Hey guys quick update on my AC trip. I finished day 1 with a really nice stack 160,000. I honestly think this was one of my best days of live poker. I opened the day playing almost every hand, but after about two hours I realized that I was almost certainly going to be at this table all day. With that realization, it became obvious that I needed to take the exact opposite style. So in the third level I became playing quite snuggly. I was down to 40k when my first big hand came up:

I raised UTG w/ 55 and got 2 callers. The big blind was Rick Fuller, I honestly have no clue who he is but apparently he is a big deal. Anyway flop comes 965 rainbow, I bet 600 and he calls. Turn is a 3 and I bet 1600 and he raises to 5100. I call. River is a Q and he bets 11k. Im obviously never folding and I am not sure there is value in raising so I just call praying he does not have 78 and he shows me total air.

Next big hand is also against Rick Fuller and this is one I refused to tell the reporters or my table but an aggressive girl opened to 700 UTG, Fuller calls and on the button I make it 3200 w/ k3 of hearts. She folds but he calls out of position. Flop is T6s4s. Now he was tilting a little bit and was sort of loose passive so there was absolutely no way he is ever check folding this flop. So I decided if I hit any equity on the turn which would be a K, 3, 5, 2, or heart I was going to double barrel big. He started the hand out with about 29k and I bet 5200 and he called as expected (only hand I really expected him to checkraise was a flush draw). Turn is the 4 of hearts, giving me a flush draw and I pretty quickly bet 20k. He literally went into the tank for 8 minutes. He fake called about 3 times and ended up laying down.......KK!!!

WOW, I can't believe that was the way he played KK. Anyway that was my really big ball bluff of the day and that was for about half of my chips. Honestly I put his range when he called as any pocket pair, up to a maximum of QQ. I figured if he didn't have a fullhouse, then I had 12 outs against his range, plus a ton of fold equity. A friend of his later came up to me and said that he thought you were very tight and the only hand that you could have there is AA. Thankfully playing tight definitely paid off there because he was not at the table for the first two rounds when I was playing every hand.

My other big bluff of the day came against a tight/good player I felt I had a great read on. I called his raise in CO with 64 suited and then called his flop bet of 1300 on 632 board. Turn is a 9 he checks, and I think I am probably value betting and I make it 2400. He makes a small checkraise to 7k and I really thought this was an info raise more than anything with a big overpair. I thought for awhile and made it 20k straight and he open folds AA. These two bluffs were made possible I think due to my tighter image, and also realizing the significance of the deep stacks. Both times we were over 250bbs deep and stacking off with one pair which they made obvious that they had was not a smart play.

I also had one big hand. An aggro live player sat down to the table about 20 minutes ago and probably raised 1 out of 3 hands. I had position on him and immediately targetted him as someone that would overplay a hand and go bust out of postion. Well I raised UTG to 1800 and he made it 5300 straight in big blind and I called with AQ of spades. Flop came T83 with two spades and he made it 8500. I called with the plan of raising all in any turn if he bets due to his aggression and the fact that my hand does not look like a flush draw when I raise turn and not flop. Also I did not want to raise flop and raise with an overpair when I felt I had a significant skill advantage. Turn was a 3 of spades, he checked and I quickly bet 14k, he shoved for 51k total and I called and my hand held against his KK.

Overall I had one of my better days of live poker, but I need to put together 3 more days of great poker in order to take this thing down. Honestly, if you take away the AQ suited hand and the set, I was miserably card dead but stole when I needed to, folded when my image was too spewy, and made a few really timely bluffs. Hopefully tomorrow can continue like this and it will be a smooth day two. I think I probably have a top 5% chip count.

If you want to keep updated on my progress, check out www.wickedchopspoker.com. I'd really like to thank all of the guys over there, they have been so cool to work with, put on a great freeroll, and hopefully I can represent the site well. Check out my goof mug if you scroll down the page a little big (without my girlfriend here, I think I was trying to go for the sloppy homeless look today lol)

I will try to post updates during breaks tomorrow and hopefully my big rush of cards is coming!

Salud!