$38,900. I'm headed to Day 2!

(More in a sec - wanted to post this quick)

ditto.

bills were rough this month so i didnt have any extra cash..

Congrats on a great day 1 showing. Looking forward to reading more.

My goals for this tourney, in case anyone was wondering:

1. Make it through Day 1.
2. Make it into the money.
3. Cash for at least $10,000, so he people who bought shares of me will at least break even.
4. Make it to the final table (9 players) to get some more POY points (this is the least important goal).
5. Make the tv table (6 players).
6. Win the tourney and at least $1 million.

I can cross Goal #1 off the list now, but as you can see, I have a looooong way to go.

Like I did with my WSOP tourney, I will type up a detailed tourney report after I get home. I'm definitely not going to do that now though, as I wouldn't want any of my opponents to be able to get an edge :)

All in all though, the day went really well. I lost a good 25% of my chips in the first level, after getting called down with a 44 (no kidding) and being reraised on the river with a big AQ hand I had. I was realy hoping to start "up" early, but I managed to turn it around in Level 3 and it's been a steady climb since. I've only been all in where I could be knocked out once all day, and my top two pair held up (against a well played gutshot draw). The end of that hand was filmed, but the only way that will ever mke the air is if I make the tv final table. It wasn't very exciting.... just me cringing when I realized his 11k all in raise was a few hundred chips more than I had left and saying, "I don't think there is any way I can let this go" and calling, turning over top 2.

My stack was as high as maybe 42k or so. I lost $1400 on he final two hands of the night just by posting my BB (800) and SB (400) and antes (100 each). I would have loved to fight back against the blind thieves, but with 72o and 73o, literally, I figured there was no need to get silly.

Well, I guess that's all for now. I'm sure the UB blog and other sites will be updated with all the chips counts soon. I hope so anyway. I'm certainly not one of the leaders any more, but I am well above the average. I'm happy...

Now if you wil excuse me, TP needs to get in the pool!

P.S. I LOVE live tournament poker. I mean, I really, really love it. Online MTTs are fun, but (and maybe because I'm not multi-tasking and doing 5 other things like when I play online), I'm able to get so much stronger reads on my opponent in real life. I don't just mean actual physical tells, but just really getting to know your opponents... knowing who to avoid, who to push around, etc.

I was moved twice today, which was annoying and a big disadvantage for a while... but the second move was to Table 1, so once I got settled there (which pretty much consisted of me folding for an hour), I was in good shape...

Very Cool, TP...

GL tommorrow and watch out for this....

did you play with any pros today?

Was wondering if you were sitting in on John Phan when he was going crazy throughout the day lol.

15th not bad after day 1. GL and have fun. YOU THE MAN!

I see the blog has been updated and I am indeed 15th in chips out of the 79 players who survived. I'm happy with that.

John Phan was at the table next to mine when we started, but then both of our tables broke up and I didn't see much of him after that. Chatted with DevilFish during a bathroom break - he WAS doing really well, but I see he's down to 16k now.

The chip leader, James Van Alstyne - I played with him for a number of hours after I got moved to Table 1. He and Sdouble (Josh Schlien, who they profiled in the blog) were both very solid players. I would honestly rank myself third on that table behind the two of them. I play a bit tighter, which works for me, but their ultra-aggression is awesome.

Anyhoo, I couldn't be more impressed with James' play. I watched him fold to 4 or 5 (maybe 6) BIG check raises and reraises in a row... preflop, and after he'd make continuation bets on the flop. I wasn't impressed with the folds so uch as I was impressed with his attitude. He got fairly low in chips, but kept his cool, stayed patient, and then tore it up later. I even chated with him during our last break... he's been a pro for 15 years (he doesn't look that old). My friend saw him on some Fox Sports poker final table, I think... I don't get that channel.

Anyway, one more thing about him: Inside 20 minutes at the end of the day, he was WORKING his stack... raising nearly every pot to 2500 (I did this myself twice when I actually had the chance to act before him). One hand, Josh reraised to 10k. James thought for a moment, and then pushed in. You should have seen Josh's face. It was the fastest fold I've seen all day (James was the only guy at the table who had him outchipped at the time). Josh said he folded TT...

There were a few other pros I played with today too, but no one really well known. When I make the final table, I hope James is there. I'm looking forward to battling it out with him :)

Well, that's funny. I didn't know who this was, but I described him as "Good, aggressive player" in my journal. He and I only realy butted heads once, when he got me off a decent hand:

So you keep a journal kind of like Raymer did or what?

I don't have a detailed journal or anything like that. I've just been taking brief notes so I will have reminders of key hands throughout the tourney...

So, I ended up going for a swim in the pool tonight. There were wo other people there, in total. KillerDave (UB name) and his girlfriend. I played with ave earlier today. He finished 2nd in the televised $200,000 thingee UB had. He told me the whole story... pretty interesting. He was REALLY close to winning it. I don't get Fox Sports, so I haven't seen it, but maybe some of you have.

When I left the pool, I swung by the beach for a minute, taking the scenic routhe back to my room. I bumped into exactly one person who was going the other way - yup, Phil Hellmuth. He had headphones on and looked like he was going for a jog or a swim or something...

I decided to swing by the bar on my way back to the room, bought a Corona, and noticed P0ker H0 and his posse. I don't know most of these people, but they are huge UB players. I met H0 yesterday, and I really like him. Nice guy. Actually, I quite like the entire crowd. Maybe we'll get some of them to show up around here... Then Tommy from UB stopped by and the conversation got really interesting, with suggestions/criticisms flying left and right. The next thing I knew, it was 2 hours later, so I decided to call it a night. On the way back to my room, I popped into the poker room to see how my buddy was doing, and saw a number of players that I've met these past couple of days. Pretty cool how so many faces are familiar now. The lawyer dude I met the first night is insisting I go scuba diving with him tomorrow afternoon, so I guess I'm just gonna have to go...... Did ou guys know I'm a non-teaching scuba instructor, I wonder? I do love to dive.

Anyway, tomorrow and Wednesday are off days for me, so I'm looking forward to relaxing, hanging out at the beach, diving I guess, and maybe, MAYBE paying some poker. There are 24/7 cash games plus $500 and $1000 daily tourneys. The fields are pretty small though. I heard today's $500 had less than 100 people in it.

Well, that's all for now........

Well regardless of what happens, it seems like this has been the trip of a lifetime so far. Again, great job.

Can someone post a link to this? Thanks.

Thanks BB.

FYI: It's also in the first post in this thread with ll the other links... It's in bold there so you don't have to search for this post every time you want to find the link)...

Great job TP! Keep up the good work. I hope you are taking some nice bikini pics! :)

Sounds like you're having a great time. Stay calm, focused, and aggressive.

:)

Ive seen the Fox Sports Net thing you are talking about... Dave Klassen finished 2nd to Bobby Hill or something like that.

Klassen was by far the best player to participate in those UB matches, he was so aggressive while all the other players were just there to savor the moment.

Thanks TP and sorry I forgot about that. Unfortunately my firewall here at work is preventing me from getting to those sites so if someone doesn't mind cut & pasting any blurbs about our man TP and posting them here it would be much appreciated!! Thanks.

He wont be playing again till Thursday Reel.

Yep, I know... thought maybe there was a blurb about yesterday?

Yes, that was him. And I'm not surprised he was the best player. I played wth him yesterday, nd he was solid. Nice guy too...

This Aruba trip was thrown in for him and the winner... Apparently there was a slight screw up with the final hand of the tourney (Dave was BB two hands in a row), so he thinks they threw it in because of that.

Considering he finished on a $200,000 vs $0 bubble, he had a pretty good attitude.

I thought you meant for today... all the blog had was his chip count a few times throughout the day.

Oh, OK... thanks.

CardPlayer will be doing my chips counts on Thursday as well :)

And they finally have my hometown listed!


I would really like to see another entry on that page by the end of the week.

How did you get cardplayer to keep your chip count?

Well, I walked up to them to find out about updating my hometown (which took all of 5 seconds) and then asked them the same question you just asked me. They basically said to let them know what I'm wearing and where Im sitting (on Thursday), so they can keep an eye on me. I said, "I wasn't sure if you were only doing it for the 'cool' people," and they said "We usually do it for the people we know, and if you look at that list, the people we know aren't that 'cool'" or something like that.

And now they know me.

Keep up the good work TP. Glad you're enjoying yourself.

TP is the MAN!

Go Mark Go! :D :cool:

Today's quick update...

Snorkeled off the beach for little while, played 6 hours of $2/$4 NL (down $500 - mostly due to one ugly hand), played a bit of roulette (up) socially, played craps with Josh Arieh and others (down), even played some Black Jack (up). All in all, I'm down for the day, but no biggie... I had fun and met a lot of new people.

I think we are going to take an ATV tourn of the island tomorrow, as per the Arieh's recommendation. And then Thursday, it's back to work. I see that 18 people finished with more chips than me today, meaning I'm now 33rd in chips with 166 players remaining and one more flight to get though before Day 2.

Thats still very comfortable. But damn man, the poker doesnt even seem like the best part. Im pretty jealous, Ill switch test taking for ATV cruising? Ill even throw in 10 whole dollars...whaddya say?

I will up that 10 bucks to 11

The ATVing was AWESOME... well worth the $75 (best deal in town). We went al over the island, saw most of the key attractions, and it was FUN. I really enjoyed it. Bumped into the Arieh's in the ocean afterwards and thanked the for the suggestion. Yes, that means Josh is out, as are about a gazillion other big name pros today. Check the UB blog or CardPlayer for updates.

Right now, the guy I am most worried about is Mizrachi, who had 40k chips at the break. I love Phil Ivey, but I'm not going to lie to you - I'm glad to see him out.

Also saw Devil Fish doing a photoshoot with two beautiful girls at the beach today. We chatted with him for a few minutes afterwards - he's taking them to dinner tomorrow night. He can't tonight, because he's going on a cruise with a handful of beautiful blondse. Considering this place is 99.5% unavailable women (poker players' arm candy), I'm impressed.

Anyway, nice guy, that Devil Fish... time for dinner.

Great updates TP...good luck the rest of the way.

Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi ($124,600) and Cliff "Johnny Bax" Josephy ($104,100).

Can anyone say watch out lol.

GL tommorrow TP and dont draw The Grinders table.

Damn, wishing I had the money to buy a share more and more.

Believe me, I know. He is literally the ONE player I have no desire to play with. I'm not "afraid" of most of the well known pros, but I don't want the Machine at my table unless it's the FINAL table. Fortunately, I did NOT draw his table (I'm at Table 5, Seat 1), and if they break them down tomorrow the way they have been, I won't be playing with him any time soon. I bumped into him not long after the end of the day today, and when he told me how many chips he had, I couldn't believe it. I pity the people at this table.

Erick Lindgren was down to under 1500 chips (give or take) when I saw him push in and pick up the blinds a few hours ago. Saw him at the bar tonight and was pleased to learn he's up to 16k. I like Edog.

Anyway.... the chip counts and seat assignments have been posted:


Looking around my table, I see that I'm second in chips and there are no names that scare me. I do indeed have a game plan, but I'm not going to say what it is just yet (you never know who's watching - seriously). Here's hoping I'm still alive this time tomorrow...

You got a nice draw it looks like... I have a good feeling about tommorrow.

GL again.

PS: I feel sorry for anyone who drew The Grinder's table lol.

I like that you have a good feeling. :)

They posted the official payouts too. I don't have them in front of me and don't feel like digging for a link, but there is very little difference between 125th place (5500) and 11th place (12,000). Then the money gets crazy - 20k for 10th, 30k for 9th, 40k for 8th, 60k for 7th, 100k for 6th..... and so on... up to a cool million bucks for first.

I've met a lot of great people this week and actually have some that will be rooting for me. Here's hoping I can give us all a reason to celebrate.

BTW... talked with P0ker H0 at length tonight about all sorts of stuff - this tourney in particular and how it played out last year (he finished 11th), winning MTTs online, poker and taxes, and so on and so forth. I can't say enough how great of a guy I think he is. No wonder everyone likes him so much.

I also played some more casino games for fun (I refused to play a hand of poker today), including craps with the Brenes brothers (who bet less than I do, oddly enough)... When all was said and done, I think I was around even.

Payouts...
 

Here they are:

1st: $1,000,000
2nd: $440,450
3rd: $300,000
4th: $200,000
5th: $150,000
6th: $100,000
7th: $60,000
8th: $40,000
9th: $30,000
10th: $20,000
11th-20th: $12,000
21st-30th: $10,000
31st-40th: $8,000
41st-100th: $6,000
101st-125th: $5,500

I'm going for the bold as soon as I 125th.... and probably sooner.

My Table tomorrow, by seat number, current rank, and chip count:

1: 52 Mark Petrillo 38,900 Chips
2: 158 Brian Wideman 14,300 Chips
3: 130 Brandon Sampson 19,900 Chips
4: 89 Pete Winkler 27,800 Chips
5: 220 Pasquale Vetrano 8,100 Chips
6: 105 Darshan Shah 24,500 Chips
7: 102 Mirco Plebani 24,900 Chips
8: 41 Steven Black 44,100 Chips
9: 132 David Klassen 19,500 Chips

The only guy with more chips than me is two seats to my right (good for me). The next closest is more than 10k chips behind.

Just want to say good luck. Hope you take down some serious cash from this.

"Day 2" looks solid for you. Best of luck. :)

What they said.

The casinos love hearing you say that last line, lol.

"I think I was around even." :D

There's a sucker born every minute and I think the aruban air along with all of the high rollers down there is getting to TP. He'll probably final table this tourney and a month later will be asking for stakes because of the "craps' table.

Oh man.

1st break
 

140 left, 125 get paid

TP's at 29,000, avg. is just over 46,000.

Hang tough TP!

The bubble has burst!

Unless TP just busted out, he's in the money