My first World Series of Poker final table.....

Okay, now the goal is first place.

It took from 2pm to 5am to wind down from the 215 players who started day 2, to the 9 of us who will play the ESPN360 final table tomorrow at 2pm. It was a crazy day and I'm not even sure where to begin. I was chip leader (or very close to it) for a little while (300k) but somehow got short stacked late in the day and was stuck dead last on the chip count from about 25 people on down to the final 9. I am very familiar with the short stack from online tournament experience so there were a few spots I was fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of. A ton of all-in res-steals and open-jams just to pick up the blinds and antes. Long story short, I made it, final table, 675,000 chips which is currently 5th/9. Short stack has around 475k and chip leader has around 1.6million. 9th place is guaranteed 58k and first is over 630k.

I am really fortunate because the lowest stack when we got down to 10 handed doubled up and I became the hunted stack at the table. I picked up AdKd and went all in for 200+k, got called in two spots, QQ and AT. Flop was 22J,turn K and river T so I more than doubled up to my present stack. The final bust out happened a few hands later.

Anyways, I'm going to try to get some sleep, it's 6am here and we play the final table at 2pm. The blinds start back at 20k-40k with a 5k ante. That means every 9 hands it costs 105k to play so I only have 6.5 laps (or roughly 50 hands) before my stack evaporates. The good news is that I'm not the only one feeling the huge structures and I've got a decent handle on what everyone's ranges will be when the pressure mounts. I saw a lot of people lose their minds today when the blinds got high, hopefully the same happens tomorrow. Shallow push-pot tournaments are not what I would ideally like to play but it's out of my hands now. The big jumps in pay (nearly 30k from 9-8-7) makes out-lasting others a worthwhile thought. Sure the bracelet would be great but if you're not playing poker to win money than you're playing to lose it. Hopefully I can find both the coins and the hardware tomorrow. :)