Now that I've spent about a week and a half barely playing poker while getting over busting the WSOP Main Event, I suppose it's time to tell the tale.

Not that the interim has been too bad...I'm really working out the kinks in my Mario Kart for Wii game, have become better acquainted with my new digital VOLCANO vaporizer, and re-watched (I somehow got a hold of these when I was about 11) half of the gruesome, sick, and highly controversial "Faces of Death" movies.

I'm also starting to get back into roller hockey, in the hopes that one day I may be in shape again...or at least a shape that isn't round. =)

Anyway, back to the lecture at hand...

As I've done in previous years, I showed up to buy in halfway through satellite day. In my experience, this generally helps you get softer table draws. Many times late registration results in extremely tough table draws with no satellite winners, especially when the registration process is terrible and they open up new tables as players come in.

This strategy, while generally effective, was so far beyond not working in this case that I'd actually say it backfired.

Not who you want to see.

I ended up with a table so loaded that I'd actually say that it may have been the toughest starting table of the Main Event! Marco Traniello, Scott Fischman, Alex "AJKHoosier1" Kamberis, and David Benyamine already made this table a little absurd for day one of the WSOP Main event...

Then I found out that the older guy on my immediate left was Bobby Baldwin. Aside from being a former winner of this particular donkament, he also has the honor of having the most famous high-limit poker room in the world named after him.

"Bobby's Room" within the Bellagio poker room hosts the "Big Game" and some of the highest stakes poker in not just Vegas, but the entire World.

From the beginning of the tournament, Fischman was ranting about how he hadn't made day two of the Main Event since 2004, the same year that he'd won two bracelets in prelims. He told us that coolering him was the only way that he'd get his chips and that he was going to play super-tight all day in an attempt to finally make day two again.

Then he went on to tell us that if he was dealt A-A, he would just move all in before the flop because he was so afraid of getting cracked and paying off. I assumed he was kidding until about the fifth orbit of the tournament. With blinds at 50-100 and effective stacks of 30k, it folded around to Scott in the cutoff...who moved all in.

HOLY SHIT! If he doesn't have aces this would just be idiotic, and if he does...well it's probably even worse, in my opinion. The button folded, the small blind looked at his cards, laughed, looked at Scott, and held his cards forward towards the muck but didn't release. He asked the big blind if he was folding because he wanted to show his hand to the table, and the big blind looked bewildered and said "I don't know!"

Scott Fischman

After the small blind mucked, the big blind re-checked his hole cards. Keep in mind that he was our one and only true unknown fish at the table, as even the rest of the unknowns seemed to be playing pretty solid and smart. He laughed nervously for another minute while Scott put on an act as if he was worried about the guy tanking.

After only about a minute to 90 seconds, the softest spot at the table turned two kings face up and threw them into the muck. The SB claimed J-J, which I obviously believe since he was trying to show his hand.

I'm not even going into hand analysis here. When you do something that allows the weakest player at the table to turn two kings over and pitch them into the muck before the flop when you have A-A (which I'm ~100% sure he had), well you've probably f***ed up pretty badly.

Scott is a really nice guy who I like as a person, but this play made me puke a little in my mouth!

About to start an abbreviated online grind session centered around the $1k Monday tournament, so I'll just cut if off there and continue in part two.

Matt Stout