Thanks for all your comments and encouragement. They mean a lot to me. Thanks especially to Todd and Emily, who both found and posted or sent me my table draw for today. Google didn’t turn up much, but here’s what I’ve got on them so far:
Ralph Blanco 47,175 AMAZON / 353 / 1 no info
Andrew Fegan 49,325 AMAZON / 353 / 2 played some prelim events in past WSOP’s but no significant cashes
Brad Jarrett 99,000 AMAZON / 353 / 3 satellite qualifier who’s been running hot
Anthony Scherer 39,000 AMAZON / 353 / 4 16th the year that I finished 35th
Mark Marcellus 11,050 AMAZON / 353 / 5 won a live satellite two years in a row, 118th last year
Martin Perez 16,000 AMAZON / 353 / 6 cashed in a few prelim events over the course of several years
Andrew Brokos 26,500 AMAZON / 353 / 7 fish
Csaba Knokoly 54,100 AMAZON / 353 / 8 no info
Jay Keeler 29,950 AMAZON / 353 / 9 no info
If you recognize any of these names, by all means let me know! I’m really bad at matching names/faces with screennames that I probably know well and have played with many times. It’s just one of the disadvantages of being an internet donk at a live tournament.
Overall seems like it could be a pretty decent starting table. Not a lot of chips, so we’ll probably lose some people early on. Hopefully I’ll be on the receiving end of those chips, and then we’ll see who shows up next. I’ll be back on Twitter of course, sans “a” key (if you see it occasionally, by the way, it’s because my phone auto-completes words and sometimes I get lucky and it does that with an “a” word.)
Knowledge is power! When you wrote about Day 1 I had a deja vu that you had other difficult Day 1s, and you even thrived! Remember it’s the irritation that makes the pearl. We’ll be rooting for you!
Anyone have link for where to find our own table draws?
Andrew, where’s the confidence? In the past when I’ve read your hand posts, one common thread with regard to your opponents is that you don’t “give props” lightly. Was your Day 1 table that good? Does ultra-aggro necessarily = good? Does “everyone is younger than me” mean you’re minus EV? Certainly you aren’t one who carelessly conflates. I’ve no doubt you can out-play these fools! So power on — lest wannabes like me stop reading your blog.
Thanks for the encouragement. They really were pretty good. I don’t believe I was -EV, but they were good enough that I wasn’t messing around too much, and I wasn’t catching many cards either. I wouldn’t say they were ultra-aggro, but appropriately aggro. Enough so that playing back at them was going to be very high variance. Today was much better, though.