buyin tournament.  I had planned on playing a tournament later in the summer, but this was going to be a big tournament with a huge prizepool, so we both decided it was possibly the best value of the summer and too big to pass up!

Sunday
We made our way over to the Rio Sunday at noon for Event 9 of the WSOP, hyped for the event, which would be the first WSOP tournament for both of us.  It got 3,404 people, and first prize is over $700,000. The top 342 players would get paid a minimum of $2,800.  The tournament started slowly, as I remained around starting stack of $4500 in chips.  After grinding for hours, I finally picked up a few hands and got up to 24,000 chips at my high point.  However, near the end of the night, disaster struck as I attempted a big bluff that got called.  I was left with just around 6,000 chips, but I didn't give up and finished the day with 10,200 chips.  I was ecstatic to have made day 2 of my first WSOP event!  I was concerned about my chipstack though, which would be just under 12 big blinds when I came back today.

Monday
I came in to the 2nd day of the tournament very short and knew I had to make moves quickly.  As luck would have it, I picked up pocket Aces the first hand of the day!  I limped in, as I had many aggressive players at my table and alot of short stacks who I thought would shove.  It folded around to the small blind, who was the chip leader of the tournament at that point with over 100,000 chips.  He started to put the wheels of my plan in motion with a raise to 2800, and then the big blind moved all in for about 13,000 with pocket 5s!  I called all in for my 10,200, and the big blind called with Ace Queen.  My hand held up and suddenly I had over 30,000 in chips and felt really good.  I won't bore you with all the details, but after a few hours of play, we finally made the money!  I cashed in my first WSOP tournament, and it felt great, especially since the buyin was very large for my taste at this point.  For most of the tournament, I was short stacked, including for much of the time after we got in the money.  I never gave up, even when I got very short, and I kept myself afloat long enough to get 102nd place for $4,595!!!  It felt like such an accomplishment, as I was card-dead(never got many great hands) for almost the entire tournament but kept myself alive to finish in the top 3% of the tournament.

The money is a great boost to my summer bankroll, but more than that the experience was incredible.  I am so glad that I decided to play.  Even if I didn't make it into the money today, I was so glad to have gotten the opportunity to play the entire day yesterday.  I had such a great time.  It has always been a dream for me to play in the WSOP, whether in the Main Event or a side event like this one.  The last two summers here playing cash games were great, but I regretted not ever entering a WSOP event.  I have no more regrets.  I got to go after my goal of winning a bracelet and the cash that comes with it, and I came out ahead.  I am really looking forward to the rest of the summer as I try to build my bankroll further playing cash games.  Hopefully I will get to play another event this summer, but if not, I am really glad I got to accomplish one of my goals so early in the trip.


This has gotten long enough, but I was a succinct as I could be about the tournament.  I would love to go through all of the interesting hands I played, but you guys would get crazy bored!  Thanks for reading, and I will update again soon.

-Danny