Day One Recap

It was an interesting day - I spent most of the day feeling invincible after increasing my stack 50% in the first three rounds and playing well... then had a miserable last four hours and gave it all back.

When I reviewed the hands I played last year and how I did, I found out that I made a lot of calls and raises based on hands I wanted to play - I was getting good odds, I had a pocket pair (Even little ones), I had a suited ace, I had suited connectors, etc. These are very fun hands to play with enormous potential to get paid off, but I didn't win very many. Also included in this should be my bluffs and position raises which are fun poker moves but don't end up paying me off very well. Also included in my poor play categorization is chasing... I'm actually pretty good about not doing it, but I always get caught up a couple times.

So this year, I wanted to not do those things... and for the most part I didn't. So I'm pretty happy about the way I played. Of course, the few times I did do those things I took big hits... and it was coupled with a stretch of bad cards.

I played 24 hands the first 3 rounds and won 15 of them (63%). I played 15 hands the last 2 rounds and won 6 of them (40%). On the day I won 21 of the 39 hands I played... with 39 hands played being  two more hands than I played last year on Day 1.

Blinds will be 250/500/50 on Wednesday - that's 1,200 around the table. I have roughly 25 times around the table in blinds. 10 is worrisome and 5 is shove on anything... so I'm doing ok on chips compared to the blinds, even if my stack will be below average. If I didn't play a single hand for the first two rounds, I would be about 6 times around the table when the third round started, which is basically betting on a miracle... so something is going to have to happen in the first four hours on day two. If it's like the first four hours of today, I'm in good shape... like the last four hours... well...

6,352 players this year - total prize pool of $59.7M. They will pay 648 places with 648th getting $19,106... first will get $8.3M. But the money won't be until Friday afternoon... there are still at least 30 more hours of poker to survive before then.

Day off on Tuesday!