Rain On My Parade

Day 1: $550 No-limit Hold'em
A mixed day. On the one hand, I finished 29th out of 285 people. Not bad for my first WSOP event, but not in the money either. That was reserved for the top 27 people. So drat. I'm pretty sure I could have finished in the money if I just didn't play, and were this the main event, that's exactly what I would have done. However, had I done so, I would have guaranteed myself of a bottom-rung finish, albeit in the money. Since I had already allocated money for the tournament, breaking even in the money would not really have helped as much as winning $27,000, so I went for the gold and came up with sand.

The good news is that I got there by making some very good reads on players, spotting tells and folding very big hands to even bigger ones. Everyone was amazed I folded trip aces until they saw trip aces with a bigger kicker... and even he got beat by a flush on the turn! Had I called, I would had finished like, 210 or something.

In the end, I was like, 28th of 30 people remaining, which sounds better than it was. The reality was that I was at a very tough, short-handed table with a tiny stack. We started with 3,500 chips and I was hovering around 20,000 for the last 3 hours. Not bad, but I had won some coin flips to get there, and didn'ton feel like pushing my luck against the monster stacks there. Monster stacks too, like hundreds of thousands of dollars! The game was harsh... seriously... seems like every hand, everyone folded preflop to a big raise! The question was not if the pot would be raised a lot preflop, but by whom. There were only maybe 5 or 6 flops seen after the dinner break! And every time I was going to raise it up with a mediocre hand, someone in front of me would do it first, and since they had me way covered, re-raising wasn't really an option.

So I lost. But I finished in the top 10%. Not bad for my first tourney, and for a massively huge public setting as a girl! :)

Besides, earlier that morning, I got the manager of the hotel to comp my first night and take off $25 for the rest of the nights, so in my book, I still won a little.

By the way, it rained so much that day, I entered the boat at the 3rd deck but left - arriving at the same point on land - from the 2nd deck!

Marching to the beat of a different Flower Drum Song
Very early in my transition, I was quite fond of a song from a musicial titled, "I enjoy being a girl." That song was in regular rotation on my mp3 player while I was in London... how can you not walk a little lighter with that running in your head?

After today though, I realized the title is no longer representive of how I feel.

Regrets? Hardly! I love being a girl!

OMG, I had boys from across the poker room buying me drinks! Teehee! Boys were flirting left and right... cute ones, too! I think the hormones are starting to kick in! I was totally passing all day and looooving it. I felt feminine, I felt pretty, I felt absolutely wonderful.

I felt alive.