Brief Update

First, for those of you who have looked at wsop.com, we are listed as no chip count.  Of the 430 people who finished Day 1 with us, we should be listed in 30th place.  However, I forgot to note on my receipt the chip count of 101,100 (mark that up to exhaustion).  In the long run, it doesn't matter.  These are all self reported chip counts.  I could have written 12,000 or 212,000 or nothing at all.  I did the latter.

In review of the day, there are a few highlights that keep going through my head:

• We were very lucky to have slow-played the set of 9s we flopped.  Had we not, or had the guy who flopped the set of Aces not slow-played, we would have been all in.  We played the river very, very conservatively, afraid of a flush.  Had the river not been a heart, we probably would have been all in and lost 30,000 chips there instead of about a quarter of that.  We are rarely conservative, so this was great timing.
• We were lucky near the end of the tournament to simply call with AK on the button.  Had we raised, we would have been called by the 66 and the JJ, creating a bigger pot for them to get quads and full houses on.  It is, of course, possible that a large enough raise would have pushed the 66 out, and perhaps continuation bets would have pushed the JJ out before  he hit the J on the river, but we really have to twist the hypothetical to find a hand where we win.  Instead, the conservative play let us lose as little as possible.
• We were absurdly lucky to flop a flush against a hand that flopped a smaller flush and to get them all in on it.
• We were absurdly lucky to flop the nut straight against a hand that flopped top two pair and to get them all in on it on the flop and then have it hold up on the turn and river.  Holding up was about 92%, but just getting it all in with the nuts like that is pretty fantastic in the luck department.
• We did suffer a bad beat from a K4 against our bigger K when he rivered a 4, but that was the only terrible luck we saw that we couldn't get out of way of.

Going into Day 2 we will likely be in the top 10%, but not in the top 5%.  It's a great place to line up.  We will look at what our table looks like on Wednesday morning when that information is available.

All the best,

Donkey