It’s been a couple of days since I’ve written an entry and a lot has happened since then, but unfortunately I don’t have a ton of time right not to talk about it, so this will be kinda brief.

Two days ago, I busted out of the $1k at WSOP. I don’t even remember how, but I think it was before dinner break. Yea, it definitely was before dinner break, because on dinner break I drove Ray Coburn (Exitonly) and Jimmy Fricke (gobboboy) to Taco Bell where I remember asking them what it was like to still be in a tournament. In Ray’s case, he was on day three of a $1500 event and was down to the final table when they broke for dinner (Jimmy was just in day one of the $1k that I just busted).

The reason I was hanging around with poker players on dinner break despite not being in any tournaments was because Ray is one of my best friends in poker and has helped me with my tournament game to such an immense degree that I wasn’t going to miss sweating a final table of his for anything. I started talking to Ray online in 2005 when we were both grinding micro-stakes multi-table tournaments. Ray won the monthly tournament leaderboard on Stars one month mostly from just crushing $1-$3 buy-ins. He and I became pretty good friends from talking online and have remained that way for six years now.

Despite Ray probably having always been a better thinking player than myself, he’s never quite had any huge breakthrough scores. When I was running hotter than the sun in 2008, a part of me always felt a little bummed for Ray. Put yourself in his shoes: a guy that you taught how to play is crushing everything and popping up on ESPN and you’re swamped in make-up. That’s the way poker goes, Ray knows that, but to say that he’s been “overdue” for a large score would be a huge understatement.

Well… his large score finally came.

Sunday night, I found myself and probably 20 of Ray’s closest friends in the poker world (most of them, heck, all of them 2p2ers), on the rail of the $1500 final table. This was the first time I’ve ever had the chance to sweat a good friend at a huge live final table, so I was pretty excited and even more excited that it was Ray. Incidentally, one table over, my friend Leif Force was playing at the $5000 PLO/8 final table. So after going years of never getting to sweat a friend at a WSOP final table, I get two chances in one night. (Leif would go on to finish 6th for $65k, nice job Leif!)

There was a Brazilian at Ray’s final table which meant one thing: Brazilian railbirds. Those guys know how to sweat their countrymen. They had Brazilian flags, alcohol, even a vuvuzela! The highlight of the final table was when the Brazilian got all-in against Ray (for most of Ray’s chips, too) three-handed. Ray held 98 and the Brazilian held QQ all-in on a T87 flop. The atmosphere was like a World Cup game; both sides were going nuts rooting for their guy. Our rail went absolutely insane when a six came on the river. “U-S-RAY! U-S-RAY!” It was probably the most excited I’ve ever been about a card in a game of poker. I couldn’t be happier for Ray.

After he and Jesse Rockowitz took some off the table before their heads-up battle, Ray built up a 3:1 lead and could almost feel a bracelet around his wrist until Jesse won a couple of big pots and put him away fairly quickly. No regrets for Ray though; he played great and landed an absolutely huge score ($550k)!

Okay, I really am running out of time, so I’ll have to wrap this up by saying that I made day two of a $1500 at WSOP. I’m trying to do my Ray Coburn impression. Right now, there are 315 players remaining, 270 will finish in the money, I have 27,300 and blinds are 600/1200 when we resume in a little over an hour. The only time I was all-in was after four-betting Dyzalot with Ace-King and being pretty happy to see him make a fairly big overcall with Ace-Queen. Queen in the door. Jack, ten behind it. I’ll probably post updates from the table on Facebook (just search for my name) if you’re interested in following along. It might be a little while before I get another entry up; my girlfriend gets into town tonight, tomorrow is my birthday, and hopefully I’ll be at day three of the $1500 taking one down.