Yes, today’s post is pretty late.

I wasn’t even sure if I was going to write it or wait to combine a couple of days into a single report, but let’s give this a try.

Day 2 of the Colossus was set to get under way at 2pm. I got back to the house from covering the last starting flight (Day 1F) at around 4am. Had to stop at a Wal-Mart to pick up something to drink (Diet Coke, natch) and noticed that this town—for all the malls and mini-malls it has—doesn’t have many large groceries. In Portland, pretty much every second or third mall is going to have a grocery store. It might not be open at 4am, but it’d be there at least. Only the fourth or fifth time I’ve ever set foot in a Wal-Mart, and two of the other times were here in Las Vegas.

Slept the sleep of the dead for about four hours then woke up, talked to Barbara at home and the guys in the house, then had to start getting ready to head back to the Rio. It’s about 12 miles. I use an off-brand route that—except for a crossing over US95—avoids the freeways and is pretty much a straight shot with just a couple of turns from Flamingo and onto the street that runs by the subdivision gates. The one downfall being that the first night I drove the last leg, I screeched to a halt at two stop signs that were almost impossible to see in time on unlit sections of a four-lane road road.

I made it back to the Rio safe and sound. When 2pm rolled around it was time to get to work. The plan for me was to run around and familiarize myself with the faces attached to  big names, but that sort of went to hell when I ran across a hand for a write-up and tables were breaking at a rapid clip. There were 21,613 entrants total, 846 (under 4%) of them came back for Day 2, and just 78 of those (about 0.036% of the total) made it through the day.

My find of the day was Marek Ohinsko a Czech player with just $3,000 in reported tournament earnings, who had a good read on Michael Mizrachi and made an impressive call for all of his chips. I spotted him before he had reached the top of the chip count, and tried to keep an eye on him the rest of the night.

OK, I’d write more, but I’m falling asleep and I don’t even have to read this.