Ugh....such a grind.

Well, it could be worse....I made it through day 1 of the Main Event, but I only have $11,050 left of the $20,000 starting chips. I got up near $30,000 pretty early on, but lost some medium sized pots along the way and ended up being fairly short stacked from about the 5th hour all the way until the end of the day. Going into the last level of the night I only had $7600 in chips with the blinds at 200/400 w/ 50 ante. That is borderline all-in poker and you really can't afford to be raising and folding at the point with such a short stack.

I thought I got a decent table draw when the day first started, but as it turned out I had one of the worst tables possible. There were two pretty terrible players at the table that liked to limp into lots of pots and played pretty poorly after the flop. One of those guys reraised a bet of 900 all-in for $25K when the blinds were at 150/300 w/ 50 ante. It is pretty safe to say that when you see someone do something like this they aren't a very good player. Anyway, both of the fish got a few chips early and never seemed to get into any serious trouble for the entire day. After 4 levels and 8 hours of playing our starting table still had not had one person eliminated. That really limits the chances for anyone at our starting table to make it very deep in the tournament since we never had more than $180,000 chips in play and no one could build a big stack. Finally, our table broke and I got moved to a table where two guys had over 100K and there were several 50-60K stacks. I got to that table with around 7500 in chips. Within the first round I open pushed for 7500 with two tens and everyone folded. About one round later it folded to be on the button and I picked up Ace King. I thought maybe I would get a loose call out of one of the blinds if I just open shoved again, but I just assumed I would have to to win a coinflip if I did get called. Well, I moved in for $7400 and the big blind barely gave it any thought and called $7,000 more with the super strong holding of K3 of hearts! Don't worry though....the door card and the second card on the flop were both hearts and the third one was red also, but a diamond. The turn card...the super scary looking queen of diamonds. River...brick! Now that is what I call a courtesy double up....even though I couldn't get it without a huge sweat.

Well, I don't play again until Wednesday at noon and I will be pretty short-stacked when re resume, but at least I will get a fresh start. I will need to win the first hand that I play and if can do that I will have a little bit of breathing room again. I did a really good job of staying patient today and I think I will be able to do it again on Wednesday. Hopefully, I will pick up some hands this time though.

I am super tired right now. I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night because I was so anxious to play today. I got in bed around 1:30 am and didn't completely fall asleep until about 9 am! I should sleep like a baby tonight though (there will be no proofreading done on this tonight, sorry).