We started with 670 players and the tournament directors announced that 63 places would pay. Nearing the end of the first day, it was clear that we might actually make it into the money by the end of the day. The tournament schedule called for playing 10 blind rounds on the first day, but the tournament directors announced a slightly different plan. Instead of playing 10 blind rounds, they announced we would either play 10 blind rounds or until we made the money…whichever came first.

When Table-3 broke up, Marcel Luske and I were both reassigned to the same table again. Marcel came half-stacked, as he and I had tangled together a few times and he repeatedly came out on the short end of the transaction. Marcel sat in Seat-2, and I sat in Seat-8. Looking around the table, Jesse Jones was immediately to my right in Seat-7, and John Juanda was immediately to my left in Seat-9.

When we broke for dinner, I had a very comfortable 5000 chips, but the chip leader had over 30,000!. Table-2 was broken up right after the dinner break, and I was moved to my third table. This table was VERY intimidating. Not only was the chip leader at this table, but so was Marcel Luske, and Shaun “Sheiky” Sheikhaun. Even worse, all of these guys had MOSTER stacks, and Sheiky and the chip leader were nearly tied for chips.

As soon as we came back from the break, they didn’t allow us to play; and instead broke up our table. I was moved into the #10 seat of a new table – a few tables over from David Skansky, Mark Gregorich, and Mike Sexton (I could see them from my table). Within 15 minutes of joining this table, Mike “The Mouth” Matusow came and sat in the #7 seat. Even before he sat down, his mouth started going – his mouth was moving as he was walking over to us. You just couldn’t shut him up.

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.

It was the dream of a lifetime -- to play in the WSOP. There was one big catch: I didn't know what the heck I was doing. 18 months ago, I got the bright idea to play Omaha Hi/Lo in the WSOP, but there was another catch: I only knew how to play Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo (PLO8). So how on earth was I going to re-teach myself to play O8 and ween myself from PLO8. This is the story of how I did it and the bumps along the way.