Day 1A

Well, the first flight is over. I couldn't help myself, I had to stay up and go hang around the poker room. It wasn't until after 1 a.m. that I realized I was allowed in. I couldn;t wait until tomorrow to see who was piling up chips and who was eliminated.

2003 WSOP champion Chris Moneymaker exited early, and was like the fifth guy out. Apparently he had a real bad beat and had to excuse himself from the table, walk half way down a flight of stairs and let off some steam.

There's aggressive, super-aggressive, then there's Gus Hansen, famed for his radical play. Hansen showed up late for the WSOP championship, then threw all his chips in on the first hand and lost. It wouldn't surprise me if he did something similar earlier today en route to the gate. Another aggressive player put the door is Isabelle "No Mercy" Mercier. I didn't get the details, but I saw her chatting with some pals in the lounge, so I know she's been ousted.

That's the thing with the super-aggressive style. When one of these players makes it deep into a tournement, they are generally seen with massive stacks of chips blotting out the sun, but they often get the gate early. All it takes is a couple early beatings to get in a hole not easily crawled out of.

The flip side is Xuyen Pham. Don't ask me how to pronouce that, becase I have no idea. The spelling is probably why they just call her "Bad Girl". Fresh off winning the Dublin EPT Championship and a victory during the week of the World Series of Poker, Pham has amassed about 97,000 chips, which puts her in the top two or three spots after Flight 1A.

I watched her for about half an hour and only saw her play two hands. She pretty much had the stack she wound up with when I first caught a glimpe of her.

One of my favorite players in the world, not only a real gentleman, but one of the most fun players around is Marcel Luske. I wasn't sure he was playing and was very glad to hear he was here. It would be a scream to sit down with this guy. He has been at many final tables during his career and has been sniffing at a WSOP title, but never quite made the final table. He is the kind of guy you find yourself rooting for.

So many of these clowns are super-serious, it's nice when a guy realizes that he's playing poker for a living, and the living is pretty good. Well, it's after 3 a.m., I gotta get to bed early and rest up for tomorrow.

Yippee.