The tourney started at 10:00 AM and had a great structure with 20,000 starting chips and 1 hour levels with a break after every two levels. I got a great table draw and the play on average was horrible. It helped that I ran well and flopped a bunch of sets, but I think I played well too. A couple of noteworthy hands:
I am on the button with pocket 5′s and have both the blinds covered with T40,000 or so. I raise to 1200 with the blinds at 200/400 and the small blind minraises to 2400. The BB folds and I think briefly before calling. My plan was to fold if I didn’t flop a set unless something else came up. The flop came 4c Ts Qs and the SB bets out T1200 into a T5000 pot or so. He had about T7,000 behind and the bet felt so weak to me that I decided to make a move and I raised him all in. He thought for about a minute before calling with pocket 8′s. I was right about his weakness, but didn’t think he was desperate enough to call his tournament life in that spot. I didn’t improve so he doubled up, but I stand by my read and play and if he had a slightly larger stack I bet it would have worked.
Another beautiful play I made was a stone cold bluff against one of the tightest players at the table.
I had a great day 1 and ended the day with 101K chips when the average stack is 75K or so. I will join 115 others on day 2 in a race to the money which should start around spot number 60 or so with 1st place locking in the A$1,000,000 prize. Some of the big names still in are former world champs Joe Hatchem and Scotty Nguyen.