Kevin busted as no. 304 in event #51, just 7 places before the money, aaarrrgh! His pocket jacks did not hold up, so the sad status is that none of our six players made it to the stage where it got really interesting. Hopefully that wil change today when Mike Schaefer, Tyler, Jeff and Julian are pressing the RESET button in event #54 starting at noon. Also Diego Quesada who came to town Sunday evening will be playing, let's wish them all good luck!

Yesterday Jeff and I trickled down to Caesar's to play their Megastack tournament. En excellent structure (a LOT better than the WSOP) with $15,000 to begin with, blinds start at $25-50, levels of 50 minutes. I played this event once last year myself and came 12th out of 500+ players, paying for my entrire Vegas trip back then, so I returned to the scene of the crime with happy memories.

This year the buy-in is $340, we had 279 entries. Unfortunately Jeff never caught pace and exited a few hours into the tournament. I managed to stay at average most of the long afternoon, but after the dinner break I started growing my stack and when we were down to 40 players (27 places get paid) I was in the top5 and cruising. Then a table change, two other big stacks on my left impeded my freedom to make moves, and I lost 4-5 hands significant hands in a row - making good laydowns at least - and I was knocked down to below average again.

Lat table move of the day when we hit 30 players, I was now down to $114,000, average at $130,000+, blinds now $4,000-8,000, $1,000 ante. We would play down to the final 27, hand-for-hand when at 28. When we were down to 29 I pick up

 

in the cutoff seat. I have a smaller stack on the button to my left, the SB is a big stack while the BB is probably the smallest stack at the table at around $50,000+ while I have around $100,000.

I push my stack, and Einstein decided that

 

would be his choice of hand to risk his tournament life. Naturally he filled out his inside straight on the turn, leaving me - ME!! - on life support as the shortest stack. Volcano, explosion, eruption, foamy stuff coming out of my mouth.....

Anyways, I actually managed to get a walk in my BB once, and when somebody else at another table stood up and walked away I realized I had miraculously made the money and will be playing day 2 today at 2 p.m. holding $69,000 in chips with an average of $155,000. Minimum pay is $812, $16,000 for the winner.

Updates coming later today