I survived day 1 today. We played for 8 hours. I have a stack of 46k with the average being around 47k. I’m not in bad shape. I played a couple real interesting pots today. I won a lot of small pots after winning one big pot and found myself at 70k in chips before the last two levels of the day. I couldn’t hit a flop or win a pot for the last two levels and finished with 46k. I played well though for the most part. I don’t think I spewed off chips or anything. Just standard hands with continuation bets, etc. I avoided a couple of marginal spots which I’m not sure how I feel about yet. I had a pretty tough table with a lot of good players.

I didn’t really get to touch too much on the DeepStacks University deal. I just want to say once again I’m really lucky and thankful for something like that. I’m sure there are a lot of poker players and people that are more deserving than me. In this industry it seems pretty hard to get yourself in a position for an opportunity like the one I have. They have a bunch of awesome players signed to their site already and I’m sure it will be a blast working with them as well as all the other guys involved with DeepStacks U.

The weather in the Bahamas has been a little chilly and windy. I had a few days off before I had to hit the tables. On Tuesday I tried to fight the cold weather and hit the pools/slides/beach. It wasn’t so bad until the wind started blowing and the sun was stuck behind the clouds. It would have been nice to relax on the beach for a couple of days before playing. That’s the least of my concerns at this moment. I want to stay inside as long as possible for the Main Event now!

I’ll post one Interesting hand I had today. A good cash game player who was playing pretty solid at the time made it 500 in 2nd position at 75/150. The button, who was a loose player (but a thinking player) from Greece called. I called in the small blind with black JJ. We all had around 25-35k in chips. The flop came J97hhh. We all checked. The turn brought the 3s. I bet 850 and the Greek guy called. The other opponent folded. The river brought the 7d, pairing the board. I thought this was a good card for my opponent and the way the hand played out I felt like a check raise was best. I checked, he bet 1850, and I made it 6450. He then reraised me 6k more.

What do you guys do? I probably had a little over 20k facing his raise of 6k. Do you call or do you move all in?

Pretty interesting spot considering how the hand played out and what hands he can turn over on the river. I’ll keep everyone updated on my progress. I will be updating Twitter every now and then. Follow me on Twitter to see the updates.