Today is my 4th day of playing deep into the tournament. Its about 11pm, and I am still in the $1,000 with rebuys tournament. I missed a lot of hands watching the CBS show, but it didn’t seem to effect me that much.
I have about 13,000 now, and the average is about 17,000. I have been playing really well for four days. There are about 120 players left. I feel pretty good. I have John Juanda on my table, as I have all day. He is a great player, I have a lot of respect for him, and we have tussled a couple times today. It hasn’t been easy to have him there.
But, I am plugging away, and trying to play my game without getting emotionally effected. When you look at it, you play for 3 days until midnight every day, but you don’t make the money, or even get into the second day. You see these other guys playing the second day of their tournaments, and it doesn’t feel good – no doubt about it. But, luckily, I have done well enough in poker that the money doesn’t matter to me, and psychologically I feel really strong. So, even if I go out again, and miss day two, I could feel really good about my chances tomorrow, and just come back, and play my game.
With the fields being so big, we have over 900 players, and the rebuys are pretty crazy. I heard someone has made 22 rebuys in today’s event. Apparently, the record for this event for rebuys was Phil Ivey with 33 rebuys, and apparently, also Daniel had about 30. I heard there were 95 rebuys on one table. That was in 2004.
I don’t do too many rebuys, but I do play appropriately loose and aggressive early on. It’s a very different game when you can rebuy – there is a lot of money out there. So, for me its important for me to play well. Whatever happens, I’m not going to worry about it. It just going to be a matter of time until I do really well in a WSOP event.
I haven’t played many of these events. I usually don’t come to America to play all the events. This is the first year I have come from the start, and tried to play them all.
But, it’s a grind. I went to sleep at 4am, and had to get up at 9am for some meetings. I think I had 6 hours sleep the night before. But, I feel really good. The adrenaline is kicking in, and I am ready for anything.
