2000 Flushes: My 2011 WSOP journal

BeerDog99 · 05-29-11, 10:34 PM

Good luck Ian, I look forward to reading about your ups/down.

Cheers.

LLXC · 05-29-11, 11:06 PM

Good luck. Can't wait to see what happens to the Full Tilt professionals.

mvp123 · 05-29-11, 11:28 PM

keep us informed how you do and gl

shady610 · 05-30-11, 01:14 AM

Wear an sbr shirt for luck

stikymess · 05-30-11, 02:39 AM

Good luck bro, get that health insurance taken care of.

wtt0315 · 05-30-11, 06:52 AM

good luck bro i will be out there for the big show. i will meet up with you on the 2-5 table l

horja1 · 05-30-11, 07:21 AM

good luck ...

levski2006 · 05-30-11, 09:16 AM

good luck and meet u there!

drc6491 · 05-30-11, 09:00 PM

best of luck, very interested in your journal

sportsfun · 05-31-11, 05:20 PM

good luck! so ws starts today?

Ian · 05-31-11, 10:59 PM

Thanks for the well wishes, everyone.

Things have gotten off to a rough start. I've played only 6 hours and I'm already just shy of $800 in the hole.

I took Friday night off and got things started Saturday at the Venetian. The Venetian has the largest poker room in Vegas, but the series is such a big deal that they actually remove the slot banks from about a quarter of the casino floor and replace them with poker tables. Almost every table both inside and outside of the regular room was in use, but somehow with all that traffic I still recognized about half the people in every 2/5 game. After an hour and a half of switching tables and finding neither a good hand nor a soft game I racked up down a single red chip and walked next door to Wynn. I was immediately seated in a soft game, but that's where my luck ended.

The Wynn has a very well-run poker room, but somehow they had not prepared for the increase in poker traffic. Engineering had the AC on its usual setting, but with the body heat of 5x more people than usual in the room the place was sweltering. I chugged a water and almost immediately watched it sweat through my t-shirt. I looked around and everybody else had the same problem.

The action was being fueled by an obnoxious, middle-aged Asian immigrant with an accent that made him sound like Scooby Doo. "Rou bruff troo mruch. I crall." After about half an hour I got involved with a big pot with him holding AA. He called a large preflop with T9, and called a pot sized flop bet after flopping top pair. He spiked trips on the turn and I check/called, hoping to snap off a turn bluff, but with the intention of folding to a river shove. When he did shove on the river it was the first time he shut-up all night, which is a pretty huge tell, but somehow between the heat and getting offered a decent price on my money I made a call that I knew was bad and doubled him up.

I was able to grind some of it back, but lost another big pot with another overpair. Fortunately, the second time I had the good sense to fold after the scary turn card came, and my opponent flashed me her turned straight before mucking. I racked up in case I might be going on tilt, and took a walk down the strip to cool down (figuratively and literally). I popped into Casino Royale looking for a Leroy's kiosk. I didn't find one, but I did watch a 50 year old bimbo at the cage reach into her bra and pull out several handfuls of $1 white chips to cash in. How funny that last sentence will be to you depends on how much time you spend in casinos.

Anyway, I returned to the V Saturday night on graveyard shift. The action was better, but the results were the same. I again paid off a river bet with AA because of the price I was getting against a tourist who sucked out on the turn and was giving off big-hand tells. I don't think there's anything I could have done to be in the black over the last couple days, but I made about $375 worth of bad river calls that I usually wouldn't make.

I'm ready to learn from my mistakes rather than repeat them. I'll try out a different fishing hole tonight. Hopefully this time the fish won't bite back.

Week 1: 6 hours -$777

levski2006 · 06-01-11, 03:43 AM

very nice, keep it coming. Very interesting and let the cards be with you!

Czu81 · 06-01-11, 04:08 AM

Originally posted by shady610

Wear an sbr shirt for luck

Good Luck! keep us informed..

ChileCheese · 06-01-11, 10:24 AM

good luck, hope to hear more positive updates.
Im a little curious about your daily or weekly routine in Vegas.
Im currently in Chile, and had plans to spend a few months in Vegas, but that was before Pokerstars and FTP had their issues.
So I am curious how soft the comp is at 2/5 and how much money you figure I could make a week... stuff like that.

svenodds · 06-01-11, 12:15 PM

Good luck

daily updates ?

lolguy999 · 06-01-11, 11:21 PM

ｇｏｏｄ　ｌｕｃｋ　ｂｒｏ！ keep us informed with updates!

Ian · 06-01-11, 11:46 PM

I don't normally like playing at the Bellagio, but I needed to change things up and I figured the room would be packed 24/7 with tourists in town for the series. I was half right. Nearly every table was in use, even the normally empty top-section and Bobby's Room were going strong... to the point that there weren't any open tables in the "privileged" areas for Barry Greenstein's mixed game. So Barry & company played for hundreds of thousands of dollars right next to a 10/20 limit hold 'em game on the poker room floor.

The part that I was half wrong about was that the room would be packed with typcial wsop degens. Black Friday/Blue Monday has had a bigger impact on Vegas than I was expecting it to. It seems like nearly every 2/5 table has at least one former internet pro who is going to try to grind it out in Vegas for the series. Last night at the Bellagio it seemed like there were 5 per table.

After two table changes I finally found an easy game. There were 4 players at the table who were so loose that bluffing them was clearly pointless, and 5 tight players who had figured that out and were just waiting for hands. I had actually built up an okay stack on the tough tables, but after winning the second hand I was dealt at the soft table I went on a 2 hour drought. I was finally able to get it in preflop as a 2:1 favorite against a short stacked halfwit, but he outflopped me and made sure to slowroll me for his trouble. Eventually two of the fish busted out, the third was away from the table, and the slowroller somehow folded preflop, leaving me and two of the tight players to play a large 3way pot. My image was so rock-tight that I was able to make both my opponents insta-muck (one claimed to have held an overpair) when I bet the turn as a bluff. Shortly thereafter both fish racked up, and I was able to escape behind them with a $70 profit.

Not my greatest session ever, but after the past few nights I'll take it.

Week 1: 10 hours -$707

Pajda · 06-02-11, 03:23 PM

Thanks for the updates and good luck at the tables.

nickdotcom · 06-02-11, 04:43 PM

Very cool of you to keep updates like this. People thinking they could make a living out there might get a chance to see how hard it really is.

Ian · 06-03-11, 10:11 PM

I want to publicly thank SBR for negotiating my dispute with Sportsbetting.com. I'm the bettor who had the dispute with them that's now on the front page. What happened was that around Halloween sportsbetting.com switched to offering a 3way line on boxing. Their rules stated that draws on the 3way lines would be graded as pushes, and I contacted them via their email link to confirm that. They told me unequivocally that draws would be no-actioned, which made sense despite the 3way line because even with draws getting pushed they had dramatically increased the juice on boxing sides and totals.

I continued to bet fights with them until mid-December, when I bet on Victor Ortiz to beat Lamont Peterson, a fight that ended in a controversial majority draw, and sportsbetting.com graded my bet as a loss. When I contacted them about it and showed them the rules and email response they made some absurd claims as to why they were not honoring the word of their rules and CS reps, including: stating that my email was invalid because the rep. I was talking with didn't personally know the rep. who sent the email; and a higher-up telling me that the email response was invalid because my question wasn't regarding the sport of boxing (a blatant lie that could be refuted by anyone who can read English). When I followed up they stopped responding to my queries.

I contacted SBR in late December, but I was saddened to hear that sportsbetting.com was no longer talking with SBR. I figured the money was gone. Sportsbetting.com updated their rules days later to state that draws would be graded as losses, and I went from giving them frequent action to almost zero. Even though the money wasn't big there was a period of about two months in which if I had crossed paths with a sportsbetting.com employee I probably would have tried to set him on fire.

On a whim earlier in the week I decided to check with SBR to see if any headway had been made, and in just a few short days Lou was able to convince them to put the money in my account. What a fantastic surprise! Not only am I thrilled about getting the money back, but I am now far more confident that they will pay me my 4 figure balance now that my rollover is complete.

Thanks again, Lou and SBR.

And now back to poker...

JOHON8 · 06-03-11, 11:04 PM

Originally posted by Ian

-Finally buy myself health insurance

It's a damn shame that Americans still have to fight to preserve their lives, up here in Canada life is the #1 priority even over corporate a-holes who are trying desperately to privatize our health care.

Ian · 06-04-11, 03:01 AM

With all the trouble I've had finding soft games lately, Wednesday night I decided to go to the one place where I knew I could find lots of WSOP tourists... the WSOP itself. Pulling into the Rio parking garage I knew better than to be fooled by the lack of cars inside. The WSOP draws in only a fraction of the people that major events and conventions bring in, but unlike the people who come to Vegas to party on NYE or make business deals during CES, the people who come to Vegas for the series are here for one principle reason. They've come to gamble.

10 1/2 months out of the year the Rio is a sleepy, offstrip locals hangout, but on the long walk from the garage to the ballrooms that serve as the temporary home of the WSOP, there was hardly an empty slot machine or unoccupied spot in the pit in sight. I made my way down the final football field-length corridor, trying to hide my smile as I approached the ballrooms with their fantastic smoky lighting and fantastic lack of actual smoke. I hadn't been this excited about playing poker in a long time. Then I entered the actual room.

Vegas during the World Series is amazing, but the World Series itself is decidedly underwhelming. They've got the highest rake in town, no comps, no shuffle machines, no electronic board system, not enough security cameras, at times only one floor person for 60 cash games, and no ability to effectively air condition a room that will have 100 people inside during the early AM, and several thousand people inside during swing shift. Since the WSOP is only temporary employment, about 1/3 of the employees are complete rookie break-ins, and another 50% are dealers who are double shifting from their regular dealing job. As a result the games crawl along, with newb and/or exhausted dealers taking painfully long to hand shuffle the cards. Some rookies make dealer errors close to 50% of the hands, and the disputes are handled by a haggard floor person who spends his 8 hour shift sprinting from table to table in a sort of floor lightning-round.

I could tell things would be ****** up as soon as I entered, and I wasn't disappointed. I waited half an hour to get seated in a seat that was open when I walked through the door. When I finally got my seat I could practically hear the poker gods laughing at me. I'd spent all week searching for a soft game, and my hopes were crushed as soon as I sat down and saw "The Tiger" across the table in the 2 seat. I'm sure I'm not the only poker player who makes up private nicknames for other players when I don't know their real names. Usually my nicknames are based upon deficiencies in personal hygiene, but the Tiger gets a pass for being a non-smelly, likeable local grinder with a large tattoo of the Detroit Tigers logo on his forearm. His biggest leak is that he practices the worst game selection of any poker player I have ever seen. I've played with the guy probably 10 times, and never once has the game been non-horrible. This past session was no exception.

Despite the terrible game, I was able to double up right off the bat. There were a bunch of 20 something guys at the table wearing "the uniform" (hoodie, baseball hat, sunglasses, iPod, backpack) and playing grinder. Against one of them I flopped a 15 out draw, got there on the turn, and was able to get it all-in on the river. I eventually got a table change by locating the seat myself, alerting the floor that it was open, and then requesting that I get changed into it. After I was in the new seat for 10 minutes the brush came up to me and told me that my table change was ready

. The new table was better, but my luck was a lot worse. I had another 15 out draw, but this one bricked out, and I lost several hundred on a series of three AK hands in which my play was 100% automatic, but none of them worked out. I was planning on playing all night, but the dealer errors were so frequent and so bad that I realized they were putting me on tilt. I left before I had a chance to act out my tilt up $33.

Last night things finally went my way. I made over $900 playing all night in a shorthanded game at Caesar's Palace that featured TV pro Scott Fischman. He acted like a douchebag while spewing away the first $800, and then shut up while spewing the 2nd $800. He had $800 left when I racked up too tired to keep playing. I've done enough writing for one night, so I'll leave it at that.

Week 1: 20 3/4 hours. +$281

wtt0315 · 06-04-11, 06:04 AM

keep it up ian

Ian · 06-05-11, 01:14 PM

Week 1 is in the books (this will be the only 8 day "week"

), and it turned out better than I thought it would. It wasn't the greatest week financially, but it wasn't a bad one either, especially considering the early hole I was in and the fact that I came up way short on my hours goal. I ended up playing only 25 3/4 hours when I wanted to play 45, in part because I stayed home Friday. I thought I had come down with conjunctivitis but fortunately it was just a combo of lack of sleep, a mild cold, and a random bloodshot eye.

Last night I was back at Wynn. The table was full when I sat down, but I didn't get dealt in for 5 minutes. Myself and another player were new and couldn't come in between the blinds, two players had racked up, and two were away from their seats, leaving a greasy haired Asian degen and two perma-angry Asian degens who all refused to post their blinds because they didn't want to play 3 handed for 2 hands. When they were finally coaxed into paying their blinds the two angry guys were so incensed that they racked up shortly thereafter, and No Shower Asian launched into a hilarious and totally indecipherable tantrum. The irony was that the guys who wouldn't play 3 handed played about half their hands.

Once the dust settled the game was fairly tight, but very passive and beatable. I was doing well until a player I thought was new to poker shot an angle on me. It was folded to the blinds and when the dealer explained chopping to the SB he pretended like he didn't know English very well and didn't understand chopping, so he just threw in a chip. I raised to $25 with AQs from the big blind, and then he shoved for $650 with QQ. I later learned that he could speak English fine, but I didn't even really mind his angle, as I would have only called his shove with 2 hands and it didn't cost me much. I was up $300 prior to the angle, but that was unfortunately the start of a lengthy dry spell. I didn't win a hand for a couple hours, lost a race in a biggish pot, and found myself stuck $200 after value betting top pair semi-hard against the angle shooter only to find that he limped preflop, bet/called the flop, check/called the turn and checked the river with pocket aces. The only revenge I ended up getting on him was catching him ratholing $300.

Fortunately things turned around. In the space of 15 minutes I got it in on the flop with KK vs. a uniform wearing kid's top pair, and then got it in on the turn against a huge fish who flopped top pair with AJ, but was outkicked by my AQ. Both held up. The game got pretty tough after the AJ fish left, with several pros in the game and the only big pots resulting from steal/resteal situations. I racked up ahead $485.

Week 1 result: 25 3/4 hours + $766

Cuse0323 · 06-05-11, 01:22 PM

Good stuff, thanks for sharing. Keep it up.

Ian · 06-07-11, 12:34 AM

Who raised?

I know of no better way to assert one's ignorance at the poker table than by asking the question "who raised?". To answer that question requires only a basic understanding of the rules of poker and vision. One might as well state "My IQ is less than 85" or "I'm not capable of deductive reasoning." Occasionally the question is used as a conduit for berating a tight opponent.

"Who raised?"

"The 7 seat, sir," the dealer says while remembering not to roll his eyes.

"Oh, you mean the guy who hasn't played a hand in 3 hours!"

This is usually followed by the berator saying the words "I call" and then losing a large pot.

Years ago when I first heard the question I instinctively responded "the guy with the chips in front of him," but when I saw the hurt look on the face of the confused fish I apologized to the guy for being rude and have resigned myself to biting my lip every time I've heard the question since. It's not my job to insult halfwits at the poker table. It's my job to take their money.

---

Many of the tourists who come to Vegas for the World Series come to really play poker. They come to live out a fantasy they've seen on ESPN. They wear sunglasses indoors, stand up when they go all-in, speak the jargon, stare down their opponents and agonize over small decisions. They ask the question "who raised?". Their antics get tiresome, especially when they slow the game down, but this is how they escape their daily grind and get some enjoyment out of life. Who am I to say this isn't how they should have their fun?

I found myself at a table of these guys last night. On a per/hand basis it was the highest positive expectation game I have sat in since the start of the the series, although it wasn't nearly as good as it seemed on a per/hour basis due to how slowly they were playing. I didn't voluntarily enter the pot for the first half hour I was there, which was only about 12 hands, so I launched a 3bet bluff preflop and was called cold in 2 places in addition to the original raiser. Over the next few hours I raised preflop with unpaired high cards three times and never saw the flop with fewer than 3 opponents.

It's pretty easy to go through 40 hand stretches without being dealt much of anything, but when the game is moving slowly a 40 hand stretch can take 2 hours. When this happens the perception is that the card-dead player is tighter than he actually is. Some of my less atrocious opponents caught on to this perception, which ended up working out to my advantage. On a board of 984 with two spades I bet/shoved the flop with 4s3s and the BB who check/raised me started pontificating on how much of a nit I am for a full minute before mucking 94 face up.

The goofiest of the fish was sitting on a $4K stack after bluffing all-in on the turn with a gutshot and 4-outing a Mexican fish who had been showing down 75% of the hands he was dealt. It was his second enormous suckout in a 4 figure pot. I didn't like seeing the Mexican go, but with him out of the picture I could now fully take advantage of my image. I knew I could get away with bluffing the goofy fish because he told the conventioneer to his right that I'm so tight he would fold every time I raised, not knowing that I, 3 seats to his left, could hear every word he said. We then settled into a rhythm of: goofy fish raises to $25, I reraise, goofy fish asks "who raised?", I say "guilty as charged," goofy fish folds, goofy fish tells conventioneer I had aces or kings. Eventually the goofy fish got tired of this and racked up his $3925 stack.

I played 5 hours, was never dealt a starting hand better than 99, never made a hand better than top pair, and left up exactly $200. I watched the sunrise, ate a huge breakfast, and played the SBR freeroll before going to bed. Nights like that are satisfying.

Week 2: 5 hours +$200

wtt0315 · 06-07-11, 05:41 AM

bet those 25 hours of poker feels like 50 hours of work. Its more stressful then real job. I spent 7 hours in a tournment just to finish 14th yesterday when 13 places paid and I feel exhausted

Ian · 06-07-11, 08:40 AM

Got a late start and didn't get to the casino until quarter of 2. The game was similar to the night before with horrible players taking an eternity to act on their hands. Tonight's group was a lot more fun, though, with most of the entertainment coming from a highly quotable drunk. My favorite gem came after the table spent a full 5 minutes explaining to him what a straddle was. He straddled and after the cards were dealt he looked at the dealer and said "Hey! You didn't give me three cards!" Another good one was when two other players turned their hands up at showdown and he observed "the highest hand is gonna win" before taking another slug off his Bud.

Once again I never got dealt much of anything. It took 2 hours to win my first hand, and over the course of the session I only won one pot larger than the blinds. The table eventually broke and none of the other games looked too hot, so I called it a night, ending my mini win streak with a small loss.

Week 2: 8 1/4 hours. +$87

BeerDog99 · 06-07-11, 09:01 AM

Ian, I just want to let you know that I really enjoy these posts. Your perspective, knowledge and writing style is interesting and all of this is much appreciated.

Thanks!

Ian · 06-07-11, 09:09 AM

Might as well respond to a few posts for a change...

Originally posted by ChileCheese

good luck, hope to hear more positive updates.
Im a little curious about your daily or weekly routine in Vegas.
Im currently in Chile, and had plans to spend a few months in Vegas, but that was before Pokerstars and FTP had their issues.
So I am curious how soft the comp is at 2/5 and how much money you figure I could make a week... stuff like that.

Thanks for the good wishes, Chile. I don't really have a routine, so to speak. I love Vegas, but it's so damn hot this time of year that I naturally slide into a vampire schedule and sleep through the heat of the day. Other than that, every day is different.

If you're used to playing online you'll find the live 2/5 games much softer than what you're used to. $40 an hour is doable.

Originally posted by wtt0315

bet those 25 hours of poker feels like 50 hours of work. Its more stressful then real job. I spent 7 hours in a tournment just to finish 14th yesterday when 13 places paid and I feel exhausted

Ahh... the bubble. I've busted out on two huge bubbles in my poker career, and both were drastic suckouts. One in a satty to UB's Aruba WPT event in 2003 (KK AI preflop vs. 44) and one to the final table of a freeroll at the South Point (top pair vs. 2nd pair AI on the flop) with 10th place getting 1K and first place getting 30,000.

I've got to disagree on poker feeling like work, though. Even after 8 years of grinding I still find poker fun. I get to meet lots of cool and crazy people, and I enjoy the challenge of getting inside an opponent's head and figuring out their hand & mindset. Even when things do get tedious, I love the lifestyle that poker allows me to live. It's not for everybody, but the life is definitely a good fit for me.

Good luck in the tournies.

EDIT:

[COLOR=#000000 !important] Ian, I just want to let you know that I really enjoy these posts. Your perspective, knowledge and writing style is interesting and all of this is much appreciated.

[/COLOR]

You bet, beerdog. Thanks for the kind words.

Ian · 06-10-11, 02:44 PM

I'm going to be way short on the hours goal again. The cold I had started breaking up, and I didn't feel like showing up to the poker room sick. Not only is playing while sick not fun, but it's really rude to the other players and staff. Finally feeling better, I returned to the Wynn for a brief session last night after two days off.

The Wynn has had the best 2/5 games so far this series, but last night the tables were a disappointment. I got seated in a game with 6 aggressive Europeans. The game was tight, but at the same time the Euros were very loose with their blind steal attempts. I was able to make a little money by playing even tighter than them, and then every 2 or 3 orbits coming over the top of a steal raise on a bluff. It worked every time, but sadly on my first real hand I ran KK into a short stack's AA. In a show of class the short stack laughed at me after the hand was over, and within 5 minutes proceeded to prove that karma isn't real by doubling up with AA again, this time against a German who bluffed it off.

I got a table change into another game, which was barely an improvement until a maniacal Asian sat down on my left. I knew what I was in for having played with him before, and on his second hand I got unstuck when I made a semi-hero call with top pair on a board showing 4 to a straight. That was the last hand I won, but it was big enough that I was able to leave in the black after the Crasian cashed out. He got stuck 5 bills in half an hour, but racked up an hour after sitting down ahead 5 bills. The other players were frustrated by both his play and some antics that the normally well run Wynn poker room allowed him to get away with, and they handed him a lot of money by raising him and then folding to highly predictable 4bets.

After cashing out I took a walk down the strip to say hello to some friends who work graveyard shift at various casinos along the strip. On the way I stopped into the all night burger joint at Harrah's for a comped dinner. Not feeling like eating beef, I ordered the only non-burger on the menu, a dish consisting of: tater tots, fried chicken, waffles, and jalepeno flavored maple syrup. It went together about as well as it sounds.

Week 2: 10 3/4 hours. +$121

Affirmed3 · 06-10-11, 02:52 PM

Nice blog. Looking forward to future updates.

Ian · 06-12-11, 06:54 PM

The suits who run Caesar's Entertainment, the parent company of the Rio, try to squeeze every penny of profit out of the WSOP, but their greed isn't matched by their knowledge of the poker business. One of their many schemes is to order “Official World Series of Poker®” playing cards for each year's series and then wholesale the cards out to retailers once the series is over. What they haven't caught on to yet, despite having a track record on par with Wile E. Coyote and Acme, is that brand new card designs are often flawed and not fit for use in a casino. This year's problem was a totally innocent “printing error” that caused the low spades to be marked. The Rio pulled the marked decks and went back to using the miraculously unflawed leftover 2010 decks, which can be purchased by cheaters in retail stores all over Vegas.

The World Series of Poker is run with such incompetence that only an idiot would play there over the other Vegas rooms. The irony is that by running off the players smart enough to know they've been treated poorly, the games become softer, which in turn brings the more masochistic winning players back to the Rio, making the games no softer than anywhere else. With the strip games more difficult than usual, though, I thought the normal equilibrium might be out of whack, so I headed back to the Rio last night, resigned not to become upset when confronted with the inevitable mistreatment.

I walked in the room on graveyard shift and was fifth on a list that wasn't moving, so I walked down the tables and found seven open 2/5 seats. I got sent to a table that broke as soon as I sat down. The dealer didn't know how to break a table and the floor wasn't in the room, so I went back to the board and put my name on the list again. On the way there I passed a predictably stuck Jamie Gold loudly insulting the other people at his poker table. When I finally got my seat I took a deep breath. I will not let small things bother me. I play poker for a living because it is fun.

There was some passive-aggressive tension at the table between a weirdo in the 1 seat and Tom Jones's doppleganger seated to my left, but otherwise it was a friendly table. That made it a lot easier to put up with the near-constant dealer errors and excruciating pace of the game. One break-in dealer was so deliberate while shuffling the deck that we only saw 9 hands during her 30 minute down. The game was pretty soft, with most of the action coming from an eccentric drunk who kept assuring the table he would lose all of his $1K stack. I took half of it when I coolered him with top set vs. top 2 pair. He steamed off the rest plus another $300 within half an hour. I ended up cashing out a nice win, salvaging the week.

For week 3 I plan on playing a lot more hours and having a lot more fun.

Week 1: 25 3/4 hours +$766
Week 2: 15 3/4 hours +$674

El Sol · 06-12-11, 09:22 PM

Good stuff, fun to read. I wish I was there, its like that here in So.Cal during the big events, the money is on the main floor. I'm restricted to only playing event #54 and #58 in the series, bummer. Didnt see you mention that you will be playing in the main event. Are you? Or are just grinding it out in the main room.