Despite the truncated schedule for today, eight hours of poker felt like an eternity. I’m not happy with Harrah’s random last-minute decision to make the flights lopsided, but I’ll save my gripes for later.

My table draw was, again, very bad: every one of my opponents was somewhere between competent and expert at NL tournaments and, again, the one weak player was super tight and didn’t give away any chips. Before I realized quite how tight he was, I doubled him up in level 6, four-betting him with AK when he raised my 1600 opening bet to 6K, and I put him in for around 20-25K total if I remember correctly. He thought for quite a long time considering that he had kings, and after he didn’t instacall, I actually thought he was going to lay down his hand or call with a hand that I was in good shape against.

Eventually he called and tabled the kings (I believe the kids these days call this incident a “nitroll”), and I didn’t hit an ace. In that hand I dropped from 50K to around 30K, and it ushered in the downward tumble in which my stack dipped to 11k before dinner break, a low point similar to yesterday’s dinner break. The two levels after dinner were swingy, but I managed to chip up to 25K without a showdown and my stack stayed in the range of 20-38K for the rest of the night.

I ended the day with 34,200 chips. While the action was concluding and the management was distributing plastic bags for storing players’ chips, a hand began where a very good player named Josh raised and Travis Rice, also a great player who had been at the table since the start of the day, re-raised on the button. I folded my big blind and went outside to smoke a cigarette. While I was walking back in, I saw Travis in the corridor between the Brasilia Room and the parking lot and said, “Wow we bagged up that fast?” It didn’t occur to me the hand would have been Travis’ demise, and he explained that Josh 4-bet allin with 66 and Travis called with AK and lost the race to bust out on the last hand of day 2.

Of course, he handled busting out like a professional, but there was a palpable level of heartbreak in that tinny hallway. That’s because the WSOP Main Event is kind of a crazy and unique tournament with a particular level of focus and stress embedded into it. I don’t have a lot of chips, but with almost 30 big blinds to start day 3 with, my stack is playable, and I am looking forward to extending this odyssey for as long as possible when the game resumes on Friday.