The long road back

A total of 251 runners paid $355 to enter the WSOP Circuit Event No. 12 Sunday at Harrah's Casino Tunica. We started with 10K in chips. The blind structure was slow with 30 minute levels through Level 12. Then they advanced to 40 minutes. Beginning with Level 19, each level was 50 minutes.

It's a good thing that the blind structure was favorable because I don't think I won a pot for the first three hours. When I had a playable hand, someone would raise in front of me. My 10K dribbled down to about 6.5K before I started getting some hands. Fortunately, I got Q-Q twice and was paid off each time.

The game stopped Sunday night at 2:45 a.m. with 27 of us in the money. The lower-level payouts aren't much, but first place pays nearly $18,000 along with a ring. The average chip stack is around 93K and I have 197K, so I'm looking good. The blinds are 3000/1500/500 so a stack can dwindle at an alarming rate -- you still have to play poker.

Here's my big hand of the day: When the blinds were 2400/1200/300, I had about 95K and raised to 5600 (2.5 times the big blind) and a guy with A-K reraised to 10,000. The big stack called the 10K. I re-reraised to 30K. The AK called and the big stack folded (he later said he had Q-Q). The flop was A-x-x and I checked and the A-K guy quickly moved all in for around 100,000. I called and showed him what I said I had: A-A. Amazing all four aces were accounted for. I was pretty sure he had A-K and was hoping for a king to flop so I could stack him. An ace, of course, was beyond my wildest dreams.

We resume play Monday at noon, so I am heading to bed.


Above: Here's what my chips looked like after I bagged them when play ceased.


Above: The shot clock when play was halted for the day.