Today was a weird day. Yesterday was the day that the WSOP Day 2B was played. Since we (me and Rune - the only two left in the WSOP ME from the camp) both played on 2A, we had the day off. Today is the official WSOP ME break day before we start on the 5 day marathon beginning from tomorrow, friday, day 3.

Neither of us wanted to do anything big today as it’s very important that we get our sleep and are ready for the big and long day tomorrow. I got up somewhere between 2 PM and 5 PM, don’t really remember when exactly. We ordered dinner through Dominos (absolutely excellent online ordering service!), so we didn’t have to leave the house at all.

I joined Rune into the Rio at about 11 PM since he needed to register for his ITIN number in the event that he cashes in the WSOP - which all odds are beginning to speak in favor of. Without an ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number) the USA will hold back 30% of your winnings to pay the american taxes. Being an alien you don’t have to pay these taxes, but if you have not registered for an ITIN number, you’re shit outta luck.

After being beat endlessly in pool (seriously, I suck at it) I decided to head for bed early tonight (1 AM). Tomorrow at noon, history will unfold!

Today I got up relatively early at about 1 PM. Before I knew of it, it had somehow become 7 PM, and several of us were starting to become quite hungry. We weren’t really in the mood for the usual fast food, and neither of use were turned on by the local sushi bar. Instead we went a couple hundred meters down Eastern Avenue to a local placed called ‘The T-Bird’. The scenery was a classical 60’s highway truckerstop place. It was kinda sad as it really looked like it was stuck in the 60’s.

When our waitress (very hot youngish blonde) came to take our orders, Morten wanted to order onion rings as a side dish, as well as french fries for his main order. There were some confusion as to whether he could do as he wanted, so this little conversation took place:

Morten: “Can I do that?”
Her: “You can have whatever you want”

Now Morten slowly looked at hear from top to bottom, slightly pausing on the breast area, whereafter he muttered a slowrolled “Okaaaay”. I guess you should’ve been there, we all cracked up for sure… I’m not sure if she got the “joke”.

When we got back we decided to go to our local casino / resort, the Green Valley Ranch. Just before we were about to lave, I got an SMS from my cousin Dennis. Dennis and a couple of his friends were in Vegas also, and he was asking if we could meet up tonight. Despite some communicational problems we managed to find each other outside the Circus Circus (I used about 10 minutes just looking for the Strip exit from that place… God I hate Circus Circus.

As Dennis and his friends were all below 21, we couldn’t drink or anything, so we decided to go for a stripwalk instead, seeing some of the most fascinating strip hotels.

The without doubt most fascinating hotel I have seen thus far is the Venetian. The way they have recreated the Venetian canals, gondolas, the sky, walkways and everything is nothing but amazing.

After the Venetian we went to Bally’s / Paris to see the recreation of Paris and the Eiffel Tower.

After taking a trip by the Rio and the Luxor we split up as it was nearing 3 AM, Dennis and his friends were headed back towards LA at 11 AM that very next morning.

After arriving back home at the camp, I and a couple of other guys that were awake watched some mexian/hispanic tv show that we understood absolutely nothing of, but it contained an overload of totally hot chicks, so we didn’t really mind not understanding what they said.

I made it!

Before starting on day two, I made myself the promise that I would get a good nights sleep this time, last time I only got about four hours. So I went to bed at around 1 AM that night, falling asleep very quickly while watcing South Park episodes on my laptop. Perfect.

I woke up three hours later at 4 AM. Dammit, this is just not happening. Luckily I fell asleep again.

One hour later I woke up for good. I tried sleeping, but everytime I was close to sleeping, someone made a big roar from the living room in the house (there’s always somebody who’s awake in the camp). I have decided that if I make it through day three, I’m going to get myself a room at the Rio. After day three we will be playing every day until the 10th of august, so it’ll be important that I get some rest.

Before we started, I said to Morten (Abuello) that I was either going out of this day with $100k or with $0. This was my way of saying that I do not care if I bust out early. I don’t want to just fold my way through this tourney, just making it into the money. I’m going for the kill. I started out with $18.425, blinds being 250/500 + 50 ante.

Let me start out by saying that I do not take notes during my play, so remembering hands can be quite difficult. As so, many hands will just be vague memories though I will try to get the important factors in.

I certainly proved my statement since I was all in three times during the first five hands. First hand I get is KcQc, I raise it up in LP after a couple of limpers. I get a single caller. Flop comes an incidbly beautiful TcJs7c giving me not only the second nut flush draw, but also the open ended nut straight draw. I bet out around 3/4 of the pot, pretty hard. He calls. I can’t really remember the turn, but it’s a total blank like the 5h or something like that. Now the opponent bets out, I think for about 10 seconds before I push it all in. He folds.

Next hand I get TsJs in LP. There’s about 6 limpers to me (who would’ve though this is a $10k buyin tournament?) so I limp. Flop comes something like Tc6sQs, pretty good. It’s checked all the way around. Turn comes with another spade, blank otherwise. IIRC, I bet, get raised, I push all in, he folds.

A couple of hands go by when I get a red pair of threes: 3h3d. I raise it up from EMP, get a single caller in the blinds. Flop comes Kh2d7c. He bets out about 2/4 of the pot. Now I don’t know why, but my read (after only 4 hands previous to this one) and my instinct tells me that he is weak, so I call with the intention of making a move on him on the turn. The turn comes with the most beautiful card ever: 3s. He instantly pushes… I instantly call and shows him the set of threes. He’s devastated as he turns over his AKo and realizes that he’s drawing dead. I rake in yet another nice pot. I get a nice start, being up to around 40k after a very short time period.

Today was the first time ever that I wore sunglasses during play. Up until now I’d been kinda sceptical about it, didn’t really think it’d make a difference. Boy was I wrong. Wearing the sunglasses made an enormous difference. I suddenly had the ability to look and stare at everybody at the table without them knowing. Also I recognized that nobody were able to stare me down as they otherwise could when I weren’t wearing the sunglasses. On the contrary I was much better at staring at them, probably because I subconsciously realized that they couldn’t look at me in the same way.

At one point I get a black pair of sevens: 7s7c in LP. I raise it up. A new internet pro-ish guy sitting in seat one pushes his short stack of around 12k into the middle. Folded around to me. This player had been at my table for around 30 minutes, he’d made a lot of correct shortplay moves, pushing it in LP, pushing into weak preflop raises and such. All this made me pretty certain that he was a good player, and therefor I knew that he’d make this move on me with pretty much any pair, all aces, no matter the kicker, and a lot of hands like TJ, KJ and the likes. So I called with my sevens. I clearly announced ‘Call’ at the table, wherafter the dealer knocked in front of me, signalling for us to show our cards. I flipped my cards over, placing them in front of me, but still near me. As the other guy was turning over his cards, the dealer suddenly takes both my cards, flips them over and mucks them. The table broke out into an uproar. I had clearly announced CALL, and several people at the table confirmed this, even those at the other end of the table. I called my hand, black sevens, and so did about three other people at the table that had clearly seen my hand when I flipped it over. Now some guy to my right starts talking about it being a dead hand as it had touched the muck - which is the correct ruling albeit extremely unfair to me as this was 100% a dealer error. Luckily he didn’t really force it through, and while the dealer looked kinda embarrased (although he at no point excused to me), he started wading through the mucked cards to find my black sevens. While he looked for my sevens, he also showed up a red seven, removing one of my outs. The dealer finally found my cards and placed them on the table, signalling to the other guy that he should flip over his cards (he seemed afraid to do so, with good reason). He flipped over AKo, a classical coinflip. Flop + turn were blanks, unfortunately the river ace gave him the winning hand and he won a nice pot of around 25k.

There can and should be no doubt that I were extremely lucky when I drew my table on the end of day 1A. The table consisted purely of no-names, and there were not a single player that I really feared. Most of them played ABC poker, and most were a bit too weak for their own good. I’ll try to explain a couple of the key persons at the table.

To my left was sitting an old gentleman, I’d guess he was around 65 - I didn’t ask. He was a great player to have at the table. Besides him being a really friendly guy, he was playing very usual tight ABC poker - very common to the elder generations of players in my experience so far.

To my right were an OK guy, he played his hands too weak, was very easy to run over during hands and so forth - most of the players at the table were exactly like this guy.

Further to my right was a shortstacked guy (he was the one that mumbled about the dead hand rule), he probably had around 15k when he entered today. At no point did he have more than 20k. He ended the day with around 9k. I have no idea of how he did it, but somehow he survived more than 15 all ins. He played extremely tight for a short stack, definitely not the correct shortstack strategy. As an example, one guy in EP limps, shortstack limps, and the guy to my direct right limps also. I look down at Js2h and raise it up to 5k (blinds 600/1200 + 100) to take down the pot. Everybody folds. I later find out that the shortstack guy had AdTd - he didn’t raise (easy push being a shortstack), and even worse, he folded to my raise. The guy to my direct right folded AJ. This both shows how awful several of these main event players are, as well as how much respect I got from the table.

At the other end of the table sat a played that I really got irritated with. I don’t know if he’s just slow in general, really inexperienced at live poker or if he was just trying to be a bitch on purpose. He was constantly taking a long time to make his decisions. There could be 5 limpers to him preflop, then he’d take a minute to ponder over his hand, and then he’d fold. I mean, come on, how frigging hard can it be? Also, in one hand, he’d just won a big hand in the previous hand with AA (this guy got AA 7 times during the hand, they all held up) so he was stacking his chips. The action got around to him, and he didn’t follow the action so it was like 10-15 seconds before he realized that the whole table was looking at him, waiting for him to make a decision. “Oh, it’s on me?”. He looked at his cards, put them down again, and then he kept stacking his chips. The dealer knocked in front of him to kinda signal that we were still waiting for him. He looked at his cards again, and blimey if he didn’t make a few corrections to his chipstack at that moment, correcting a couple of edges here and there. And THEN he folded his hands as if it was 72o - which it could’ve easily been.

At our lunch break I ate at the All American grill in the Rio together with Rune who was also still in. By coinscidence I sat next to this slow guy from my own table. We got into a short conversation and I found out he was russian. He had this terrible american way of speaking - with russian accent. Everytime he met someone new he started out with “Hey man”, “Oh man”, “Man, “ argh, stop it!

I have the deepest respect of good players having a large stack, Jason Strasser for instance, he really deserves it. This russian guy also had a large stack, but it was not due to his play. He played pretty loose, but not the good loose aggresive style, just plain loose passive. He was pretty easy to push around though. He’d received AA 7 times during the day (I have yet to see AA during the whole main event hint day three dealers! /hint), and all the times he got doubled up.

Near the end of the day I got JdQd in EP. I raised it up to 4k as was becoming common to my style (though everyone still respected me and treated me as a very TAG’ish player). The russian was the sole caller. Flop come Ad9s7c - or something similar. I bet 5k on the flop (pot around 12k) - this was the normal bet sizes, remember that 2k came from the antes alone. He thought for about 10 seconds and then called. The turn was a total blank, probably the 3c. I bet out 9k this time. He though for probably 30 seconds, I could easily see that he really did not like this, but he ended up calling nevertheless. The river brought the last and final blank, a 5h (or similar). Now, I didn’t like having invested this much in the pot, beating nothing but lesser air then I had, but still, if I checked, I’d loose the pot for sure. My only option was to bet out (I was pretty sure I could push him out also), so I pushed in 15k. During the 5-10 minutes he used to think of the hand, several times he held his cards in a position as if he was going to fold - not looking for reads as he was clearly not looking at me (he was looking into the air in a surrendering way). Yet he ended up calling… With As2d. My god, the whole table suddenly lived up. One thing was that I had to show my pure bluff, but what really made the table “Oh my god” was his hand, A2o! Now, a couple of the less good players gave him the standard “Nice call” while most others were padding my back saying I made a good play, while being totally non understanding of his call. How did he call my 4k bet preflop with A2o? He’d be dominated in most cases, I was raising from EP. I bet out strong during all streets, there was no way he could put me on anything but AK/AQ/set. I wouldn’t have bet an underpair this way the whole way. Before contemplating if he just really had a good read on me and he made a superb play… Trust me, this guy was not the type to utilize reads.

Oh well, that crazy russian hand brought me down to around 70k with only 30 minutes to go. Dammit, I was up to 120k shortly before, if I’d won that hand, I’d be around 160-170k.

Just before ending the day, I got 6h6d in the MP. I raised it up, an anonymous (playing extremely tight the couple of hours he’d been at the table) bigstack called as the only caller. The flop was kinda good, though a bit scary: 6cTc7d. I made the standard bet of 5k. He called pretty quickly. The turn brought a Qh, I bet 8k, again he called rather quickly. Now, I was starting to fear if he was holding 89 since he was calling that quickly. The river brought the case 6s, now all of my straight fears were gone, I had quads! I bet out 10k, and again he called rather quickly. He looked pretty stunned to see my quads. I don’t think he had the straight any more, he probably had the ten, maybe some kind of TJ combination. After all he had just seen my JQs bluff shortly before.

This last hand brought me up to ~$95.400 which I think is close enough to my projected goal of $100k to be satisfying. The average is around $76k so I’m well above average. The play will commence on friday at noon, day 3. When I make it through day three also, I’m going to rent a room at the Rio so I’ll be able to get my sleep - it will without doubt be necessary.

Again this friday I’ve drawn a pretty good table for me:

• 1 Marius Sorensen $35,800
• 2 David Pham $112,300
• 3 Jim McCrink $88,100
• 4 Mark Rasmussen $95,400
• 5 George Watson $24,100
• 6 David Hony $54,400
• 7 Bo Sehlstedt $65,400
• 8 Paul Kitsos $50,400
• 9 Martin Virgen $197,500
• 10 Jon Nakatani $23,000
• Average $74,640

I’m sitting together with a fellow dane, Marius Sørensen. To the first four places on my right I’ve got semi-shortstacks, including one real shortstack of only 24k. All your blinds are belong to me! There are only two players with stacks larger than mine, Martin Virgen which seems to play mostly low limit events - he won his ME entry through a live super satellite. David Pham on the other hands is probably one to watch out for.

… happened today. I got up early (around 2 PM) as I really needed to be able to go to bed early tonight. Tomorrow is the second day of the WSOP Main Event tournament. They’re expected the day to last around 15 hours like the first day, so I will need to be well rested, unlike on day one.

I went to the New York New York tonight for a dinner party arranged on the 2+2 forums. We met up at the ESPN Zone and got a couple of beers, some above average fast food and then we split up again.

I bought myself a nifty little camera today (Sony DSC-W50) today that is small enough for me to fit it in my pocket. This means I’ll be able to take a lot more of pictures during the day as my main camera (Sony DSC-R1) is a bit too large to bring into the Spearmint and such places.

I’m off to bed now (1 AM). We’re taking a cab to the Rio tomorrow at around 10 AM, hoping to be able to get some breakfast in there before the crowd starts moving in.

I got up at my usual time today, around 6 PM. We were headed to Ballys to get drunk and maybe play some drunk poker. We got a seat in their 1/2 NL game pretty quickly.

I didn’t really like Ballys poker room. It didn’t consist of more than 6-7 tables max so it’s a small room. The chairs were very good, a lot better than at the Rio. The tables on the other hand, I hated the felt. It’s hard to describe, but it felt a lot softer than at Rio, meaning that cards were more often sticking to the felt, chips weren’t sliding the same way. I can’t believe that I at my fourth cash game session already talk about how minor differences of the table felt actually has an influence on my liking of the room, I shouldn’t be noticing this before I’d become a regular nit at a poker room.

I dumped about $450 at the table playing totally laggy, straddling, minraising, bluffing nits and everything… With no success. Most of my money ended up at Mikael and Rune so I guess it’s not totally wasted.

After leaving the poker table we went to play some video poker. Video poker is absolutely GREAT if you want to get drunk. You just sit up at the bar and play. While you play, drinks are on the house. I ended up being stuck about $60 playing jacks or better, but if you play it optimally (I did not) you can really get wasted for as little as $20.

After Ballys we were supposed to go the the Vodoo Bar at the Rio, but after a thorough consideration of our looks we came to the conclusion that there was no way in hell we were going to be let in. Oh well, some stayed at the video poker tables, I went with Helge and Thijs to the Rio cash games.

I got a seat at the 2/5 NL game right away (there’s never any queues at 2 AM). The table actually wasn’t that juicy, there were a couple of good players, and the rest weren’t exactly good, but they knew how to play. There were one real nit at the table. He was a typical WPT look a like, big glasses, cap, very serious look at his face all the time. He took like 5 minutes considering to call a $40 raise preflop, finally folding in a really provocative manner. He was so pissed with me since I constantly Mississippi straddled into his big blind, I was really working him up to a major steamer, unfortunately I never got his stack.

To my direct right was a totally wasted American, great guy. We chatted a lot, he was convinced that I was an online player on the Fortune network since he had this Danish guy from Aarhus that had his number dialed when he played online. I kept refusing it, but he didn’t really trust me. I had great success in manipulating his play by chatting to him through the hands, I got him to pay me off on my set in a pot of around $350.

There weren’t any really big hands this session. I won a lot of minor pots, winning a couple of okay pots with TPTK and so forth. All in all I worked my stack upwards of around $1k. I left at 6 AM since it was getting late and the table really wasn’t juicy any more. The wasted American had left, the WPT hero was becoming more and more nitty and there weren’t any real donators left.

I got an offer of $5k for 50% of my WSOP ME winnings that I declined. I can’t say if the offer really was for real, but my read on the guy was that he was the real deal. I declined it as I don’t really need $5k, and I believe that my current position is somewhat more worth. I mean, I’ve got about 3/4 average stack (18.5k / 26k-ish) and I don’t really feel outclassed yet.

Result for this session: $466
Overall cash game result: $1568

Today was the big day. Today was the day that I was going to play the WSOP 2006 Main Event with a $10k buy in!

I guess it was a bad “decision” to only sleep 5 hours that night. I woke up at around 6 AM and couldn’t sleep any more. Not because I was overly nervous, though I guess the excitement might’ve played in unconsciously.

I got at my table at about 11:50 AM, pretty unknown table, no one I recognized, I suppose that’s good. I quickly took the lead at our table, I was clearly the one playing the most aggressive game. I raised a lot of drawing hands, TJ in position, 67s and so forth. I took down a lot of minor pots, including a sizeable 3k pot towards a 2+2’er sitting to my left (Durron597).

At one point we got a new player to the table, a real American original. He was constantly laughing in a dumb way, acting kind of retarded. He’d painted his fingernails white with royal flush symbols on each fingernail on both hands, yuck! At one point Norman Chad came over to me asking why I’d misspelled “Scrub” on my cap (I had a cap with the text “SKRUB” on it), one of the production managers had seen it and wondered what the story was. He asked if it was because I was one of those dumb internet qualifiers (in a jokingly way). Of course I answered, “Yeah, I AM one of those dumb internet qualifiers, though that isn’t the reason for the misspelling”. And then i give him the story of it being a Danish poker slang word for having luck / a good run of cards. The original went totally nuts when Norm came over talking to me, he was totally excited that one of the known ESPN commentators was at our table, so he made him aware of his fingernail painting, obviously very proud of it. Before long he’d convinced Norm to get the ESPN TV crew over to film it. While this was going all, I, together with my end of the table, were laughing our buts off.

After the first break I got absolutely no hands. I tried squeezing the pot sometimes but it seemed like the table had picked up on my style, and people weren’t playing nearly as scared as they began with, so all in all I had to slow down a touch. After about 6 hours or so from the start I was moved to table 128, having about 15k in chips. This table was a catastrophe for me position wise. On my direct right were Norm MacDonald, and two spots to my left were Mark Vos.

Norm had around 45k in chips, and Mark had around 35-40k also, they were without doubt the two chipleaders of the tournament, and I was sitting right in between, great!

I still didn’t pick up any hands, so I was just sitting tight. I tried squeezing a couple of times as well as bluffing it down on the flop, but the players at this table were far better players than on my first table, so it was a lot more difficult.

After about 30 minutes came a crazy hand. Blinds are about 50/100. Norm raises it preflop, Mark is the sole caller. The flop comes 9QJ. Norm bets. Mark raises. Norm thinks for a bit and then pushes all in. The all in push from Norm was a major overbet. Mark thinks for about a minute before he calls and tables QJ, beating Norms black aces. This was a major call for Mark, top two is a great hand, but 9QJ is a very dangerous flop, and Norm could easily have had a set, even KT was possible. No help for Norm and he’s almost out, Mark doubling up to an incredible chiplead. Norm is steaming and he plays a couple of terrible hands and ends up busting with KK towards an Ax hand catching an ace.

Luckily Mark was playing very tight passive after gaining the massive chip lead, I feared he’d be raising me out of most pots, luckily he didn’t. A new guy joined our table in Norms place, Flaminio from Italy. Very cool dude, got a good chat with him and he rooted for me when I was in tight spots. Chatting it up with players during the poker play is one of the greatest moments when playing poker. Although we’re battling it out against each other, you make some great friends.

The rest of my time at table 128 wasn’t really that spectacular, I didn’t get any great hands (my best hand all day was QQ), so nothing special really happened. At one point I had around 17k, I raised it preflop with A9o in MP, one guy called from the button. Flop comes three rags, 256 or something like that. I bet out around half pot. He comes over the top with a sizeable bet. I can’t really figure out what hand he should have that would’ve hit that flop. A set wouldn’t raise, on overpair would’ve raised me preflop. I put him on TJ-AK, some kind of overcard combination. I come over the top. He gets into the tank, thinking for a long time before he pushes his last chips in. I instamuck while puking into my water bottle. After this i had around 7k chips left.

I worked my way up to around 11k in chips before i got moved to my last table of the day at around 12 AM. This new table was a lot better for me. The players could clearly play poker, but they were so easy to read, and they were playing very scared. I picked up a lot of pots by simply playing the players. I received no cards at all during these final four hours, but i really ruled the table. When we had about 30 minutes left it got even better, everybody were playing soooo scared since they wouldn’t want to bust 30 minutes before we ended the day.

At one time i raised with QJ in LP (i had around 17k). A guy in the SB looked at me while thinking for some time. He sighed, really letting me know that he didn’t like the situation. Finally he said “oh what the heck” and shoved in his chips. I instamucked. He was so clearly acting, and his hand was shaking like a bunny having sex, it was so obvious he had a great hand. He tabled AA while looking a bit sad that he didn’t get my call. He asked me if there was any amount I would’ve called. “Nope, you shake too much”. Clearly he was not aware at all that he was shaking, and even less of it being a tell. Normally I wouldn’t notify a player of me picking up their tells, but we had 20 minutes left of the day and all odds are against me ever playing with him again. This also enabled me to constantly hit his blind and push him off hands as he was clearly scared of me.

The day ended with me having 18.425 chips, about 2/3rds of the average of about 27k. I am extremely satisfied with my play during the 1st day of the main event. This was without doubt the best poker I had ever played! I got no cards all day. I had no real hands that made my day, most of it was simply me playing the people instead of the cards. What surprised me the most was the fatigue such an event imposes upon you. I mean, how hard can it be to play cards for 16 straight hours? Pretty god damn hard! You have to be constantly concentrated for 16 hours straight, follow the action, remember all action and everything. From about 12 AM everybody were yawning. I was so ready to sleep when we were done at about 4 AM.

When I went to bed yesterday (after the Main Event) at around 7 AM, I didn’t think of setting my clock. I mean, I didn’t have to get up before around 5-6 PM, I’d be long awake before that.

Anyways, someone knocks on my door hard while I sleep. I look at my cellphone to see the time, my eyes are all hazy. Hot damn, it’s like 6:25 PM, yikes, I guess I really needed that sleep. We had to be at the MGM Grand at 7:30 PM since we were going to see Santana live that night.

We couldn’t get a cab, so we decided to go out to the street and see if we could get one. After standing there for like 30 minutes without being able to hail a cab we’re getting kind of nervous as the clock’s around 7 PM, and it takes about 20 minutes to get to the strip. We decide to walk into the nearest 7-eleven and see if we can get a ride with someone. After a couple of tries we get in touch with an American guy that says that although he has a pickup, he’d take us, although he’d have to talk with his wife first. He goes outside, has a quick chat with his wife, and then he waves us out. Really cool guy / couple, they drove us straight to the MGM Grand entrance. While he insisted on not taking any money, I threw $50 into the backseat of his pickup and said I insisted. He smiled, gave me his hand and said thanks.

We quickly met up with the others and went into the MGM Grand Arena. Damn what a place. That hall is so unbelievable big, and it was inside the MGM itself, everything in Vegas is just extremely large. Mark Hamilton was warming up, I guess he was okay, but the sound was far too loud so it really ruined the experience.

At about 9 PM Santana came on. It started out with a video of a white peace dove flying, it was so grand a scenery / experience, one couldn’t avoid getting goose bumps simply due to the feeling. It’s impossible to describe a concert, but it was breathtaking, Santana is nothing short of amazing on the guitar. I really liked his small speeches in between the songs. After a short speech of us having to be thankful to god for being born into this world, he said, “We are opposite of George Bush… Compassion. Humanity. Kindness… We are opposite of George Bush”. The hall went into an uproar of applause, it was so great.

After Santana I went to Rio with Abuello to see if we could get an update on how Mika (Miwala) was doing in the Main Event, and Danes in general. While we didn’t find Mika (later on I found out he busted earlier on to a nasty rivered flush vs. rivered full house hand), I did meet Hostrup (Carl) waiting for cash game entry. I signed up for the $2/5 NL game also.

After about 10 minutes I got called over the speaker, my seat was ready. Luckily I got a seat at Hostrups table, in fact I got the seat directly right of Hostrup. It was seat #1, yuck, the seats right next to the dealer sucks.

The game was really juicy, there were some really awful players at our table. Carl and I really lagged up the game, raising a lot. We also Mississippi straddled each time we could (explanation later on). No one could blame us for colluding, we really battled it out the two of us. At one point i loose around $300 in a pot. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I semi-bluff reraise Carl all in on a board like xxJ with 77 (both X’s being lower than 7). He calls and shows QQ, takes down the pot. I rebuy for another $500.

At one point I get into a pot with an obviously non-experienced player sitting across me. He has around $400, I have about $1.000. I can’t really remember neither the hand nor the action, but that’s not the point of the story either. I bet on the flop, and he goes into the tank, clearly pondering of doing a reraise. He asks me how much I have left, I simply answer, “I’ve got you covered”. He insists on hearing how much I have, fair enough, “I have about a k” (k = $1.000). He then thinks a bit longer, and then he asks me how many bills I have. Seriously, that’s one retarded question, it does not friggin matter, I have him covered. So now I answer him in a bit more irritated way, “It does not matter, I have you covered!”. He continues to insist on knowing how many bills I have. I end up counting the bills and more or less yelling it at him. He then thinks for a bit longer and AGAIN he asks how many chips I have. I HAVE YOU COVERED; THAT IS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW!”. He then goes on defending on why it matters to know how many bills I have. Oh my god I got upset with this guy. I have you fucking covered, would you please just act and shut the fuck up? He ends up folding, clearly irritated over being taught how the mechanics of the game. I don’t mind as I was on a pure bluff, I really considered showing my hand as that would’ve put him on an incredible steamer. I didn’t though as I feared it would’ve resulted in him leaving the game.

The session ends in me winning a brutal hand over Hostrup (sorry). I get KQo in the SB and bet out 35 (I were first due to a Mississippi straddle). Hostrup is the sole caller. Flop comes with a beautiful 9TJ, two of a suit. I bet out around $60 I think. Hostrup then raises to $200. Earlier on Hostrup has pushed me out of a lot of pots, including a very similar situation where he showed a flush draw. So I mutter, “You have the flush draw, eh?”. Make it $500! Hostrup thinks for a moment then pushes his stack in, I guess he had around $7-800, I instacall. He shows black queens for an overpair + open ended straight draw. The turn brings a 9 which pairs the board, yuck. At this point I already imagined the Q/9 on the river to fill up his boat. I was excited over the 4 that came along on the river. A $1500 pot is not that normal in a $2/5 game.

A Mississippi straddle is a weird straddle. It originated on the each coast and is usually only played there. It enables you to straddle when you’re on the button (you get 1st choice over an UTG straddle). It effectively improves your already good position as the SB is now first to act preflop (worsening their already terrible positions), and at the same time you double the stakes. So in a game were you have an edge, this is an absolute must-do. You improve your position and heighten the stakes, an even better opportunity to get the fishes money.

Result for this session: $1327
Overall cash game result: $1102

So today I got up a bit earlier, at around 4 PM. At about 9 PM I took a cab into the Rio together with a couple of the other guys to pick up my Main Event registration, this time there were no problems, thank god.

I decided to sit down for some cash games since I was nowhere near ready to head for bed, so I bought into the usual 2/5 NL game for $500. Today I got a somewhat worse table than last time, worse in the way that people were a lot better. Most of the guys at the table knew how to play, though only a couple seemed to be really good. There were a couple of nits among them, one guy constantly complaining about everything, even when I politely told the table that I had seen the color of a card the dealer had dealt. He asked me which color it was, “Red”, “Haha, that’s easy to say, they’re both red” - well excuse me, it’s fine with me if you wanna play those cards when half the table knows about it.

I catch no cards at all, I just sit tight and blind down. There’s a friendly young guy to my left who’s clearly a good player who I’d chatted a bit with. I get 72o in the BB, he raises it to 20 UTG, everybody folds to me, I call. The flop comes Kd5c2s. Check, he bet’s 30, I call. Turn comes with a blank, something like 8h. I bet out 50, he thinks for a short while and then calls. The river comes with another blank, a 3 of some kind. I bet out 80, I’m trying not to make it too large, i want it to look as if I’m milking him with my flopped set. He goes into the tank, looks at me - I just smile back at him. He finally mucks K9o, and he’s clearly frustrated when i table my 72o. I had to loosen up the table a bit, it was simply getting too tight’n’nitty.

There’s sitting this donk a couple of seats to my right, he’s the only real donator at the table. He’s just won a major put with a runner runner flush against another guys TPTK, allin on the turn. I get QcQs in EP, raise to around 35. Two callers, including the donkey. Flop comes something like Td5c3c, a perfect safe flop for me. I bet out 3/4 pot, he calls. Turn comes with the 8c, I bet out around 1/2 pot, he calls again. River comes with a complete blank, and this time I bet out around 1/2 pot again. He ponders for a couple of seconds and then announces “Call”. I was pretty sure I had him beat, until he tables Kc6c for the second nut flush. Now, I could handle being beat, but why the f* could he not just bet/raise his hand so he would get paid? Damned donkey.

Down to around 260. I get KK in the EP, I raise it to 40, donkey calls. Flop comes very safe again, Jh5s7d, the pots around 100. I bet around 80, and the donkey moves all in. Since i only had around 260 from the beginning, I am now facing a rather large pot with a short stack, so naturally I have to call, again I expect i’m good, he probably has something like AT. Unfortunately he tables 55 and I’m dead.

Overall a crappy session. I had okay control over the table, flopped pretty good, caught some okay hands at times, but constantly someone else outflopped me.

Result for this session: $647
Overall cash game result: $225

The incompetence of most dealers continue to amaze me. I’ve had several dealers that were simply too slow and inexperienced to deal a poker game. Some of them are so fat that they can’t reach more than halfway around the table compared to others, again slowing the game down. Also today I had a situation, a lot of limpers, somebody raises to 15, a lot of callers, somebody calls all in for $3 more. Then the dealer stops, “I don’t even know if that’s a raise, anybody know?”, dude, that’s an overcall!

Of course there are also positive moments. I had my best dealer ever today, a guy called James from Sudan. He dealt those cards at amazing haste, had total control, always great and fast information, “Raise it up, call, call, fold, three to the flop” and so forth. Later on I had an asian woman, Mimi, incredibly sweet. Not the fastest dealer of all, but constantly smiling at people, even the dorky nits. I just couldn’t help tipping her a dime when she left, saying she did a good job.

Tomorrow is the big day. Tomorrow is my main event day. Tomorrow is the day my luck turns. Tomorrow is the day I’m gonna build my chipstack through the roof.

So tonight I woke up at 7:30 PM for some reason. I have no idea how I could sleep that late, I mean, it wasn’t more than like 6:30 AM when I got back from the Rio last night. But whatever, it was great to get some sleep. At around 10 PM we went to the Pokerteam DK party at their house on the other side of the strip. Great party, lots of danish poker players, cool to have a danish gathering. Norsemen were holding their own party in a house right next to us. It was also cool to put faces on guys like bad_ip and zweig, they were much younger / teenageish than I’d imagined.

Due to a promise we all made, I will have to sum up the rest of the night in the following picture: