Nate's Vegas Diary 2018, Day 1- I'm Back At The Main Event!
Well folks, here we are, back in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada to have another go at the most important poker tournament in the world, the Main Event of the World Series of Poker.
In case you are new to this here website, which would be a lot of you because of Barstool’s massive growth since this time last year, my name is Nate and I love poker. It’d always been a dream of mine to play in the Main Event of the WSOP, and last year, that dream came true. Thanks to my good friends at Fantasy Labs, your one stop shop for all things daily fantasy sports, myself and Smitty got to live the dream and play the Main. And for the most part for me, it went GREAT.
On the first hand of play, I won a 15k pot, which is a lot of fucking chips when you start with a 50k starting stack. Then not even an hour later, still during the first level of the tournament, I turned quads and doubled up vs top full house, and it was all up gravy from there. I ran over my tables all day, and bagged a ton of chips. On day 2 I picked up where I left off, and eventually became the Day 2 chipleader, as well as a player on the 3rd featured table, which was shown a few times online on PokerGO and on TV on ESPN.
I battled hard on Day 3 but eventually fell about 200 people short of the money. It was still an amazing experience, with all the poker outlets picking up on Barstool at the WSOP, all the interviews, being on the 3rd featured table, and playing awesome poker. Would not trade that experience last year for the world.
Except now I’m back, and I want vengeance.
I should have made the money last year. I got cocky. I didn’t adjust to my new tables quick enough, thinking I could keep running them over, even as the competition got tougher. There’s one hand in particular that stands out where I bluffed off a lot of my stack for no good reason other than I was tired and really didn’t want to give up on that hand. If I could get that hand back, I for sure make the money. But that’s part of the game. I was not ready for how exhausted I would be towards the end of day 3. I was getting like 4-5 hours of sleep a night because I was working nonstop, blogging nonstop, had the crazy high from all the excitement, and still on East Coast time. The days are so long- you play 12 hours of poker a day. I would get back to the hotel room at 1am or so, and then be awake at 6:30, and then get another hour of sleep before play started again at 11am. I know all of that now this year, and I’m ready to do what I couldn’t do last year, and that’s make the money.
It’s impossible to say what will happen. Shit, maybe I’ll run aces into kings and be out in 5 minutes
I certainly hope not though.
Last year went about as perfect as a Main Event can go, besides making the money. I will try my best to rectify that this year. I feel good. I feel ready. I’m just hoping the cards are once again in my favor. Play starts tomorrow morning at 11am West Coast time. I’ll be updating on Twitter and IG (both @BarstoolNate) anything cool that happens.
God I hope I get quads again. That really helps.