Day Two!

How exciting.

So, I start today at table 106, seat 3 with $30,750 chips and blinds at 250/500/50. At my table with me are the following players:

Taylor Paur: He has $70,000 in chips and won event #18 a couple weeks ago. His lifetime winnings between casino and online appear to be over $3M, and he has the 120th place player ranking on the year according to one website.

Well, at least I know who is going to be stealing my big blinds every round...

Lei Dai Shanghai: He has $21,550, is not from the US, and I can't find anything online. A wildcard.

Jeffrey Rydz: $30,750... now we're talking about wildcards.

Chris George: He has $34,650 and finished second in a Omaha Hi/Lo game earlier this summer. Also finished 4th in a mixed game event earlier this summer. He was 126th in this event in 2010.

Of course, there are a half dozen Chris George poker players and some aren't quite that good - none have a matching hometown with the guy to my left.

Another wildcard.

Matthew Dietrich: He has $27,400 and won a No Limit tournament in Melbourne in 2009.

Speaking of which, WSOP is having an event in Melbourne in April 2014 and I may have to go since my brother now lives in Australia and I was thinking of going in March anyway.

As long as early April isn't hunting season in Australia because I understand my brother's priorities. Anyway, Matthew is Canadian, so I don't think he should be a problem.

Donald Kelley: He has $39,975 and a couple cashes in random events, but is not as concerning as some other players (I'm talking about you seat 1).

John Corsi: He has $90,650 and is the big stack at the table... and has had some decent poker success in various tournaments.

Hal Marcus: He has $29,750 and I had trouble finding information about him. Every time I googled his name and poker, instead of getting a poker profile page like the others, I kept getting all these web pages to buy Hal Marcus poker books. Evidently Hal writes poker strategy books. That are published. And people buy. And learn from the master.

Great.

He also seems to be the maker of those little cheat sheet cards that tell you exactly when to stay, hit, double, etc. in blackjack for every scenario based on the best mathematical odds for that situation. It appears he has created, and now commercially sells, similar cards for No Limit Hold 'Em.

Great.

I wonder if he's got any extra cards for sale?

David Jun: He has $51,325 and a couple cashes in his history.

So that's my table... I'm guessing half of the stacks under $35K, which includes me, will be gone by the end of level 2. Well, out or doubled up... I would expect a lot of shoving in the first couple rounds. Maybe not right away, but certainly in the second half of the first round and into round two.

The average stack is $44K, but the median is only $34.6K, so I'm not far off from having a middle stack. I will be, however, under the gun to start.

I think I'm going to need to be more aggressive today if I want to get out of the day, but initially I plan to sit back and wait for a hand to jump on - I don't want to press early. $30K is still enough in relation to the blinds that I can wait a bit.

I'm much less nervous today than on Monday...