Thursday, July 8, 2010

It's 10:45 out here in Sin City and Mike has now completed 4 levels of play, with a chip stack still in the green! What a level! Doubled up on an all-in of A-K against called by 9-9 and an Ace hit the flop - how nice i that? The cost of a round goes up quite a bit in Level 5. Ante is $50 and the big blind is $400 with a small blind of $200.

Day 1 was suppose to end with Level 4, but they changed the schedule and are playing one half of Level 5 still tonight. All the Day 1's played 4.5 levels. The rumor is, with so many people starting, they need to make sure they get far enough along to have the field down to a manageable number by Day 3 of play, when the whole field combines.

In my books, we made it to Day 2, but formally, we have to make it through the next hour.


We are back from the dinner break. Level 4 starts in about 5 minutes. For dinner, we walked over to the Gold Coast Casino, across the street from the Rio - what a wonderful idea that turned out to be. It's definitely the thing to do in all future years, too. No lines, no crowds, and the walk was a good break for Mike.

He's feeling surprisingly comfortable. He's starting Level 4 in the yellow, but all it will take is one hand to hit. It has been a really difficult 3 previous levels. In 6 hours of play, he saw only about 5 flops, and did not connect with any of them. Seems he made a lot of good lay downs.

We are estimating they've lost about 15% of the field so far. I certainly hear a lot of all-in/calls. One guy was SOOOOOO excited to win the all-in, he was yelling and hoop-laa-ing and he was so loud, they gave him a time out. Yep, they can do that - if you are too loud, or show too much excitement, they give you a time out! You have to sit out for something like 1/2 level.

For those who are commenting (and you know who you are...) no, spectators cannot get a time out for being loud and i AM using my indoor voice!!!

I'll tweet the next level of play, even though all you folks at home are asleep now....hope you find good news when you awake and check in tomorrow!


Fifty minutes in and this has been a fun level for me so far. Mike's table is two back from the rail, so i bit hard to watch. Right on the rail is a table with Todd Brunson and that french guy who was on the final table last year or the year before, i forget. Elan somebody. Todd's older sister, Pam, busted out and she came by to see her brother, and he dissed her! Pointed and laughed, She countered with "i hope dad beats you". ESPN was there taping it all - it was funny! Their dad Dolye is still in, playing in the other room.

Then, Norman Chad, the best announcer there is (this guy should have his own cable show) came by, and i got to take a picture with him!

They finally just announced the series totals. 7319 players total, for a prize pool of $68,000,000. The first place winner will take one $8,944,138. Not bad for 9 days work. They will be paying the top 747 players. First pay is $19,000.

There's 57 minutes to go in Level 3. It looks . Looks like we dropped that $2000 we won 20 minutes ago. Oh well - that' poker! We are so fortunate we are able to come here and take a stab at such a cool thing! That's winning enough in my book!
Two levels of play are done. It is a tough year!!!! No cards coming mike's way at all, other than that initial pair of Jacks, which got chopped up by a silly pair of 6's that caught a straight on the river.

As level 3 starts, mike seems ok, but knows he has his work cut out for him. Good news, is that he is not the short stack on the table. There are 3 others with less then him. No one person on the table is cleaning up.

Time to start level 3. Still no anti, which helps. The big blind is $300 and the small blind is $150. If we survive, we get a 90 minute dinner break, then 1.5 rounds after that before the day is done.

Still no announcement about how many have started today. They actually sell seats through level 2. So now i suppose they will be able to get a final count.

It seems to me that most people (well men anyway) wear socks


It's just about noon and all the players are taking their seats. They have not announced how many people are starting yet. Mike is at tableb19 seat 9.

Those links on the top of the blog? Have you tried them? If you are at work, they may be blocked. Oh, those IT types are so clever!! I'm working on it, however, (i'm not an IT type, but i did sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night, so maybe.....) If the links remain blocked, you'll just have to catch up on the first few hours when you get home. Sorry!


Getting Ready!!

Today's Day 1, hopefully Day 1 of 8! Time to hunker down and concentrate - put on that poker face...

Today is also my mom & dad's 54th wedding anniversary - Happy Anniversary Mommy & Daddy!!!

Play starts at noon. There were 1800 people signed up for today, as of 5:00 pm last night. They have a total of 3800 seats they will sell, and the lines were long last night (so they say - we actually sneaked in at 1:00 yesterday afternoon - no lines - and they said 'sure, you can sign up' even though the formal starting time wasn't until 4:45 pm!).

Off to breakfast!