The fourth level brought the $25 antes, and with blinds at $100-200, it was now costing $550 to play an orbit. My stack continued to dwindle without winning any reasonable pots, and as we headed to the dinner break, I was in bad shape at around $5800. After the dinner break, blinds would increase to $150-300, meaning it would cost me $700 (or about 1/8 of my stack) to sit out of the action. It also meant that when I entered a pot I’d have to be prepared go all the way with the hand. I’d played pretty badly to this point, and it looked like I was going to continue to melt away in a whimper.
To make matters worse, our table broke right before the dinner break, and I was moved to a new table, in seat 10 (argh), facing the rail. There were several chip stacks north of $25,000, and it appeared I was the short stack on the table. It hadn’t helped that I had been card dead for the better part of the day, but frankly, I’d played so badly and passively that I can’t imagine it would have mattered much.
The dinner break brought a much-needed moment to relax. Tiny B and the Freeze had been kind enough to reserve a table at a very tasty fish place in the Rio, and I lamented over my poor play as we dined. Farha was seated in a group two tables over, and rumor had it he was already north of $100,000 on the feature table. “Great, I have no shot,” I thought. I actually commented to Todd that I needed to start getting some hands to play or I was going to lose interest. He may or may not have punched me.
Dan’s buddy, Wendeen Eolis, who was sitting on a similar stack, allegedly told Dan she was moving in with any ace after the break. That sounded bizarre to me, and I resigned myself to playing a solid as I could and let the chips fall where they may.
Back from dinner, level 5 got under way with a bang. First, I got into a blinds war with 34o on a flop of 25x rainbow. The turn was the 6h, and we re-raised each other all in and turned over the same hand. Terrific. I finally see a flop, make a hand (the nuts, no less), and end up chopping up the blinds and antes.
Meanwhile, Seat 5, an older man (in black left), had been showing down a lot of marginal hands. He was fluctuating pretty wildly between 5000 and 14000, a lot like seat 6 from my first table. I continued to be stone cold card dead for about an hour, only once or twice able to steal a blind. With only 5200 left, I looked down at AQo on the button. Seat 5 made it 800 to go, and it folded to me. Even though he’d played plenty of marginal hands, something told me this hand was strong. In fact, if pressed, I’d say I thought his hand was AK. But the reality was I couldn’t wait for a better hand, and it was just as likely he was playing a middle pair, two Broadway cards or Ax suited, so without any hesitation, I moved in for the first time in the tournament. The blinds folded, and he called pretty quickly with, of course, AK. He had me covered by about 3000 at this point. Perhaps not uncoincidentally my father (who had a piece of my action) had just arrived on the rail to watch me flop a queen and stay alive. (The actual suckout is captured in this picture.) That would prove to be my big lucky draw of the tournament, catching on a 3-1 dog to stay alive early.
As soon as the pot had been pushed my way, we were racking our chips again. With just over 11000 and back out of the danger zone, I headed to my third table of the day.
This new table would also prove to be the first table where the play was recognizably better. I was seated in seat 2, and across the table in seat 7 was a cocky, 21-year-old kid, wearing a suit (with tie), sunglasses and a Red Sox lid. As I was stacking out my chips he called a pre-flop raise all-in from a short stack with AKo. Short stack had AQo, and his hand held up without improving. He screamed “ship it!,” and shoved the I-Pod earplug back in his ear. At about 35-40k, he was clearly in control of the table. Within another orbit he would take the blinds uncontested three times and call another all-in with AKo and again win without it improving. All the while he talked, talked, talked, to anyone or no one. He would have been incredibly annoying were it not for the fact that he appeared to be a pretty good player. Perhaps I would have been that kid at 21…
Sitting to Cocky kid’s left in seat 8 was a quiet, tight player who appeared to seldom enter pots. On my immediate right was a talkative high school teacher who ended up being a former history teacher of my wife and Tiny B. Small world. He was very short and playing extremely tight, so I took his blinds a couple of times to keep up.
In level 6, I finally played a decent hand. I raised UTG with pocket queens (which would become my defining hand) and got called by seat 8 after some deliberation. The flop came jack high with two spades, I checked, he bet the pot, and I aggressively moved in to represent AK, a flush draw or both. Seat 8 deliberated forever and finally called. I assumed he would turn over AJ, but to my dismay he turned over pocket tens. Good thing, too, as an ace spiked on the river. He mumbled that he thought I had AK. That got me to around $23k--my high point of the tournament to that point.
The very next hand I got AKo and re-raised Cocky kid’s raise of $1500 to $4000 straight. The flop came J-10-x, I checked, and he shook his finger “no-no” and fired out $8k. Like the small girl that I am, I mucked quickly. Maybe I should have made it $6000 to go pre-flop, but I’d just gotten those chips!
The next 3 hours I went back to being card dead, literally playing a hand or two, and only to stab at the blinds. I finished Level 7 at $15,000ish, and closed Day 1 (a few minutes into Level 8 at 2:30 a.m.) pretty short at $13,975. To start Day 2, average stacks were at 30k.
Though it was exhilarating to survive Day 1, I wasn’t at all happy with the way I played. I knew I’d have to get something going early in Day 2 to have any shot at making it through the day.
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