It's over...

Disappointment is a funny thing. Not so much haha funny as just plain difficult to pin down. It's about 2:30 AM vegas time and that fact means that I have busted out of the main event. It was a good time, and I enjoyed the hell out of it, but I'm supremely disappointed. I was up most of the day, and then up and down quite a bit most of the evening. As we entered the final level of Day 1 at 1:00 AM, I was down to 8,500 chips and things were looking grim. Right before the break I had made a huge error and dumped about 5k in chips. After the break I came back looking for a spot to get my chips in. I raised a few pots to steal the blinds, but not enough to make up any ground. Then I look down at Pocket Kings, as I hear a raise and a re-raise at the other end of the table. One of them may have Aces, but this is as good a spot as I'm going to find, so I push my last 6,500 chips all-in. The original raiser folds and the re-raiser calls immediately. I'm expecting Aces, but instead he flips over Queens. My Kings hold up and I basically triple up to about 17k in chips. I then win a few and lose a few before looking down at Pocket Aces as I hear a raise down the table. I re-raise his bet from 1,500 to 3,500, which in hindsight was not enough. After a minute or so of thinking, he calls and the flop comes 10, 8, 3 with two hearts. I bet out 5k and he moves all-in. He has me covered and I know I am beat, but I already have more than half of my chips in the pot. I call and he turns over a set of 10s...game over.

I was crushed, but in the end if I made 500 decisions over the last 14 hours, I can say roughly 495 of them were good (or at least correct).
I'll post more tomorrow, but figured this would allow me to vent at least mildly. The guy who put me out was a semi-pro named Ross Mallor. I sat next to a well respected pro, Mark Gregorich, who happens to hail from Oly, Wa and used to play at the Spar card room downtown where I played once or twice. Very nice guy and a true pro....

Not that it means much, but on my starting day I outlast a lot of big time players, including:
T.J. Cloutier, Mike Matusow (my boyyyyy), Sam Farha, Antonio Esfandari, Thomas "Thunder" Keller, Jennifer Harman, Phil Gordon, and last years second place finisher Steve Danneman.