Main Event: Day 3

I survived day 3 at the Main Event and am now in the money. Tomorrow, 474 of us resume to play 2,500/5,000/500. I have 260,000 chips, which is slightly below average, but far from concerning.

I started today with 247k and was never higher than 360k or lower than 160k. In the first level, things started off kind of poorly for me. I lost a race (Tens vs. Ace-Queen) for a 130k pot and then lost Kings vs. Ace-King (after someone said they folded an Ace, no less) for a 75k pot. Despite that, I astonishingly managed to actually increase my stack by a little bit in the first level.

I know it sounds hard to believe that one could play for ten hours and not really have any interesting hands to talk about... but I don't. I busted three short stacks in a series of about one hour. One was an 80-20, the other a 70-30, and the last a 55-45... so I was getting the chips in good.

My starting table had Jeremiah Smith who turned his 375k starting stack into well over 600k in the first level. This was no thanks to me. The two times we played pots against each other, I raked in the pot.

Later in the day, Smith was moved to my immediate left at a different table. He needed help carrying his $1.2M in chips!

That table was pretty tough. Jon Friedberg and a Swedish guy I know named Samir were also there. The others tended to be pretty competent themselves.

It was a cool table though because Hellmuth, Matusow, and Johnny Chan were all at one table or another very, very near ours. Matusow and Hellmuth kept yelling back and forth at each other, which was pretty amusing albeit annoying.

In the last level, I lost a race (Ace-Queen vs. Sixes) for a 90k pot that only cost me 30k of my chips (re-raised to isolate after two flat calls). It was kind of a bummer to lose that flip since I was getting 2:1 for my money... but I'll settle for losing the small flips so long as I can get a big one (or two) to go my way tomorrow!

I'm going to hop in the shower, brush my teeth, and hit the sack. This tournament is as much tiring as it is exciting.

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