Pretty crazy day 1 of WPT Legends tourney

[Inthacup]

It was an odd first day. The tournament started at 4:15PM. I still haven't figured out why.

I take my seat at the table. Don't recognize anyone there. However, there are 2 empty seats, 2 and 6. I'm in seat 4. About 5 minutes after we start, the 6 seat sits down. It's Jerry Buss. 10 minutes later, the 2 seat comes in. It's Doyle Brunson. very cool.

Let me just say that Doyle is a blast to have at the table. Laid back, tells lots of stories, mostly about gambling more money than I'll ever see.

The tournament structure is odd as well. Today started with 500 players. The rest of the players(329) play tomorrow. Today consisted of 6 90-minute levels, starting with 25-50 and ending with 150-300 with a 50 ante.


We started with 10k. I won a few small pots early, but all of that was offset by this hand:

On the first level, I get J [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] in MP. UTG(seat 1) raises to T-200. Folded to me, I call, 2 others call, and we see the flop. Flop comes Q [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 7 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. UTG bets T-300, I raise to T-1000, the other 2 fold, and he calls. Turn is 9 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]. He checks, I bet T-1500, he calls. River is 10 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]. He checks, I check. He shows QQ. That could have been much worse.

I don't do much for the next few levels. However, I did win a showdown with 10 2 in the BB w/ a turned 2-pair. It was pretty cool to hear 'nh' from the guy who the hand is named after.

At the 100-200 level, I have T-7000. EP raises to T-1000. I decide to go all-in with Q [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] Q [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]. Folded back around to EP who thinks for a second and calls. EP shows K [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] K [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. Flop is 10 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 7 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 3 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]. Turn is 8 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], River is 2 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] and I pull off a miracle runner flush to double up and stay in.

About 2 hours later, with blinds 150-300, I get K [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] K [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]. I have about T-15,000. Loose big stack(maybe T-60k) limps, folded to me, I make it T-1,500. Folded to him, he check-raises to T-4000. I decide to go all-in for the rest of my 15k. He insta-calls and shows AA. For the 2nd time that day, I go all-in against a bigger PP and win. First card turned over is a king, and it holds up.

I'm currently at T-29,700 going into Monday. Out of the 829 entrants, only 72 get paid. We played down to about 200 players today, so there is lots of poker left before the money.

A few other crazy things I saw:

Doyle went out fairly quickly. He never really could get anything going. He claims to have lost with AA, KK twice, QQ and JJ.

Tim Phan plays very well. He was moved to my table mid-way through the day. He mixed it up a lot and he did a good job of using his chips. This hand created a good 10 minutes of discussion:

Tim is in seat 10 and is on the button with about T-45,000. Seat 7 has about T-40,000. The pre-river play is a little hazy to me, but it's close enough. Seat 7 raises preflop, Tim reraises. Flop and turn action is minimal. Pot is about T-7000. The board is K [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]Q [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]7 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]5 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]2 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. Tim bets about T-3000. Seat 7 check-raises all-in. Tim sits there for a good 4-5 minutes and calls. He shows A [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]K [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] and seat 7 shows 88. He risked about 90% of his very healthy stack on the river with TPTK. It was amazing. After he called, he broke down his thought process. It was quite interesting.

Cup