On to Day 2

I love bagging chips -- it means I've advanced to the next day of a poker tournament. We started with 30,000 with two-hour levels. Think slow tournament structure. I ended the day with 53,600.

EDIT: I see that they misreported my chip count as 26K. No biggie - the people who do the reporting have a thankless job and I think it's amazing they do as well as they do.

I don't have the numbers, but you can read more about Day 1A here.

What was the Main Event like? In a way it was a lot like any tournament -- there are good players, horrible players and many in the middle. One of the vagaries of tournament poker is your starting table. If you sit down and see eight pros, guess what? You're in trouble. If you see three players who look like fish, you feel pretty good. Beware that some of the people who look fishy can turn out to be players, so profiling them accurately is important. Value bet the calling stations, don't bluff them, etc.

Theo Tran was the best player at my starting table with more than $2 million in tournament earnings. On one deal, he bet preflop, bet the flop, checked the turn, and bet the river. When he was called, he turned over 7 high. When the table broke, however, I had twice as many chips as he did, so woot for me.

Above: Poker player Susie Isaacs was at my starting table. During the first two hours, she played zero deals! A player asked her about her hat and she said she has four of them that she regularly wears.

Above: The Rio is the home of the World Series of Poker.

Above: It looks like MOJO is doing more than playing poker. I believe he is going for a Royal Flush, if you catch my drift.