Today was a $2k buy-in at the WSOP. I’m going to bed with 40,400 chips (which is almost exactly average). There are about 240 players left down from a starting field of ~1,650. Due to this year’s improved structure, we’re not quite in the money yet. Only 171 places pay in this event which means something like 70 people are going to play two days of poker and have nothing to show for it.

On dinner break, I joined shaniac, Cory Carrol and Owen Crowe for a pretty decent meal at this Italian place. Our waiter had an interesting way of running up the bill on us. He basically hustled us a little bit and brought a couple of appetizers we didn’t technically order. He sort of just said, “I’ll bring you some calamari and some prosciutto,” and when we failed to object to this, another $40 or so had been tacked onto our bill. He also kept pushing this dish, I forget exactly what it was called, that Cory pulled the trigger on without realizing it was $40 (when most things on the menu were like $13). The bill for the four of us at this little shopping plaza Italian place was $180 and we didn’t even order wine! Alas, a $180 dinner bill isn’t something four poker players with spending problems are going to get their panties in a knot about.

They were enjoyable dinner company. Aside from the fact that it was nice to sit down for a real meal with other like minded people, which was only the second time on this trip I had been able to do that, I’ve never really spent any time around any of those guys, so there was a novelty factor in play that made their already-interesting personalities especially entertaining.

There’s nothing too spectacular to talk about regarding my assent from the 6k starting stack. The only time I was all-in was with Ace-King against pocket Jacks for a 23k pot after dinner. A few minutes before, I spent the rest of the break watching Phil Ivey win his sixth bracelet after man-handling the poor guy he was playing heads up in the no-limit 2-7 single draw event. Ivey certainly won more than the ~$95,000 for first based on prop bets he had on himself to win a bracelet.

Near the end of the day, I was at a pretty tough table. I was laughing with the guy on my immediate left that I think might have been Nam Le, but maybe not. Basically every pot was opened for a raise and many of those were three-bet. Just as soon as I was making fun of how hard it is to win a pot at this table, I raised with pocket Kings only to watch the six players behind me snap-fold.

Hopefully tomorrow’s table draw is a little easier. Looking around the room, there definitely had to be softer spots to be at. My table consisted almost entirely of young, aggressive players.

I wish I had more interesting details to share regarding today’s play, but there’s just not much to say. You mostly fold. Sometimes you raise. Sometimes they let you have it. Sometimes they don’t. Whatever. Somehow I had 40,400 to bag up at the end of the night which allowed me to take my first stroll to the Rio taxi stand on this trip sans-frustration.

Tomorrow, my run of mooching off of Palazzo comes to an end. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much time to play blackjack while I’ve been here, so I doubt they’re going to be able to help me continue my streak of staying in Vegas hotels without paying for it which currently rests at seven nights. In the morning, I’ll check out what kind of offers the Wynn can throw at me. My hunch is that it won’t be much thus forcing me to be a little less ambitious and hope that MGM can comp me at one of their reasonable properties like T.I. or Mirage.

It’s 2:00 a.m. here and I have to wake up around 10:00 or so to check out, so that’s all for now.