Yet another dream realized ...

Millions of people have participated in the WSOP without ever being « in the money ». Since this 18th June, this is no longer true in my case...

After more than 13 hours of intense poker, the tournament is suspended. In the beginning after two hours of playing I was close to being in the lead, then there was a 5-hour period during which I only thought about preserving my table by playing under the motto ‘safety first’, but without forgetting how much I could "steal".

It was by far the most difficult poker game I have ever played in my life. We were 2,300 contestants, and I saw them all pass by, one after the other, the greatest professionals, the celebrities, the young aggressive Swedish, almost all the French and also most of the Dutch to arrive at the bulb 198 "n the money".

When we were still 250, my calculations allowed me to estimate that I would still have enough to pay the blinds until the bulb, I did not even think to have a game to play that difficult a period it was...

Then I get AJ blind 600/1200 ; raise 3,200 and an excellent young woman-player tries her luck with an aggressive « call » … The flop proposes 2TJ (2-10-valet) and she gives me a dressing down « all in » without checking the 10,000 I have left ... And I change my mind! With poker one must go for it...

If she had had a trio or even 2 pairs, she would have checked to oblige me to re-launch the flop and she has kojak (king – jack) Phew, this gives me some breathing space! They won’t have the chance anymore to play me out of the game today. Thirteen and a half hours of poker to obtain my first humble ranking on WSOP !

We were 2,300 at the beginning, now we are still 166. Reprise tomorrow at 14h.00, Brazilian hall …

I could not even count my chips at the end to put them in the sealed plastic bag. But, there were quite a lot... Tomorrow, at table 52 seat 3, I’m back with 44,600 chips...

We received 3,000 at the start; as 92% of the participants were eliminated, my table must have performed somewhere around average in respect to the survivors. Everything is still possible, although everything still needs to happen.

Tomorrow will surely be a totally different day. Ending 162nd or 50th, that does not really make much difference. You don’t win a lot. Therefore I will change tactics: today I have chosen to play to stay in the game. Tomorrow, things will be a lot more offensive: either attacking to be at the final table or being stuck. In other words as the English saying goes: "play to win"...

If we look at the structure of the tournament, we see that tomorrow, we start at level 11 (800/1600 - 200), in other words one trick per round costs 4,200. When starting at my table I can survive some 10 rounds without ever going. That’s way I am in the privileged position of being able to be patient for two or three rounds before having to attack.

Little anecdote: when the bubble busted, there was an ovation for Phill Helmut for his absolute record of entries "in the money" in the WSOP tournament (65). Say he plays about 30 games annually, then this is a splendid result on 300 tournaments. This clearly shows who I am up against as a freshman! Knowing that there are about 299 WSOP tournaments between him and me, I prefer facing him tomorrow afternoon rather than tomorrow morning!

What is definitely sure is that now, I’m going to bed and this for at least 10 hours!