Before I tell you what happened on the first day a quick update , Ken Lennard finished 15th in the $5000 but Joe Grech did fantastic finishing 2nd and pocketing over $300,000 . Joe played day one and is one of the chip leaders .

I played the second super satellite as I knew I was playing the second day , I lasted one hand ! I called a raise with 99 , one player doubled the raise , remember this is usually AA or KK , the first raiser called as did I hoping to flop a 9 and win a big pot . Flop was J 9 3 , I called a bet of 350 , the “ AA “ raised to 1000 , the FP made it 2500 and I moved in hoping they both had overpairs , FP had JJ , the double raiser had AA .

Ok , there are a total of 452 players , half played today , we lost 54 , Scotty Ngyuen is chip leader with 232,000 , also up there is current World Champ Greg Raymer , Average chips is 64,000 , 68 have more , 110 have less , lowest stack is Gus Hansen with 10,000 .

The interesting fact is that today apart from the likes of Ted Forrest and Daniel Negreanu just about every top American player played , I am sure this is just a coincidence as unlike the WSOP where playing day one seemed to be an advantage because of a day off , here as we only play 5 levels and finish by 9pm it shouldn’t matter .

I am pleased because in theory I should draw an easier table than I might have done today . One thing I noticed is that the players seem to overplay there hands because they have so many chips , I will be avoiding this trap by playing hands relative to the size of the blinds and their equivalent raises rather than the fact I have 50,000 chips , my goal for day one is to finish with between 45,000 to 75,000 but I have already worked out 36,000 would be a playable stack , this is after all a marathon not a sprint .