Scott Diamond

I will be at the Bicycle Casino watching the Legends Final table tonite and sweating John Phan.

If you are there stop by and say hello. Also you can catch my blogs at All-In Magazine.com under blogs also...

Take Care...Be Safe....

Yesterday was a long and tiring day for me. I woke up at 3:30am for work and the only thing that got me out of bed was it was my Friday and I also was going to meet the wife of the Deputy who was murdered 2 weeks ago.

It was a slow day and at 2:00pm my partners Craig and Jamie and I headed to meet Celeste Escalante for the first time to give her a check from the Fallen Heroes Fund and a Cruise for the whole family donated by Linda Johnsons, Card Player Cruises.

As you know Linda has been a HUGE supporter of my Charity and we have become good friends. I have met a lot of people in my life and Linda has the Biggest Heart of anyone I have ever met.

It was a little emotional for me to see the Escalante kids running around with a Picture of their father on an easel in the Living Room. They are well behaved and lovely children and its a shame there Dad will not be around to watch them grow up.

I arrived at the Bike about 2 hours after the tournament had started and it was pretty quiet with about 170 people still in.

I watched Gavin Smith play a hand and he called a bet on the river and his opponent had Quad tens.Mark Seif went on a rush and at one point had over 300,00 in chips but he ended the day with about 242,000.

Layne Flack was wild and crazy as usual and he was down to about 20,000 at one point but he came back and ended the evening with 189,000. The best play though was by Raymond Davis. Ray was down to 7,000 chips early in the day. With a lot of work and tremendous patience and the ability to have no fear in re-raising certain players he ended the day with close to 190,000 chips.

Alan Weintraub was by far the luckiest of the day. I watched him hit almost every flop for an hour and build his stack to over 500,000. Alan was playing J6 off and turning full houses, 5-3 diamonds flopping flushes and he knew he was hot and continued to play almost every hand.

Kelly Kim (from the November9) made a call early against John Smith with a board of 10-10-5-2-2, of 75,000 chips,two thirds of his stack. John went all in and Kelly thought for awhile and you could see the anguished look on his face. Kelly folded but with some hard work he is back in contention and I hope he makes the final table along with Mark Seif. As I told you yesterday, I am very impressed with Kelly, as he is a very polite and down to earth guy.

The other big hand I saw was Antonio Esfiadiari All In against an opponent with AQ. Antonio had him covered slightly with KK and when the flop came A-Q-7 Antonio was flustered. But as I stated to the table after the King hit the River, "Thats why they call him the Magician" Everyone just laughed and Antonio doubled to over 200,000 chips to put him in the top ten of chips.

Nothing else really exciting happened. Allen Cunnigham was reading a magazine while playing and Eric Seidel was sleeping with his Ipod on during the last break of the Night. I did see Gabe Kaplan make a King high straight flush and then call for food service. He looked at the Menu for about 15 minutes and I told him , " Gabe that's not a script, its a food menu" he laughed pretty hard and shook my hand and finally ordered a fruit salad.

Walking around the room and watching these established pro's play is quite rewarding. The style of play is so different then the players I am used to going up against. Rarely do you here an "All-In" call,the pace is much slower and position is very well played.

I enjoy watching players go at each other. I actually study their faces and look for some sort of tell and I try and guess to myself who has the best hand and what they might have.

I really believe I could do well in this kind of event, because it fits my style of play.

I will not be going to any other days of Legends until the Final table Thursday. Going to spend some time at home with the girls and take care of a few things around the house.

I am going to try and play the Player Appreciation $225.00 NL tournament on Friday at the Bike, because it starts at Noon, so I have to take a few hours off of work.

So till Friday..........Take Care....Be Safe.........Good Luck Mark,Antonio and Kelly hope you get there.

Today the second starting day of The Legends of Pokers Main Event, started at 2:00pm at the Bicycle Casino.

There were 212 players who showed up to play the $10,000.00 No Limit Tournament which is the second largest event here in the Los Angeles area every year.

A total of 373 players entered to make first place One million and ninety eight thousand dollars and second place Five hundred and sixty three thousand. Last years tournament had 475 players and was won by Dan Harrington.

The big story of this tournament is the big name players who did show up. No Doyle Brunson,Todd Brunson,Scotty Nguyen,Mike Gracz,Chris Bell,J.C.Tran,Nam Le,Phil Hellmuth,Mike Matusow,Annie Duke,Howard Lederer,Michael Demichelle,Joe Hachem and Andy Bloch.

Some who did come to play are Mark Seif,Alan Cunnigham,Chris Ferguson,Jordan Morgan,Brandon Cantu,Theo Tran,Kathy Libert,Kenna James,Michael Binger,Maria Ho,Barry Greenstein,Layne Flack,Kelly Kim and David Levi just to name a few.

Phil Ivey was also here but only lasted 20 minutes before going all in blind because he had to leave for an unknown reason and losing to a very happy player, who doubled up early.

Play was very very slow and with 30,000 chips and 90 minute levels there is really no reason you should bust early because this is not some 300.00 event,it's a 10k and the play is so very different in a tournament of this stature.

I did get to speak with Kelly Kim for a few. Kelly is one of the WSOP main event final table players and he is a local, who like me, started playing small events at the Bike to hone our skills.Kelly is a great guy and I gave him one of the Fallen Heroes Shirts and he just might wear it during tomorrows play.Kenna James told me he is definitely wearing the Fallen Heroes hat and shirt during tomorrows session and that is great news.

I will be going to watch some of the play tomorrow and then I will not be going back until Thursday, when the Final table is being filmed. I am going to spend some time with the twins on my days off and get some honey do's done around the house.

Sorry I do not have anything interesting to report,but today was like watching paint dry on a wall, very slow.

Take Care,,,,Be Safe...

The 10,000 Main Event started today at 2:00pm PST today here at the Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, California.

There were 161 entries for the first of two start dates this year and by 4;00pm there were 9 people on the road home. the most notable was Joe Sebok who had Aces and Kings busted and left him short stacked almost immediately.

All players started with 30,000 in chips and the levels are 90 minutes long,so there is quite a bit of play.

Some of the notables there today were, Eric Seidel,Men the Master, Chad Brown, Vanessa Rousso, Vinny Vinh,Bryan Devonshire, Eric Lindgren,John Phan,Gavin Smith, Antoni Esfiandari,who is supposed to go on a ride with me in the morning And several others.

Daniel Negreneau stopped by and I had a nice conversation with him and he was very wound up and appeared to be very happy he was here in Los Angeles.He was doing an interview with Amanda Letherman from Poker Road so you should check it out and see how excited he was for yourself.

It was a pretty slow evening and there was some tense players in the group,but as always if you were at John Phans table, it had a party like atmosphere.

My good friend Jorge Pineda who won his seat into the event unfortunately will not make it to day two on Monday as he had an early exit.

Not much else to report, very slow day. They are still running some $1,000.00 satellites tomorrow morning to give someone a chance to play at the 2pm start time.

So if your feeling lucky head on down to the Bike and take a shot at a Million Dollar payday.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a little more exciting. have a great day..take care..Be Safe..