Alright, I finally get to play Day 2a tomorrow. The UFC was awesome to go to live. We saw 2 really just sick fights. We arrived a little late and the first fight we saw was the war between Cole Miller and Jorge Gurgel which ended by submission with only 18 seconds left. Just crazy. And of course the main event was insane. The atmosphere during that fight was just electric from start to finish, it was awesome. I really didn't have huge expectations for the card coming in, and while the fights in the middle were pretty boring overall it was a great night. On Sunday I decided to stay home and grind online tournaments. The day was going catastrophically as I had not managed a single cash and I was down to only the last tournament of the night, the always tough Stars $200 rebuy. Things started going right in that tournament though and I kept picking up hands when short stacks pushed and holding against them. Before I knew it I had a lot of chips at the final table. At the final table I again got lucky in a few key pots and got heads up with a 2:1 chip lead. As always though everything just went wrong heads up. I got behind in chips but clawed back to even when the big pot happened.

10/20K he limped the button and I raised to 60K with KK. He called and the flop came J65. I bet 80K and he called. The turn was an 8, I checked and he bet 160K. I shoved for 400K more and he thought a while before calling with QJ. River Q, sigh. 2nd again, but 31K is obviously still a good score.

Today I stayed home and relaxed. Went for a swim and played online a bit more. I luckboxed a big stack in the 100r on Stars but in consecutive hands I lost KK vs JTo aipf and then KQ vs AQ on a Q-hi flop against the same guy to bust 12th. So tomorrow is Day 2. My table draw seems relatively mediocre. The only player with a lot of chips is on my direct left, a Scandanavian sounding name with 83K. Solid online players mikeymer and SBRounder are also at my table but with only a little over 20K in chips each. Recognizing 2 players at your table as solid players this early in the tournament seems rather unlucky, but if the other guys are bad the table draw should be alright. None of the others seem to have any live results so that's probably a good sign. You should be able to follow my progress all day at PocketFivesLive, PokerNews, and of course my voice blog updates over at TwoRags. Hopefully I can pick up right where I left off on Friday!

Mike

Day 1 went really well for me in the main event. I won several big pots mostly by flopping sets and finished the day with 104,425 chips. Early on I was trying to get involved a lot and I was fooling around with limping in a lot of pots. It's not something I've ever really done before but I knew my table was never going to break and because of the structure I'd probably be playing a lot of the same people all day. I wanted to establish a bit more of a passive image so that my raises would get more respect in the later ante levels as well as encouraging the rest of the table to limp a lot as well. I guess the idea is to just outplay people postflop since most players in the main event obviously play pretty bad, especially with deep stacks. I also ended up picking up a lot of smal-mid pairs which I will just limp with as a standard play a lot of the time anyways to make sure I get to see the flop and try to hit a set (when I'm not in late position). So somehow I had established some goofy limpy image and people were rarely raising my limps, except one fish who liked to raise 7xBB. After having just limped/called a 7xBB raise with 77 and check/folding when I missed this hand happened:

Hand 1: 50/100 I find KK in EP and limp. Robert Varkonyi on my left limps and fish raises to 700 again. I make it 2200 and fish calls. Flop Ks 5s 4s. I bet 3200 fish calls. Turn 6c. I bet 10K fish calls. River Tc. I go all-in for my last 2000 into the 30K pot. Fish folds. lol. 32K after this hand.

Hand 2: 100/200 I limp 88 UTG. Folds to a tight player in the CO who raises to 1200. I call. Flop J87 two hearts. I lead 2K, he raises 5K, I make it 12K, he calls. Turn J. Damn, that might kill my action. I move all-in for his last 8500 or so. He thinks it over and calls with QQ and I hold. I have around 53K here or something.

Hand 3: I open limp KTo in MP. I don't really know what to say about this play, I just kinda decided to stick with the limping thing but it seems pretty ridiculous. Button makes it 800 and he's tight so I definitely have to fold, but the BB who is big fish calls so I decide I'm getting a good price to call, especially since the button has over 40K in front of him and the fish is a fish. Flop QJ9 (obv). Checks to button who bets 1600. Fish folds and I make it 6100, he calls. Wow, he really might have a set here which would be a huge pot. Turn 8 killing my action since I'm pretty sure he basically never has a T himself. I bet 10500 because I can't let a set peel a free card and he folds.

Hand 4: 150/300 Same tight guy from hand 3 opens UTG to 1200 and I call with 22 in the SB. Flop 632 (you might be noticing a trend). Check, he bets 1600 I make it 5100 but he folds. 71.5K at dinner break.

Hand 5: 150/300 a25 Folds to a seemingly decent player in MP who opens to 1K. I make it 3K in the CO with KK and he calls. Flop KTx two spades. He checks and I bet 4K. He shoves ~12K more and I call about as fast as anyone has ever called. He has JJ for some reason and I'm over 90K.

Hand 6: I guess I should include one hand where I don't have the nuts. Really bad player from Paraguay limps in EP as he often does. He is basically a huge call station and has never folded A-hi to a flop bet ever. He has limped AK/AQ and peeled a 743 2-suit flop several times. it's hilarious. I raise to 1200 in MP with 99 and he calls. Flop K52 with 2 hearts. He checks and
I bet 1800. He calls. Turn Q chk/chk. River 4 he bets 2500 I call and A6 is no good.

Hand 7: 200/400 a50 A young guy who is playing pretty tight except he's constantly opening UTG, but he's opening to 1400 so I kind of think he's not just stealing he just happens to only get hands UTG raises to 1400. He has 12K or so I think. I find JJ on the button and flat call. Flop J22. lol. He bets 2800 I call. Turn J (lol) he checks I bet 4200 and he folds. I found out later the player in this hand was MSNL poster ParlaySlow.

Not much else of interest happened and I finished the day with 104,425. I play Day 2a on Tuesday. In other news, huge congrats to Tony "Bond18" Dunst my housemate for finally winning a live tournament and getting out of hole. He won the $3K Bellagio Cup event for $193K, and timex doesn't even get all of that! It's unfortunate that we lose all the jokes about how he's lost $100,000 of some 18 year old kid's money, but really it was about time he broke through considering the amount of live tournaments he's played. Today I'm going to UFC 86. I will probably play the $3K at Bellagio tomorrow, though I might just stay home and grind online or do nothing and complain about how hungover I am all day depending happens after the fights. Oh yeah, because I was one of the chip leaders throughout much of the day I got a decent amount of media coverage. PocketFivesLive were following me as always, but also PokerNews and PokerStarsBlog were following me a bit. In particular here's a nice little update they wrote about me on the latter.

http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/2008/07/2008-world-series-sirwatts-is-lord-of.html

Mike

Day 1b First Break Update

Day 1b Second Break Update

Day 1b Dinner Break Update

Day 1b Late Break

So I busted in the 2nd round of the limit shootout. The key hand was when I lost a big pot to mattg1983 with AJ vs QT on a QJ9JQ board after I 3-bet him preflop. I probably should have lost one less bet on the river but my play wasn't that bad in retrospect. Matt went on to win the event and his first bracelet though! I was lucky enough to have made a swap with him before round 2 so I got a little % of the win. Today I am playing the main event at Blue 11, seat 9. Excited as always! I'll be phoning or texting in updates to TwoRags so check in over there to see how I'm doing.

Mike

Today was the final preliminary event of the 2008 WSOP, the $1500 limit shootout. It got 823 runners. I was actually pretty excited for this event because while limit holdem is certainly not my best game I do play it pretty competently, and most people in these limit tournaments tend to be really awful. I also have a history of running pretty good in limit tournaments and that always makes you feel more optimistic. My first table was pretty much what I expected. 3 guys were just terribad. 4 people were just super ABC tight passive, if they ever raise you you are probably screwed. That left me and one other guy who seemed to play really solid with some aggression and little moves mixed in. I ran really good throughout the first 2 levels of my first heat and had already worked my stack up to 8K from the 3K start bank by the first break. I cooled off for the next 2 levels but I think I played well and lost the minimum, and I still had 5400 at the 2nd break. After that I started to cardrack pretty hard. I was making hands left and right and value betting aggressively to get maximum value. Finally, I ended up heads up against the only player who seemed tough. I ran insanely hot from the start and took a 21K-6K chip lead, but then I stopped making hands and dropped down to under 10K. Just as it felt like it might be slipping away I caught another rush of cards even more absurd than the last and made some solid value bets on the end to close out the match.

My 2nd table seems considerably tougher than my first. While my first table was very passive and predictable, this table is extremely aggressive. A few of the guys seem kind of spewy, but they are certainly not easy to play against. We played 4 levels at the 2nd table before calling it a night. I managed to chip all the way up from 30K to 30.5K in that time. We restart today at 2pm PST. If I win this table then next stop is the final table. Hopefully I can keep running good and min-bet my way to glory.

Mike