WSOP 2009 Update

With Day 1 of the Main Event in the books, I figured it was time to get back on the computer and finally get some updates out. I know lots of folks have been following the action on Twitter so I wont give a lot of play by play in here. I played 15 events prior to the main event and have 3 cashes. Certainly not the year that some of these kids and men have been having (multiple two-bracelet winners and Jeff Lisandro with 3?!?!? - wow!), but overall 3/15 is actually pretty good. They were all first or second level cashes, so the finishes have been a bit disappointing, but I really do feel like I have been playing some of the best poker of my life. I bubbled one event where I tried to pick off a bluff in a pot that was just too big for my hand. My read was right that they player didn't want a call, but he was bluffing with the best hand. If I had let that one go, I had plenty of chips to still make a run and would likely have four cashes and potentially another deep run.

My dad has been out here for several weeks now too and he has been playing great. He has two WSOP cashes and he won a nightly tournament here at the Rio. He strongest finish was in the $5K six-handed event where he finished 36th! That field is one of the strongest there is and we are all really proud of how great he played. 90 players made the money in that event and I finished 69th. The event before I cashed in the $3K Triple Chance event, so I was happy to have the back-to-back cashes heading into the Main Event.

My wife Jenny has been able to visit me twice out here and we also met in Wisconsin for our friends' wedding a couple weeks ago. The wedding was great and a nice relaxing vacation away from the Vegas madness. Last year I only got to see her for one long weekend, so getting to see her three times this summer has really been awesome. Unfortunately she had to head back home today, but she was here yesterday faithfully on the rail all day long! She rocks - I am really a lucky guy!

I played day 1c yesterday of the Main Event and when I first got to the table, I only recognized one player. I was pretty happy about that, but it turned out that the table was really strong. No one was making big mistakes and it was a struggle to get any chips. After starting out really tight, I won a couple of small pots with AA and KK and was up to 32k from my starting stack of 30K. From there, things just went downhill until dinner break. I kept making a lot of second best hands or getting raised on continuation bets when I totally bricked the flops. I also had to make a lot of tough laydowns throughout the day, but the great thing about my table was many of the guys kept showing their hands and validating the correct folds. The player to my left got hit over the head with the deck and just about everytime that he re-raised me or we got to the turn or river and I was forced with a big laydown, he would oblige and show me his cards. Overall, I feel great about how I played yesterday. I was down as low as 11-12K and battled back to end the day at 26,950. I have two days off now before playing day 2b on Wednesday.

Today I am catching up on e-mails, writing and relaxing. I will likely go down to the Amazon Room and check in on some of the PPI team and some of my other friends that are playing today. I'm thinking about trying out my Flip Video and getting some footage from everything that is going on. We'll see if I get anything worth posting.

That's it for now. I will try to be better about blogging and am going to look into the video posting and maybe even linking in the tweets on here. For now, all the action can be followed at www.twitter.com/leechilds.

Decide to Win!

lee.childs@acumenpoker.net
www.acumenpoker.net
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