I couldn't sleep the night before the tournament (understandable), and I woke up early -- around 8:30 AM. After eating breakfast, I tried to hang around the Wynn to kill some time. I finally headed over to the Rio at 10:00 AM -- a good two hours early. I planned to wear my Full Tilt Poker (“PencilGeek”) hockey jersey and Club-33 hat for good luck. A month earlier, I had met Rich – “scareoriver” – online at Poker Stars; he was playing this same event. I promised him he could find me wearing my Full Tilt jersey. There’s only one huge problem: he needed to find me out of the 670 players signed up for this event.
Table-1
When I looked for my table – it was gone. The Rio had removed all of the tables along the TV aisle. 20 minutes before the tournament started, the Rio announced the table changes. I found my table and sat down (a bit scared, but mostly composed). The tournament started, and everybody was at my table…except the player in the #10 seat. A few minutes later, Huck Seed came and sat at the #10 seat. It was hard to draw Huck into talking, but I tried with some small-talk questions and table chit-chat. Huck was a very nice guy.
We played for two hours before the first break. I was even stacked at the break. It already was apparent that people were getting knocked out faster than I had thought. Tables were already being broken down…and ours was next to go after the break.
Summary
Table-1 was mostly uneventful for me. I had a chance to play Huck Seed; I made it through the first two hours, but I hadn't really gained any chips either. Hopefully Table-2 would bring me greater luck.