Matt Stout's WPT Five Diamond Day 1

I'm going to continue the epic slowroll of publishing my Foxwoods WPT final table just a little bit longer... not for dramatic effect, but to try to do nightly blogs while the Bellagio WPT event is going on.
This is always the way I'd like to be able to do it, but it's not nearly as easy when I'm on the road as when the tournament is in Vegas and we only play five levels per day.
I arrived at my starting table to find three unfamiliar faces to my left, one of whom Todd Terry told me was "the richest man in Hungary and plays every hand."
I was happy about this marked card tricks, but not to happy to see a bunch of online beasts who also happen to all be buddies of mine to varying degrees to the right. The combination gave us a table that looked like this:

• 1 - Jason "JP OSU/ouemokid" Potter
• 2 – Me
• 3 - "The Richest Man in Hungary"/DontBluffMePLZZZ
• 4 - friendly unknown older guy who I vaguely recall playing with a long time ago
• 5 – unknown
• 6 - Cory "UGOTPZD" Carroll
• 7 - Isaac "westmenloAA" Baron
• 8 - Randal "RandALLin" Flowers
• 9 - Mark "newhizzle" Newhouse

I'm going to continue the epic slowroll of publishing my Foxwoods WPT final table just a little bit longer...not for dramatic effect, but to try to do nightly blogs while the Bellagio WPT event is going on.

This is always the way I'd like to be able to do it, but it's not nearly as easy when I'm on the road as when the tournament is in Vegas and we only play five levels per day.

I arrived at my starting table to find three unfamiliar faces to my left, one of whom Todd Terry told me was "the richest man in Hungary and plays every hand."

I was happy about this, but not to happy to see a bunch of online beasts who also happen to all be buddies of mine to varying degrees to the right. The combination gave us a table that looked like this:

1 - Jason "JP OSU/ouemokid" Potter

2 - Me

3 - "The Richest Man in Hungary"/DontBluffMePLZZZ

4 - friendly unknown older guy who I vaguely recall playing with a long time ago

5 - unknown

6 - Cory "UGOTPZD" Carrol

7 - Isaac "westmenloAA" Baron 

8 - Randal "RandALLin" Flowers

9 - Mark "newhizzle" Newhouse

Half of this table could have showed up for my home game. It's not ideal to be pitted against your friends in major tournaments, but it's kind of hard not to come across each other when most of us met playing big tournaments against each other on a regular basis to begin with.
It's rare that anyone takes anything personally, and I'd much rather give my stack to someone I'd like to see win than some random.
I managed to get about 4k from the "the richest man in Hungary" in the first level when I kickered him on a jack-high board with A♥ J♥, but his unfortunate elimination came entirely too soon in the second level.
I also made a boat against Jason Potter with 3♦ 4♦, but he managed to lay down what he claimed was K-K on the river.
He also showed K♦ K♥ and folded to me on a A♦ J♥ T♥ when I had flatted his UTG raise with J♠ J♣ and we went four ways to the flop. How many times do you have to crack a friend's Kings before he pays you off!?!?!?
It doesn't help that Jason thinks I'm a complete nit, but that's beside the point...
The rest of the significant pots I played on day one all came holding A-J, coincidentally...
A-J #1: flop royal draw w A♥ J♥ and lose to Randal's flopped set/turned boat.
A-J #2: make a borderline call with A♦ J♥ after infrared contactlenses I open and a shortstack shoves, suck out vs K♥ K♠ on a J-x-x-x-J board.
A-J #3: kicker Randal with A♥ J♥ on a jack-high board.
Playing fairly small pots resulted in a pretty predictable outcome: I broke just about even for the day. I have 58,400 going to 400/800 (75) to start Day 2 tomorrow. Here's my table draw:

• 1 - Erik Cajelais 127k
• 2 - Chau Giang 45k
• 3 - Vadim Trincher 72k
• 4 - Curt Kohlberg 139k
• 5 - Matt "Poligraph" Waxman 111k
• 6 - Seth Fischer 123k
• 7 - Me 58k

Although Bellagio now allows players to register up to three levels into day two, I have no idea why we played ten-handed all day today and there are only 7 to 8 players at each table for tomorrow. I'm just going to show up and try to get the job done.
-- Matt Stout