/ James Keys / 30 November 2007 /

After surviving the first day James now finds himself back at the tables competing against pokers elite!

The players all had a day off after Day 1 so I spent the day relaxing at home then headed to the casino to check out the action on Day 2a, hoping to get a preview for what I could expect. Annette was bossing around Ted Forrest and Barry Greenstein like they were meek little children, and Gus Hansen finished the day on a towering 350,000 stack. About 45 players finished the day I think. I wasn't going to attempt to catch up to Gus, but I knew a 6-figure stack would be an achievable and immediate goal, so this was my aim.

I looked at my table and the only name I recognised was Juha Helppi, world champion of underwater poker and WPT final tablist. I was also warned that online tourney pros Jimmy Fricke and Jon Turner would be a handful. I tried not to be intimidated and not long into the day I found myself putting in a big bluff when I reraised Jimmy Fricke to 17k on the flop, trying to represent a set, leaving myself around 20k back. Jimmy says "You got a set of tens or something?" before quickly folding. At times it was a lot of fun playing against players of this calibre, despite the steep difficulty curve. The opportunity to make plays like this never arises in a weekly £20 freezeout. Anyway, this puts me on around 55,000 and a very playable stack. Shortly afterwards the table breaks and I am moved to Shaun Deeb's table for the rest of the day.

For a while I don't get much to do, but I gain a tight image and exploit this by 4-bet shoving into Nicholas Levi with A8o, after raising the button and sensing weakness in his reraise. Instantly, I ruin my tight image by showing the bluff, my biggest mistake of the tournament so far. After that, neither Nicholas nor anyone else gave my raises much respect, and I don't think they were even that impressed by my world class play :P. However, things then all kicked off between Shaun and myself, and we ended up in 3 huge pots that would give one of us a big stack and send the other home. In the first pot, my newfound aggressive image reaped rewards when I was dealt KK in the big blind and Shaun raised and called my reraise with A3 of clubs, but when all the chips went in there were 2 clubs on the flop making me barely a 55% favourite to win the pot. The second hand Shaun pushed a medium sized stack over my button raise, I lost AQ vs AK and Shaun doubled up, putting us both back onto 70,000+ chips. Finally, finding AK in early position, I raised. Shaun reraised and I went all in over the top, only to be called instantly by QQ. The first card out was an A, and with no Q on the board I found myself leading the field on Day 2b with over 140k in chips.

Shortly after this comes the first dinner break, and suddenly people are interested to know who this kid is that they've never seen before. I had my first interview with the SickTilt crew, who then interviewed by drunken rabble of fans, which was quite entertaining. You can see the interviews here. Someone even handed me a business card, saying they were looking for "up and coming players" to blog for their site! Fortunately for betting.betfair, I lost the card :). Over the dinner break I went to a steakhouse with my mates, but I was too nervous to eat, instead choosing to spend a lot of the break throwing up in the toilets. I've never been so nervous in my entire life. I think as the chip leader there's immense pressure to achieve something, whereas before this I'd just been playing to get as far as I could.
Thankfully, about 10 minutes into the final level of the day, Jamie Gold moves to the table and does me a huge favour by taking half of my stack. As he sits down, Jamie surveys my stack and says something like "Wow, covering the table there!".
I say "Yeah, I'm playing this tournament Jamie Gold style" to which Jamie replies "Enjoy it while it lasts, it doesn't come often."

A round or two later, it's folded round to Jamie on the button, where I'd fully expect him to raise maybe 50% of the time. He does raise, so when I looked down at KK I was overjoyed. I decided to flat call and see the flop. The flop came 8-high and I check-raised Jamie to roughly a third of his stack. He called pretty quickly. The turn came a ten, and while I tried to work out what was going on, Jamie said to me:
"Go all in. Either you do it or I do. I promise if you go all in, I'll call. If you check, I'll go all in."
I asked the tournament director if his verbal action was binding. I was told the action was on me, and Jamie was given a warning. Eventually, I decided to check to see if Jamie would go through with it, and decide afterwards. Jamie pushed 44k into the pot, which was pretty much a pot sized bet giving me 2:1 odds on the call. I had 70k back if I lost, with blinds of 500/1000. With the low board and knowing how loose Jamie plays on the button, I think I should have folded, but I couldn't make the big laydown and called. I think he talked me into it. To my surprise, Jamie showed AA, which had me well beat all along. I've got to acknowledge Jamie's table talk that maybe won him another 44k chips in the hand. A lot of people don't like it but it's a part of the game and he used it well. As an aside, when I was dwelling on the turn Patrik Antonius leaned over the table to see what all the fuss was about. When the cards were flipped over, he asked how it took so long for the chips to get in the middle. Kenny Tran also had something to add, shouting "King!" as the river was dealt :).

I finished the day on 76k, which was misreported on PokerNews as 26k for some reason, prompting a few concerned messages and phone calls from people who'd seen me on 150k+ at one point and thought I'd almost blown the lot.

The final few days to follow soon....

Cheers

James

For your chance to follow James into the WSOPE - qualify now exclusively on Betfair Poker

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