‘HillyTheFish’ through

The impossible has happened, Steve Hill a.k.a ‘HillyTheFish’ has made it through the first day of competiton at the Main Event of the 2006 World Series of Poker, being played at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

This is the guy that had never played poker a year ago. With the help of ParadisePoker.com we’ve been training up this complete novice to play in the biggest and toughest tournament in the world.

This year the Main Event, played as No-Limit Texas Hold’em, has seen well over 8,000 players all put up the $10,000 buy-in to compete. It’s the biggest field ever assembled for a poker tournament.

Due to the massive numbers of players, the first phase of competition is split in four flights, and ‘HillyTheFish’ had to wait until the last flight, D to play.

He’s managed to swim his way through the first day’s play in 1D, where over 2,000 players have been whittled down to 800.

The campaign kicked off on a table with two-time WSOP bracelet winner and PokerPlayer writer Scott Fischman, and following a shakey start Hilly took down a large pot when a short-ish stack made a move with A-K. Hill had Kings and took him out.

After this the aquatic one was moved tables. And it was to no pokey table in the corner of the cavernous Amazon Room for our scaled hero.

He landed right in the glare of the spotlights, playing on the ESPN featured table with no lesser player than Joe Hachem, the reigning World Champion.

Hachem trousered $7.5 million for his Main Event triumph in 2005, and the Aussie from Melbourne means business this time around, already making two final tables this year.

‘HillyTheFish’ arrived at the top table with around $20,000 in chips (roughly double his starting stack). He managed to pick up some more chips but ended up taking a hit just before the end of the day when Hachem hit quad two’s!

Tournament staff bagged up Hilly’s $18,000 or so chips at the end of the day, and he no doubt went straight to his room to analyse his play and meticulously prepare for the next stage of his assault on the WSOP summit. Not likely. He’ll be in the bar.

Our man will next sit down to play when the qualifiers from flights C and D combine on Wednesday 2 August, and those 1,600 players are reduced to 700.

Could he go all the way? We doubt it, but it’s going to a be white-knuckle ride from here on in.