I arrived in Monaco one day before the main event to and took ahelicopter from Nice to get to Monte Carlo. This is a wonderful placewith great views and and beautiful landscape.We had a welcoming party and the draw for the seats and the big namesare in town to get a piece of the $3 million guaranteed prize money.Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, Jeses Ferguson and many other huge names arehere. It look like th toughest field I have ever seen.Day one started and I picked up a table that was much easier then mostand was able to cruise along for most of the day by picking up smallpots on a consistent basis. One interesting pot came up just before mytable broke, I picked up 6-7 harts on the big blind and it was raisedto 1200 we were playing 200-400 So it was a must call in mysituation. Flop came down A-5-4 with 5-4 of harts giving me a straightflush draw, this looked very exciting and I could push this hand rightthere and take it 95% of the time, but on the flop I just called theturn brought another hart and I bet 5,000 he raised me another 10k andI had this feeling that he has the bare K of harts, So now I don’t havethat much value to re-raise since I am blocking his out with my up anddown straight flush draw. So I just call his raise we have another 30k+behind to play with on the river, the river come a blank and I checkit like here you go just bet and take it. He goes all inn and I veryquickly call he does show me the bare K of Harts. I get to go over 100kin chips we started on 50k.The table brakes and I get moved to Phil Ivey’s and Mike the Mouth’stable so we very quickly get the TV table. Phil just dominated heknocked me out of this event last year and he very quickly doubled medown again this year. He is just so good, the best player in the worldin my book. But I take a few nice pots of the Mouth and survive theday on 102,400 this is above average and I am looking forward to day2.
