7 Clans Main Event--Day 1

--my personal starting hand strategy --blind stealing at a tight table --begging players for action --recap of the day I won the mega satellite event and got $1070 cash, and paid entry into all the events in the 7 Clans Poker Series, including the main event. As an added bonus, I got a mention at http://www.gulfcoastpoker.net/. How cool is that? Money, freerolls, and media coverage :) So I've been playing all week, soaking up as much knowledge/experience as I possibly can. I've also been meeting a bunch of people, too. I've settled on a standard playing strategy that I think pretty much guarantees I'll get deep in any tourney I enter--provided I don't get sucked up in the moment and make a bonehead play. That strategy being pocket 9's or higher, suited AK, suited AQ, suited AJ. Fold everything else. Tight and aggressive. I get one of those hands, I come out with a raise. Yesterday, after playing all week, and seriously wrung out from a solid week of stress, I started the main event. I was at the tightest table I've ever seen anywhere.....including the Hi/Lo Stud game I used to play in with the old men in Crowley. For the first 2 hours of the first day, I didn't see one hand shown at all. Very few hands even went to the river. 3 or 4 players tops, and this went on all day long. With 90 minute rounds, this game seemed like it crawled. Of the 10 players, only two of us were under 60. Mix in the fact that I was catching NO cards at all. Almost totally card dead. I played 27 hands all day long. So I folded MANY hands. We started with 20,000 in chips. We played 6 levels 90 minutes each. The blinds started at 100-200, and went up to 400-800. Most of the hands I played didn't measure up to my original starting hand requirements. Almost all of the hands I played were because it was folded around to me, and I figured I'd raise for a blind steal. I played middle pairs (6's, 7's, 8's) 3 times. I played A-10/A-J alot, 9 times, which I normally avoid like the plague, just because I read I should loosen up a bit if it's folded around to me pre-flop. My stack went as low as 15,000 and I ended the first day with 28,100. I have a friend, sort of a poker mentor, and I talked to him about the evening. He sounded as though he would have loved the situation. He thought it was prime for a lot of easy blind stealing. It was so tight, that of the 3 times I caught KK's, I limped with them twice because I was scared I wouldn't get any action. The next time, I'll hit the gas a little and really work the blind steal angle. Although I grinded out a 40% increase in my stack size, I still ended up a little below the average stack size of 49,000. Maybe I could have milked the situation a little more and had a bigger stack to show for it at the start of Day 2. Another interesting move from one of the other players came up, too. The last 2 hours, after a day of this slow, tight, grinding play, the player to my left in the 10 seat starts in with "man, I can't catch 2 cards", "man this is boring, I'm ready to gamble", "any 2 face cards, I'm gonna gamble boys". But his actions don't match his words. He's still steady folding hands and playing tight. Then he raises my $800 call in the small blind (SB) to 4,000. I fold, and he shows the table Jx offsuit and says "I'm gambling now, boys". But that's it, no more hands, no more activity out of him, just talk, like he's fishing for a call from somebody. Begging somebody at the table to play at him. One of the players across the table told him "if you wanna gamble, just throw in a bet, you know how". "go ahead, just call in the dark if you're bored". He never did it, though. I hit him back with a 4,000 raise pre-flop a little later on, and he caught the significance of it, but he dumped his hand. Maybe I wasn't the one he wanted action out of:) The day ended with 14 tables left, we started with just under 300 entrants. More than half the field gone, I'll have 28 big blinds when we start tomorrow morning, and I'm bathed in the usual tourney stress.