Guest Post (by Sarah)

This is my first attempt at blogging. I doubt I’ll be as good as Evan (I can’t believe I just wrote that), but here goes anyway.

Yesterday was my first attempt at a WSOP event, and I am so hooked that I sincerely hope it wont be my last. It was a $1500 buy-in event, No Limit Hold-em, with 6 players per table. I loved this event, adjusted to it well, and think it would be a good event to repeat in future years.

I was extremely nervous on the morning of the event. I couldn’t eat, felt jittery, and probably bothered Evan with my repeated declarations that I “might throw up.” (I didn’t). We arrived at the Rio at 11:30, and prepared to take our seats for the tournament at noon. When I was seated at my table, I quickly assessed that I could hold my own among the players. I was only nervous about one young player from London – he kept re-raising when I tried to steal blinds and I had to give up a lot of pots.

I did win the very first two hands of the day, and though the pots were only 200 and 75 respectively, it gave me some much needed confidence.

The starting stack of chips was 3000. By the end of the first blind level, I had won a number of small pots, increasing my stack to about 3800. During the second blind level, I made some much more aggressive plays, had one lucky hand, and essentially wound up within the top 10 or 20 chip stacks by the end of the 2nd hour. I had 13k in chips, and though I didn’t know it at the time, the leaderboard was showing the top players having 10K and up.

One of my favorite hands of the day was against a very solid young player, who took 12th place in a major tournament 3 days ago. We both had stacks of 6k at this point. I raised from the button w/ K9clubs, and he re-raised me from the small blind. Though I figured I was behind, the raise was giving me favorable pot odds to see if I hit a good flop. We saw the flop heads up, and it was AcQcTd, giving me the nut flush draw, as well as any J for a straight. He bet about 1500, and I raised him all in with my draws, (and hopefully some fold equity). He insta-called with pocket tens, which takes away some outs as he has a chance of making a full house. At this point, it was left to the cards, and I was happy to have gotten my money in here. I did make a flush on the turn, he did not make a boat, and I eliminated him. I had over 12K in chips and a massive lead over most players.

I’m almost embarrassed to describe the next hour or so of play, because I don’t really know what went wrong. I can blame it on getting extremely tired, or bad luck of the cards, or a few poor decisions, but I started bleeding out chips from my massive stack, and wound up at 5500. I should have taken a break. A long one. I was finally eliminated when I called a preflop raise with QdJd. The flop came out Qh4h2d, the raiser bet into me, and I raised him all in with my top pair. He called, flipped over Aces, and I received no help from the turn or river. I was eliminated in around 600th place out of 1200ish people.

All in all, I loved it. Getting eliminated was hard, because I felt I could have gone a lot further. But this whole experience has turned me on to tournament play (especially with all the “training” I’ve been doing), and really improved my game. We are planning on playing some smaller stakes tournaments and cash games over the next few days, so hopefully that will rebuild my poker spirit.

Evan – I can’t thank you enough for this opportunity. One day I will cash in a WSOP event and pay you back.