I played today in the second flight of day one , we lost Martin De Kniff Marcel Luske and Ram Vaswani but still in with approx chip counts are Devilfish 92,000 , Joe Beevers 120,000 , Barny Boatman 67,000 , Mad Marty 30,000 , i am sure Dave Colclough is still there but will have to get back with his chip count , also coming back tomorrow are Ross Boatman 49,000 , Peter Costa 28,000 and Surinder Sunar 33,675 , Robin Keston 37,500 , Harry Demetriou 37,875 , Donnacha O’dea 38,775 , Davood Mermand 45,375 , Padraig Parkinson 51,500 , Chris Bigler 52,775 , Gilles Haddad 58,275 and Jan Boubli 50,000, and Noah Boaken 92,000 .

As I was playing all day I didn’t have time to see how all the Europeans are doing and the lists weren’t ready as I left for bed , tomorrow we start at 400 800 with a 100 ante , average chips is approx 66,000 and there are 346 left .

Yesterday i said my goal for day one was to end with 45 to 75,000 , i actually have 69,900 so bang on target , I hope to get a good draw with not too many big stacks . My goal is to finish day 2 with 120,000 to 160,000 as I expect the field to drop to 150 .

Ok so briefly as I need to get to sleep , my table was not a pushover , in seat one was Micheal Kinney who came 11th in this last year , then there was Mad Marty , on my left David Plastik , on my right Men “ the master “ Ngyuen .

I didn’t play a hand in level one , only saw 66 then in level 2 i missed a nut flush draw against Men with AKs , then missed the flop with AQs but picked up the blinds with JJ , I finished the level down to 38,500 . In level 3 with blinds still 100 200 and antes 25 came my key hand , a loose player raised to 1200 and i called with AJs , flop was J 9 3 with two hearts , he bet 1500 and I called , usually when he missed he overbet so this time I knew he had at least a pair , turn was the 5 of hearts , he now bet 6000 , i still called sure I was winning and that he may bet again on the river , this brought a scare card an 8 , now if he had a 9 he may have 2 pair , if he had QT he had made his straight , he bet 10,000 , I had 21,000 left , this was going to be the toughest call to make , I went with my gut that he had only one pair and I was winning and called , he had Q9 , i was back to 50,000 .

In the 4th level I took Michael Kinney out , I limped with 77 then called a 1600 raise , on a 6 high flop he moved in , I called , he had AT and didn’t improve . The 5th level was 300 600 with a 75 ante , David Plastik raised to 3000 , I found two black Aces and raised to 11,000 , he passed and with that and a few late blind steals I finished the day with my 69,900 probably in the top third of the field , tomorrow will be a big day .