I Survived Omaha 8 Day #1, Matusow Gets Unlucky, Again

The first day of my 2009 WSOP, event #3 Omaha Hi lo eight or better, is officially in the books and although it was a long tough day it went pretty well. We played 10 one hour levels and attracted 918 players, which is a record number for an Omaha event. Now I can’t claim that Omaha 8 is my best game, but some of the play was really quite interesting. I am not sure of all of the players realized that in a high low split pot game you want to put yourself in a position to win the whole pot whenever possible. There was a player who sat on my left all day, Shirley Rosario, who I wanted to mention because of her outstanding play and good sportsmanship. She pretty much always put her money in ahead, but the poker gods were not kind.

About the fifth level, the floor supervisor moved the chips of a short stack to my immediate right to replace a player who had just busted. He said it was Mike Matusow’s, but he was still in the $40,000 NLH event and might not show up at all. I consider Mike a good friend and hoped he continued to do well in the other event. 30 minutes later Mike sat down having just busted from the other event. He recounted his bust out hand for me and was really devastated by the bad beat he took. Mike’s play of late has been nothing short of exceptional and I expect him to have a solid WSOP. I know sometimes he comes off like he just exited a box of Fruit Loops, but he is a great guy, is well liked by all who get to know him, and has been a good friend to me. He didn’t last long at my table, playing two hands and busting, he did of course put it in good and got sucked out on.

I had one really fun hand AA33 double suited on the button and with one limper in the pot I raised and the big blind called as well. The flop came 3k3 and the big blind bet and we both called. On the turn an ace came and the big blind bet again and the mid-position player called and I raised, and got one caller. On the river a 9 came and he folded when I bet. What a good feeling to flop the stone cold nuts.

We resume play at 2pm today with around 200 players remaining and the money coming at 90. The blinds will be 500-1000 so with 17,000 in chips it’s starting to get a little tight. I will be providing updates on Twitter.

I was scheduled to play the $1,000 no limit holdem today, as were several of us who made day two of event #3, but with the help of Daniel Vogel, one of the directors of the WSOP he switched us over to the second start day, which is Sunday. I have to say the staff at the WSOP is really a great group of dedicated people, and it’s the leadership of people like Daniel Vogel and of course Jack Effel that go above and beyond and make it all happen.