Wow.... just..... Wow....

As both my friend Ed and my wife has commented, the current feeling is more surreal than anything else. Today was an exercise in patience and finding the right time to make a couple of steals to survive until real hands came. I got moved to a table with Justin Bonomo (ZeeJustin of online fame) (I suck, that wasn't Justin), JC Tran, and a very aggressive Brandon Cantu. I played there for a couple of rounds and had about 35k in chips when I got moved to a table that included:

Anna Wroblewski
Jennifer Harmon
David Tran
Isabelle Mercier
Tuan Le
and
Lee Watkinson

This is what playing in a WPT event is all about!

Luckily, I quickly won 3 big pots: one with AK all in preflop vs AT (why do people keep calling my raises with AT?), one with a flush that I caught in a blind defense, and my 2nd rockets (AA) of the tournament got action from a short stack.

So now we play tomorrow, 6 6-handed tables. If (or as we positive thinkers say, when) we survive tomorrow, we will be down to 6 players, I will have $135K in prize money locked up, and the highly coveted chance to make a fool of myself on the worldwide-syndicated WPT program. :-) Oh, did I mention the $1 million for first?

My draw for tomorrow, which is posted at http://www.cardplayer.com/tournaments/live_updates/14167 could be a lot worse. Layne Flack, with $93K in chips, is the bounty at the table. I'm glad I'm not at tables 2 or 5, which have 3 world-class players on them.

Tomorrow is 2-hour levels starting at 10:30 AM, so I expect my first update to be around 12:30 PM central time.

Thanks again to everyone for your continued support.

Oh, one hand story.

I was feeling pretty low, having just made a bad fold. I said, "I need help", and pulled out pics of the kids and put them in front of my chip stack. My next big blind, I called a small raise with 6-4 suited. I flopped an open ended straight draw, and check-called a small continuation bet. The turn got checked, and I caught the straight on the river. While I didn't get any action on the river, it was still a much-needed boost at a much-needed time. So thanks kids! And don't you ever let me catch you playing 6-4...