I might as well stop putting off writing this blog before I manage to completely block this tournament out of my memory...because I'm pretty close as it is, thankfully!

As I mentioned in the first part, my starting table looked more like a tough final table. I wouldn't be surprised in a WPT event, but since this is the softest $10k buy in tournament of the year it was pretty bad news.

Unless I managed to get in a good spot against one of the softer spots at the table it was going to be tough to accumulate.

But since the first day is all about survival I just decided to lay back, taking a lot of flops with the soft spots and picking my spots against the better players.

I picked up one big pot early when I set over setted someone.  Normally I get all 30k even though it was 50-100 in this spot if I play it correctly, but the flop was Q♦ J♦ 10♦ and my opponent just check-called me down on a 2♠ turn and 6♣ river with J♠ J♣

Although a cleaner flop or us both filling up would have been great, I still picked up about 7k in that pot and was up to 36k.  I was still happy with the result and felt like it was a great start and a good sign.

Unfortunately, that was the last significant pot I won for the rest of the tournament!  I kept playing pretty solid and wasn't involved in many big pots...which is all well and good in terms of strategy and everything but just resulted in a more painful and slow torture.

AJKHoosier1 son!

Towards the end of the day, I raised under the gun with A♦ A♣ and got flatted by Alex "AJKHoosier1" Kambaris.  It was 200/400 (50) and I had 28k which he had well covered.

We went heads up to the flop, and I wanted to puke when it came Ks-Qs-Jc.  I check-called a pot sized bet from him, and just gave up on a ragged turn card to his 2/3 pot bet.

It's a good thing, too, since any doubt of me having the best hand went out the window when he showed 10♠ 9♠!  He later told me that he only showed because we're friends and he knew I was feeling pretty crappy after losing pot after pot.  Thanks Alex!

I managed to squeeze into day two with 18k going to 250-500 (50).  It was literally the most boring and card dead day of live poker I've ever had.  I ended up laying down J♦ J♠ to a shove on a queen high flop in one of the only pots I played during the first couple of levels.

In the end, I was more than happy to jam my short stack in with 5♦ 7♦ from the small blind when it folded to me for the first time in what seemed like six weeks.  The big blind woke up with A♠ 9♣ and called.  It seemed like it was over when I saw the 9♥ in the window, but the 4♦ and 6♣ were behind it for a full sweat.

Of course, this was merely part of the epic torture that was my WSOP Main Event 2009.  The turn and river bricked out, and I darted out of the Brasilia Room as quickly as possible.

Matt Stout