I survived day one of the $1500 WSOP Horse tournament. It was a pretty good grind throughout the day and the field is one of the softest fields I have played in. During the day I gave a little too much credit to some of the players for actually knowing what they were doing and it cost me a couple pots. When I did have hands they were paid off for the most part.

My original starting table wasn’t so bad. Everyone seemed to have an IDEA of what they were doing but some were still doing some pretty bad plays. I saw a lot of razz players playing 9s with lots of action behind them and some guys playing stud with T67r starting hands. I got up to 12k from my original starting stack of 4500 at dinner break 4 hours in. I kind of just cruised and won some big pots and my hands held when people were making questionable call downs in Stud 8 and Omaha 8. I was absolutely card dead the whole day during Stud hi.

I saw my stack go from 12k down to 8k, then 5k, then 2k, then back up to 4k right before the last 2 hours of play. I was getting crushed. One hand in razz an 8 opened for 200 completion, the guy to my right 3bet with a 6 showing and I 4bet with a 3 showing and 25 under. I hit paint on the turn and he hit a 9 and bet it. I still had to call a street and I hit a 6th on 5th and bricked out the rest of the hand going to the river and folding to his bet when I didn’t improve. They just fired without really knowing what was really going on in some hands so it got frustrating.

Right before the last break I played a Limit Holdem hand vs Jean Robert Bellande. He raised the hijack to 600 with about a 2.5k stack and I 3bet from the small blind with ATo. The flop came A34r and I bet 300, he raised to 600, and I had about 900 chips left and made it 900. He mucked and I was back up to 4k. I don’t really know if I could just call his flop bet to get all the money in on the turn. -Shrug- Guess he had air and was stabbing the flop hoping I’d fold all non aces even though no matter what I had I wouldn’t of folded most likely.

After the last break I came back to the table prepared to do some damage. I ended up making some hands and busting some players and getting back up to 12k or so. The guys who were real active at the table ended up dusting off their stacks (they originally were the ones who were beating me in pots.) Towards the end of the night I got moved to a new table where this one drunk younger guy was being a maniac and we got into a razz hand where he bluffed me on the river showing KJ83 and I had ATJJ up. I actually started with A23 that hand lol and made a bad 9T low on the river when he bet again after we checked 6th street. I decided to muck figuring I couldn’t beat an 8 and could only beat a J bluff or something and he slammed down a bluff. That pot hurt me pretty bad. I never like losing to people like that anyways haha. I took it in stride and battled back and won a couple nice stud pots before the night was over and ended the day with 14.4k in chips. The average stack is 14k. The blinds are 100 ante, 200 bringin, and I believe 500/1k blinds about to go to the next level. It’s going to be a pretty fast tournament today I believe. Hopefully I can get lucky and some hands hold up and these guys will just give it away.

I’ll keep everyone updated, we start playing in about 2 hours. Wish me luck! You might be able to follow some updates on www.pocketfiveslive.com