I have not confirmed this with Daniel Negreanu but apparently during the PLO he value bet into a 60,000 pot with an 8 high flush , 4 spades on the flop , he was called by a player with the bare J of spades !!

Three players have sat down to play WSOP events and then been asked to step to one side and told they owe tax from last year as they didn't have an ITIN no , in one case the player was told if he doesn't pay $14,600 he is banned from all events .

John Kabbaj played a super satellite to try to win a seat in the $50,000 Horse event , in one hand he made quads and lost to a straight flush , the very next hand he lost to a royal flush !!

Ok , in my last blog i said my dream was to make the final , Rafit Amit , the winner from last year proved it could be done , he finished an amazing 4th of 218.

I however made it to only 65 .

There was one huge difference this year that i didn't notice until we started , the levels had been changed to 60 minutes from last years 90 minutes , to put this in perspective last year we played 6 levels and started day 2 at the 200 400 level , average was 28,000 . This year they played to level 11 , 1000 2000 until they made the money at 27 which meant average for day 2 was nearer 90,000 , the final was reached in just 4 hours !

Whereas last year i had 34,000 end of level 2 after 3 hours, this year i had 5500.

Briefly this is what happened.

My first table had Scott Fischman , John Shipley and Juha Helppi , i played no hands and ended with 9675.

In the 25 50 level my best hand was QQ J9 on an A T 5 flop , i got moved to a new table which included Jeff Lissandro , Rob Varkonyi and Lyle Berman , i dropped to 7200 .

50 100 i had rag AA back to back but missed the flop , i actually won two pots with a rivered nut straight and a flopped nut flush but still ended the level down to 5500.

Level 4 , 75 150 i raise on the button to 425 , Juha Helppi reraised in the BB 1000 more , i call with 9T JJds , flop is K 3 4 , Juha moves in , i pass and i am down to 2825 , HELP !

Level 5 , 100 200 , Lyle raises , i call with 89 TKds , again i miss the flop, down to 2250 and now Daniel Negreanu joins the table with lots of chips to my right , first hand Lyle raises on the button , Daniel calls blind , i pass Q2 J5ds , flop comes 2 Q Q 2 5 , i start to think no matter what happens it's not going to be my day , average is over 13,000 , i have only 1900.

I drop to 1600 on the button and finally get a break , Rob and Lyle limp for 200 , i call on the button with KK 63 , flop is A A K , Rob bets 1200 , Lyle calls , i go all in for 200 more , they both call , now i know for sure they have the A so i have to dodge up to 6 live cards , i do and treble up finishing the level with 5200.

These aren't just key hands i am writing , this is practically every hand i played , it really was this bad . Now in level 6 Ram Vaswani joins the table and raises the pot then calls an all in reraise , he has AA xx v QQ xx , the all in flops a Q , the next hand i call 800 with A9 75ds after Daniel raises in FP , two more call and Ram reraises to 4000 , Daniel passes , i call for 3400 all in , Ram has 68 89 , flop is 3 4 6 giving me the nuts , i then have a very similar hand against Daniel A8 75ds which i win on the turn with a semi bluff of top pair with a wrap , i am back up to 9350.

The last hand of the level i am on the button with AK 46ss , these hands look huge compared to the rest i have been getting and i call in position , flop is K 2 3 with my nut flush draw to go with my top pair and gutshot straight draw so i reraise a bettor who passes , for the first time in 6 hours i have over 10,000 with 11,600.

Our table breaks and i go to the same one as Daniel , he is now two to my left in seat 9 with Barry Greenstein on my right in seat 1 and John Shipley on my left in seat 3 , i pick up the blinds of 200 400 to get to 12,200 then one round later i am in the BB , Jani Vilmunen raises to 1400 , both Daniel and Barry call , there is 4600 in the pot and it will cost me a 1000 to call , i have Q5s 33 , i decide it is an easy hand to get away from and if i flop two pair , a set or a lucky straight i could get paid if Jani has AA , i call.

Flop is 3 J K with two clubs , i check to Jani who bets the pot , Daniel and Barry pass , i have played with Jani many times and know he will lead out with anything from AA with the flush draw to top two pair or even a wrap like TQ KA , i reraise all in and he quickly calls , he has no AA , no flush or straight draw but he does have KK for top set and no 3 comes to save me , Jani goes on to make the final chip leader but finishes 7th .

If i had more chips and hadn't felt i needed to get lucky getting the odds i was preflop i would have passed this hand but average was already over 30,000 and i took a chance , hit the flop but so did Jani , still i had finished 65th of 218 having had no premium hands so i felt their is more to come this year but not today .

All the best