Day 1 in the books, 104K

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 thoughout much of the day I got a decent amount of media coverage. Pockefiveslive 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