The World Series of avoiding the land mines.
Everyone will tell you that the Main Event is all about avoiding the disaster spots. You play these super long levels and multiple days, eventually, you will run into cooler spots. Poker professional and "Only Friends" podcaster Landon Tice had his on Day 1a of the WSOP Main Event.
The hand: Ducks and snowmen everywhere
Tice shared the hand history that nearly sent him home with PokerGO's Jeff Platt.
The hand went down during Level 2 with blinds of 200/300 with a 300 big blind ante.
The button limped for 300. The small blind raise to 1,500. Landon Tice sat in the big blind with two ducks, a pair of twos. He called, as did the button to head to the flop three ways.
"We're 150 big blinds deep, I'm in the big blind, I got position," said Tice. "You got to see if you can find a third duck."
The flop showed up 10d10s8c, no set for Tice. Yet, action checks through to see a free turn. The third duck came home when the 2c hit, giving Tice bottom full house.
Now, springing into action, the small blind now overbet the pot to the tune of 5,100.
"I'm a little bit concerned," said Tice. "I call. You can't let the ducks go away, you might find the fourth one," he laughed.
Tice called, and the button got out of the way by folding.
The river brings the 3c, completing the backdoor flush. The small blind bets 11,000 into the pot of about 16,000.
"I'm just going to leave a little bit behind," said Tice. "If he jams, I feel like it's probably going to be [pocket] eights based off of the turn overbet. He could still have ace-ten or king-ten when he overbets, but is he going to jam for the last of it? I raise, leaving 5k behind, and he snap jams on me."
Tice did make the difficult fold, releasing his full house and leaving about 17 big blinds in his stack.
The small blind was kind enough to show Tice his read was on point. He flashed the pocket eights to validate the hero fold.
"This could have been much worse, and here we are," Tice said.
Too true, many players would have gone broke in that spot. Could you have found the raise-fold on the river for your Main Event life holding bottom full house?
For Tice, he worked that stack up to 17,000 at dinner break. Unfortunately for him, he couldn't find a bag, as he eventually busted before the end of the day.
Take a look at some of the players who did back massive stacks while they await their Day 2 a few days from now.
$10,000 Main Event Day 1a leaderboard
| Place | Player | Country | Chip count |
| 1 | Yehuda Dayan | Israel | 389,900 |
| 2 | Shota Nakanishi | Japan | 360,100 |
| 3 | Hai-Chi Ho | China | 297,400 |
| 4 | Doug Polk | United States | 281,900 |
| 5 | Neville Costa | Brazil | 275,000 |
| 6 | Samuel Gagnon | Canada | 271,000 |
| 7 | Todd Collins | United States | 250,400 |
| 8 | Rick Mechammil | United States | 247,600 |
| 9 | Christine Do | Canada | 237,300 |
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