This will be part 1 of 6, recapping the days of the WPT Championship leading up to the final table (which I already recapped in the previous post). I'm going to do my best to remember the bet sizing, exact details, and important hands from each day, but alas it was a 7 day experience and it's possible I'll mess some stuff up and forget some important hands. I pride myself on never messing up the hand lines or bet sizes when retelling them, but whatever, it will hafta suffice.

After everyone arrived, my starting table was Scotty Nguyen in the 1 (I honestly forgot all about Scotty being at my starting table to begin the tournament, so it's fairly interesting that we both made the final table from the same starting table), an unknown that played ok in the 2, Gregg Merkow in the 3, Ryan Young in the 4, me in the 5, Erik Cajelais in the 6, Narendra Banwari in the 7, Blake Cahail in the 8, and an aggressive unknown South African in the 9. 

Early on Gregg raised to 300 from MP and I decided to call with 73hh in the CO. Cajelais called. Banwari called. Flop 764 with two spades and a heart. Checked to me I bet 900, Cajelais and Banwari called. Turn Jh. Checked to Cajelais who bet 3000. Banwari tanked and folded, I called. River Kh making my flush. I planned on checkraising the river, but sadly Erik immediately checked behind. 

Well, I'm sure many of you know by now, but I busted out of the WPT Championship in 5th place. My finish was worth $408,550. I guess going into the final table it would be hard not to sign for a 5th place finish given that I was so short. I'll recap the final table in this entry, and I'll try to put together a recap of my entire WPT Championship later this week. I've got a really bad cold right now and don't feel like typing it all out.

My first WPT final table experience lasted 44 hands. It was an incredibly exciting time, and I'll never ever forget it. I woke up and had to meet with a realtor to lock up the condo at Turnberry that Mike, Adam and I are getting for two months this summer. Place is really nice. It's a penthouse with unbelievable views and the amenities are the nut. Later, I had to go over the Caesar's forum shops to pick up a long sleeved black collared shirt. I was  running a little behind schedule, so I went into the first place nice place I saw and paid way too much for the shirt. I then had to walk across the street to Bellagio to get my hair and makeup done at 12:40. I went through this in Australia in 2006, but obviously it's still really weird. Then, I did a 15 minute interview with the WPT camera crew. I expect that little parts of it will air throughout the episode. After the episode I checked into my room at Bellagio. I flew my family out, and they arrived in time to meet me downstairs at Snacks for lunch before the tournament. 

We got over to the ballroom and after some briefing and introduction it was finally time to begin around 4:30. On the very first hand Ran raised from the HJ, and it was folded to me where I found 72o. I hoped this wouldn't be a microcosm of the final table. Two hands later it was folded to me in the cutoff and I had a trivial shove with AQo. The others folded. The very next hand I found A9cc and shoved 15bb. The others folded. On hand 7 it was folded to me in the SB, and I shoved around 15bb into Yevginey with K5o. He folded. On hand 8 Elky raised the HJ to 285,000 and I moved in for around 1.8 million with AKo on the button. He folded. 

I'm on to the televised 6 handed final table of the WPT Championship. I limped through with 1.33 million. We'll play 60/120 (15k) for 16 minutes before bumping it up to 80/160 (15k). Note that I actually do have 1.33M and not 1.13M as reported earlier by a couple of the sites. I'll have just 11 BBs to start the day which is obv a dangerous place to be. Hopefully I can quickly double though and get right back in the hunt. I'm flying my family out tomorrow morning so they can be a part of this with me. I've had an amazing time playing poker this tournament, and it's an experience that I will never forget.  I am the shortstack, but I am optimistic, and I still envision myself winning the tournament.

The final table:

Seat 1 -- Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier -- 5,955,000
Seat 2 -- Scotty Nguyen -- 3,275,000
Seat 3 -- Shannon "BLUFFforRENT" Shorr -- 1,330,000
Seat 4 -- Yevgeniy "Jovial Gent" Timoshenko -- 13,300,000
Seat 5 -- Christian "charder30" Harder -- 7,425,000
Seat 6 -- Ran Azor - 2,525,000