Main – Day 1 – Level 1

2 hours have passed. My table is noticeably active for so early in such a slow structured event. I’ve been getting cards good enough to play for such an active table and things are going fine. The 20k in chips went up slightly, then down to about 18.5k but now I’m back up to about 21 or 22k. I’ve been playing enough hands that I probably need to tighten up slightly and avoid any bluffing. Observant opponents likely think I’ve bluffed a few times based on my betting frequency. I have a pretty good read at the people at my table (I think) so we’ll see how things go.

On entertaining notes, they opened the event with Wayne Newton coming in with an entourage of ladies in marjorette like outfits, then same in a marching band doing Viva Las Vegas. Wayne announced the “shuffle up and deal!” Which is analygous to boxing’s “Lwtks get ready to rumble!”. I caught it on video with my camera and will see if I can post that later tonight.

Gotta run play some poker now.

Apologies and an update – Main Event starts TODAY

Greetings all. My apologies for the post from two days ago that said I would be starting the main event yesterday. I was a day off and I start the main event today (in one hour, so I have to make this a quick one).

I took it easy the rest of Tuesday but played one smaller tournament but didn’t cash. Wednesday I slept late, had a healthy lunch then hung out at the pool for a few hours. In the evening I went and played some high stakes cash game from about 5 hours and made about $1,500. I had a long night sleep last night and am now going to grab coffee, a light bite, and start the Main Event.

The Main Event is the deepest stack and slowest structured event there is (I think). You start with 20,000 in chips and the blinds are only 50/100 to start. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, just ignore this part.  The levels are 2 hours each.  So there’s lots of time to just sit back and play tight and wait for good cards but many people take the opposite approach and play lots of pots for cheap looking to hit a great hand with two pair or a set or a straight, etc while hoping someone else has AA or KK and just can’t let it go. In this case they may double up. I’m going to figure out my strategy based on the table or tables I end up playing on.

I’ll try to post some quick updates throughout the day. Let’s hope for good cards and I’ll see if I can play them well.  I mainly want to slowly build my stack and just make it through today and my day 2 without being too low on chips. The end of day two and into day three is where the real action play will start, I’m thinking.  We’ll just have to see.

I’m off!