2009 WSOP: Now the Real Fun Begins

Today marks the commencement of the last of the preliminary bracelet events, $5,000 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold'em. That means the Big Dance begins on Friday, and the social calendar for the next week becomes very, very busy. A party celebrating the 10-year anniversary of UltimateBet was last night at Studio 54; the Bluff party is tomorrow at Sapphire; the PokerStars party is next Friday and there are sure to be a host of other parties in between. The Everest Poker Lounge at the Rio finally opened just in time for a host of Everest qualifiers to descend on yesterday's donkament in zip-ups that are eerily reminiscent of some PokerStars zip-ups.

Hell, even Otis is here now. You know the party's started when Otis gets here. Two nights ago I joined Gene, Al, Otis and Drizz for some late night early morning pai gow. After getting battered by the dealer for the better part of two hours, Otis declared the Degree All-In Moment and pushed his remaining stack onto the betting circle. We all followed suit and then exploded in cheers and shouts of "Pai Gow!" when the dealer pulled his first pai gow the whole time we'd been there.

It's really difficult to enjoy all this stuff (no, really) but I'm doing my best. The finish line is in sight.

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2009 WSOP: The Week of Run-Bad-aments

First it was the razz. No need to re-hash that.

Then it was a session of 20-40. Not memorable enough to really recount.

Finally, there was Day 3 of the $2,500 Limit Omaha Hi/Lo tourney yesterday. We started play with 23 players. When I looked at the structure sheet and the chips in play, I heaved a big ol' sigh. It looked like a 3am-4am night from a 1pm start. And indeed that's what it was. There was a brief moment, around 11pm or 1130pm, when if the cards had broken the right way, we could have accelerated that pace. But they didn't break the right way and it was indeed 3:30am when we finished.

I doubt I can complain too much. I've had several very short final tables so far this WSOP. But the pain of a split-pot game can be excruciating when you're trying to report on a tournament. Most hands either fold on the flop (not very interesting) or chop on the river (similarly not so interesting). It's hard to find those scoops that show some chip movement and momentum in the tournament. By the end of the night danafish had broken out a bottle of whiskey and we were taking some generous pours. It was a needed relief from some stupidity I had to deal with earlier in the evening that threatened DefCon 1 for life-tilt.

The real insanity -- the Main Event -- is looming just around the corner. Here's hoping I keep my shit together through the end.

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2009 WSOP: The Late, Late Show

There's been a rash of problems within the last week at the 2009 World Series of Poker with the daily 5pm bracelet events. They're not starting until 5:15. That wouldn't be a problem in and of itself, but it's a symptom of a bigger issue. Each tournament got off late because by 5pm only about 60% of the final field had registered.

The problem repeated itself three nights in a row -- with the $2500 Eight-Game Mix, the $2500 Razz and the $2500 Omaha Hi/Lo. The effect was that each table started play extremely short-handed. My razz table played 4-handed for about 45 minutes and 5-handed for another 45 minutes after that. We didn't fill out to 8-handed until Level 3. For the first two levels we were effectively playing a different game. We weren't playing razz; we were playing short-handed razz.

This happened because of the way the registration process works. As best I can tell, the WSOP makes an estimate of the number of entrants for a particular tournament and then allocates tables and dealers based on that estimate. If they estimate 300 entrants for an 8-handed tournament, they might allocate 41 tables. Then as players register, they are randomly assigned a seat at one of those 41 tables based on an algorithm that balances the number of players at each table. So far, so good.

The problem lies in the fact that late registration extends for a full two hours and twenty minutes after the start of the tournament. And when a tournament goes off late, it means late registration goes late also. For whatever reason -- triple chips, multiple events on the same day, pure laziness -- anywhere from 35-40% of the field for each of the 5pm events this week registered after the scheduled start of the tournament. Given that players have two and a half hours to register, many of them show no particular rush to take their seat at the scheduled time. While this was always true for tournaments in general, it has become especially true in fixed-limit tournaments. There is less incentive to show up on time in fixed-limit tournaments because it is very difficult to acquire a large number of chips in the early stages without playing like an utter maniac.

[I should point out that if you register on time, your stack is placed on the table and anted off, whether you show up or not. If you register late, you start with a full stack once you arrive at the table.]

I've never understood why late registration needs to extend so late. It could be that extending late registration until the first break in the tournament seems to tournament officials like a convenient time to do so. Or maybe it's because the WSOP is trying to keep the name pros (who often play multiple events on the same day) happy by giving them oodles of time to gauge their chances of a deep run in one tournament before registering for another. Perhaps in events like $1500 NL donkaments, tournament officials are trying to jam in as many people as they can in order to increase their take. I hope that neither of the latter cases is true because each would sell out a tournament's integrity.

How can the problem be fixed? Very simply by not allowing late registration to go so late. Thirty minutes is more than enough time for late registration -- if someone over-sleeps or gets stuck in traffic, they will still have ample cushion to register. That's what late registration should be for -- allowing people who've had some inconvenience in their life the chance to overcome that inconvenience and still play the tournament. It shouldn't be for what it's being used for now, which is to allow lazy players to show up when they feel like it. And by limiting late registration to 30 minutes, it will ensure that tournaments (a) start on time, (b) don't penalize players who sign up on time by requiring them to play a different game than the game they were expecting to play for the first two hours, (c) will allow players to have a much better idea of the size of the field they can expect to encounter when registering and (d) collapse to full 7- or 8- or 9-handed play (depending on the game) before the first level ends.

I'm interested in any competing theories as to why two-and-a-half hours of late registration is a good thing. Feel free to leave a comment.

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Blech

If you followed my Twitter feed yesterday, you know razz went about as horribly as it could have gone. After winning the first hand I played to get up to about 8,000 (7,500 starting), I did not win a single hand that went past fourth street. I repeatedly bricked in a big way, and the one time I made a hand (6-5-4-3-A), Mike Baxter rivered 6-5-4-2-A.

I was out during Level 4, one of the first people out. It was the most disappointing and frustrating 3.5 hours of poker I've ever played.

Thanks for the well wishes and support.

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Lock and Load

The quest for a bracelet resumes at 5pm today in the Brasilia Room at Table #229, Seat 6. Yep, it's time for 2009 WSOP Event #44 - $2,500 Razz. Feel free to follow my progress on Twitter.

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Sam Simon Redux

Last year Sam Simon (co-creator of The Simpsons) was at my WSOP razz starting table. We struck up a conversation, to the point that when I ran into him in the hallway a few days later he stopped to chat with me. I wrote up that discussion here.

Yesterday I saw Simon for the first time at the 2009 WSOP while covering Event 39, $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em. As soon as Simon saw me, he gave me a big smile and said hi.

"Are you playing the razz this year?" he asked me. I told him that I hadn't registered yet but that I was probably going to play. Simon told me he wanted to play too but that the razz conflicted with another event he wanted to play -- Seniors No-Limit Hold'em.

"Seniors!" I said with a laugh. "Come on. You can play no-limit whenever you want. There's only one razz tournament."

Simon agreed with me and then told me how much he's been working on his razz game over the course of the year. I guess Simon was serious at the 2008 WSOP when he told me how much he liked the game. And I think that's pretty awesome. I'm all for as many people taking an interest in the lowball games as possible.

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A Few Words on Tournament Structure

Tournament structure seems to be a hot topic these days, what with triple chip stacks the latest fad. Having covered more than my share of poker tournaments (and having played in some to boot!), I feel like I have an excellent sense for what makes for a good structure. It is not one element more than any other element; it is a series of elements designed in tandem.

1. Chips don't matter. The size of the starting stack is not the be-all, end-all of what makes for a good tournament structure. Too many times I see poker rooms promoting their tournaments by stating that the starting stack is "100,000 chips!" or something similar. Well, great. In a vacuum, that information is completely useless to me. You can give me 100,000 chips in my starting stack, but if you set the starting blinds at 10,000 and 20,000 the structure is going to suck balls.

2. How long are the levels? This aspect is often over-looked by beginning poker players. They don't understand the impact of short levels on the tournament structure. Longer blind levels allow skill to be more of a determinant than luck in the outcome of the tournament because there is less rapidly escalating pressure from blind increases.

Some of the single-table satellites at the WSOP have 15-minute blind levels. In 15 minutes, you *might* be able to get one orbit of hands in before the blinds go up. It's not hard to hit a card-dead stretch of 25 hands in hold'em. 25 hands at 15-minute levels would put you well into Level 3 before you even play a hand!

Many of the low buy-in tournaments that poker rooms offer to try to get players in the door feature short blind levels like this. The poker rooms don't make much money (if any) on those tournaments. It doesn't serve them any purpose to have the tournaments take eight hours to complete. They want you in the cash games, so they make a quick structure to finish the tournament in short order.

On the other hand, premier poker tournaments typically offer 60- or 75-minute levels. The WSOP Main Event utilizes 120-minute levels. These longer levels allow skilled players more time accumulate chips before the structure of the tournament catches up to the chips in play and forces players to start busting (the "40 Big Blind" average stack mark of a tournament).

3. How dramatically do the blinds increase? Looking at the blind increases is where the size of the starting stack has more of an impact. A good structure will allow the players to play very deep at the start of the tournament (anywhere from 100 to 300 big blinds in NLHE) and will only gradually increase over time. For example, the EPT structure is:

50/100, 75/150, 100/200, 150/300, 150/300/25, 200/400/50, 300/600/50, 400/800/75, 500/1000/100, 600/1200/100, 800/1600/200, 1000/2000/200

and so on from there. Compare that with the HORSE tournament I played at the Nugget a few days ago, where the limits jumped from 600/1200 to 1000/2000! Any time the blinds double, you're dealing with a crap structure because one level change effectively cuts everyone's stacks in half. Luck becomes a much bigger factor than skill at that point.

4. What about the prizes? This is something that most people don't ever think about. A tournament structure is only as good as its blind structure AND its prize structure. I was incensed when the payout structure was posted for the HORSE tournament at the Nugget. With 190 runners putting $38,000 in the prize pool, $12,300 went to 1st place and $6,700 went to second place. That's a full 50% of the prize pool! 18th place, the bottom rung of the ladder, paid only $360 on a $240 buy-in and required an 11-hour investment of time. Investing 11 hours to get a 50% profit is a waste.

Top-heavy payout structures don't help the poker economy or an individual poker room's economy at all. Instead they redistribute a disproportional amount of money to one or two players and create ill-will in the other players, who rightly feel it is a waste of time to put so many hours and so much effort into a tournament for so little return. More than one person I spoke to at the HORSE tournament said they would *not* return for future tournaments at the Golden Nugget unless the prize pool was distributed more evenly.

The most typical payout structures that seem fair to me are those where a minimum-cash returns roughly double the original buy-in (depending on precisely how many players enter and where the prize breaks fall).

5. A Lesson from the 2009 WSOP. When you're designing your tournament structure, give some consideration to how many players you expect. Even if you have space and dealers, you can't allow an unlimited number of players to buy into a three-day tournament. Event 4, the $1,000 Stimulus Special, proves this point. Day 3 of that event was scheduled to be the final table -- 9 players, playing for roughly 6-8 hours to produce a winner. Instead, because so many players entered the tournament, *50* players still remained at the end of Day 2. The WSOP did the right thing and adjusted the tournament to a four-day schedule, but the problem could have been avoided either by capping the number of entrants or planning for this contingency in advance.

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Back on the HORSE

I've been off my routine and my normal schedule in a big way for the last week or so. Normally mornings would be my time to get a post up and that just hasn't been able to happen.

First, congratulations are in order for LJ, who finished 10th out of 770 runners in the $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. event at the WSOP. Nice score! I was assigned to cover that event. It was very exciting to have a friend make such a deep run -- probably the best time I've ever had covering a poker tournament.

Second, inspired by LJ's success and Cardgrrl's suggestion, I tried my hand at the $230 H.O.R.S.E. tournament at the Golden Nugget yesterday. It's a great structure -- lots of chips, low starting blinds, 40 minute levels. The tournament started at noon and there were still 11 people left out of the starting 190 when I busted in 12th place at 12:15am for a very modest payout. My only complaint was that the prize breakdown was so top heavy. 18th place, the bottom rung on the ladder, got only $360 on a $230 buy-in. I feel like if you make the money in a tournament you should at least get double your buy-in or close to it.

Third, the razz tournament is coming up on Monday. I have one $500 tournament lammer so far (from chopping a $275 satellite three ways for a lammer and $400 cash). I may try to squeeze in a few more satellites in the next couple of mornings. They are like playing $5 SNGs on Party Poker in 2005 (really!). Even if I don't get any more lammers I think I have to play razz after watching people play it so bloody horribly during the $1500 H.O.R.S.E. event. Vanessa Rousso, I'm looking at you.

That's all I've got right now. Hopefully I'll be on a more regular routine the next few days so that I can get back to regular posting.

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2009 WSOP: Time to Tar and Feather Michael Craig

For reasons too silly to detail, working from the Amazon Room today on my day off made the most sense. It's not that bad in here with a pair of noise-reducing headphones and some music. The only sound that penetrates my musical cocoon (Royksopp at the moment) is the cricket-chirp of riffling chips -- the white noise of a room full of donkey-fish.

I had a conversation a few weeks ago about my relatively flat levels of emotional excitement. The last time I was deliriously happy was the night the money bubble broke in the razz tournament last year. I was ecstatic that I'd made the money, but even more overwhelmed that CK was there railing me. It meant so much to know she had my back in an emotionally supportive way at what was a very exciting (and stressful!) moment for me.

The shoe's on the other foot now. Last night I finished the 2-7 final table at 8:30pm. O.E. still had 80 players (40 paid) and MeanGene was delirious in the sports book about the Pens victory. I asked TassieDevil to call me when the O.E. got down to 42 players so that I could come sweat the action. Instead, sitting in the sports book bar with Gene, AlCantHang and Change100, I got the word:

"15,400. 48 left. 40 pay. need to make a hand."

"I have to go," I told my friends. Al said he was afraid he'd cooler her and suggested maybe I should stay put too. That wasn't an option. There was nowhere else but in the Brasilia Room that I wanted to be. I was in the same spot last year -- I was one of the shortest stacks on the money bubble of the razz tournament -- and knew the lift I had received from the fact that she was there for me.

Off to Brasilia I went. I gave her all of my luck and then sat and waited. Fifteen minutes later, the bubble burst. She was in. And even though she looked like she wanted to kick a dog when she busted in 39th place (I remember *that* feeling, too), there was only one thing to say.

Congratulations CK. I am SO proud of you.

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Pimping My Peeps

Watch this. It is one of the best poker media videos I've ever seen, and it was produced by Gloria Balding, Tom Kinsman and the rest of the PokerNews video team:



Amarillo Slim has the line of the piece. You'll know it when you hear it.

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2009 WSOP: Run Good One Time

Another night of four hours of sleep. I need to stop doing that.

I caught my first break of the 2009 WSOP yesterday. After not ever leaving the Rio before 3am for the entire series so far, the final table I was assigned to cover with Change100 -- Event 16, $1,500 Seven-Card Stud -- lasted just 3.5 hours. We started at 2pm and had a champion by 5:30. It was the second-shortest final table I've ever covered (I don't think anything will ever top the 2h45m final table from APT Manila).

We had a nephew-uncle tandem make the final table. The uncle, Rod Pardey, has two previous stud bracelets from 1991 and 1994. He made it to heads-up play against Jeff Lisandro but was so severely outchipped, and Lisandro was running so hot, that he never had much of chance. The nephew, Eric Pardey, busted in 6th place and asked me if any blood relatives had ever made the same final table before. I don't know the answer, but I'm sure WSOP media director Nolan Dalla does (or would love to find out). I directed the nephew in Dalla's direction but never heard back what Dalla said.

Since today is a scheduled day off for me, with my next tournament -- Event 23, $10,000 NL 2-7 Draw -- not commencing until 5pm Wednesday, it's like having two whole days off in a row. As much as the days off are appreciated, I'm definitely looking forward to my next assignment. Covering the $5k 2-7 rebuy event last year was a high point for the series. For one thing, I love the purity of the game. For another, it brings out lots of recognizable faces, which usually leads to lots of "color" in the blog. Kansas City Lowball, as it's sometimes called, is also much easier to report than a game like stud.

The early day yesterday gave me a chance to play 20-40 LHE for a while (small profit), have a leisurely dinner with people (unheard of so far this WSOP) and otherwise enjoy my evening (beer and more poker FTW). For a few brief moments I felt almost normal.

Some days are better than others.

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2009 WSOP: GFY Edition

"Lies, deceit, mixed messages... this is turning into a real marriage."
--Castor Troy

Well, I can't sleep (again!). I may as well write something.

Yesterday I was back on another stud tournament. It was Event 16, the $1,500 Stud tournament. I didn't really care. Maybe it's the fact that this ain't my first rodeo -- though really I didn't have any of this issue at EPT Monte Carlo, the tournament I covered prior to the WSOP. More likely it's the fact that I don't really care about much of anything these days.

I'm tired. Which I realize is perfectly fucking ironic given that I just stated that I can't sleep. But it's more a general tiredness. Finish second often enough and you start to feel that way. Coming in second is a deflating punch in the gut. If you don't believe me, try finishing second in a major poker tournament and see how you feel afterwards. It's not pretty, even when you clear a half million dollars.

Sometimes I wonder how I got to this point. This point where I'm tired and I can't sleep. This point where I'm so detached from caring about the noise of my everyday life that I don't care about what I'm doing or how I'm doing it. I had my whole life set to go like this. It was great. These things were the most important things to me once... and now there's nothing (and a nothingness that looks to only get worse the more I think about it). Compounding the problem: I'm told things by people one hour or one day that are revealed as blatant lies the next hour or next day. People don't even have the common fucking courtesy to be straight with each other anymore. It makes me wonder why anyone bothers with anything.

Whatever. I guess I should try to get some sleep. There's another fucking poker tournament to cover tomorrow and the sun's starting to tint the sky. I'm sure somebody out there is happy to see it; it just ain't me.

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Argh

I am beyond tilted right now.

Fuck you, Harrah's, for not being able to set up and maintain a proper wireless network.

And actually, fuck you Cox Communications, since you have the contract to put said shitty wireless network in place.

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WSOP 2009: Day Off!

Yesterday was my day off, which I spent playing golf and poker. I wish I could say either made me happy but it's been a rough 2009 for me. It's going to take more than a round of golf or some poker to set things right and at the end of the day I felt worse than I did at the start. How that's possible, I'm not sure. It seems these days I'm learning something new about myself every day.

As for the poker --

One of those things I've learned about myself is that when I go down to the Strip to play I expect to win. It's better than expecting to lose but still a very dangerous attitude to have when playing poker.

The biggest LHE game that's usually running at Mirage (one of my preferred poker rooms) is 10-20. That was the case last night and I took a seat in a delicious game, the kind of game with players who feel 8-7 offsuit is worth calling three bets preflop. Yet at first I was playing too aggressively against some calling stations, then missed some draws, and then started fishing out of frustration. It was a bad combination all around that left me stuck about $650 in four hours.

That's when the 20-40 got up.

Despite having the bankroll and the chops for the Mirage 20-40, normally I don't see much value in it. The game is hit-or-miss as to whether it gets up at all. When it does get up it is populated by a very small group of regulars who are (for lack of a better word) nits. The better value is in the 10-20 game or the Bellagio 15-30, where drunk tourists regularly rock up to the table, unload $1,000 to $2,000 over the course of a few hours, and then wander off with their "bad beat" stories. But last night I jumped for the 20-40 game because of three people who racked up to move to it. I also moved because I was stuck and hey, let's chase those losses!

When I switched to 20-40 I didn't expect to win. I wasn't playing above my head but I also wasn't in the cushiest part of my comfort zone. As a result of being slightly on edge, the 20-40 game snapped me out of my funk and re-trained my focus. I stopped fishing, I stopped trying to steamroll people who won't be steamrolled, and I made a few draws. Two hours later I was up almost a full 20-40 buy-in, erasing my 10-20 losses.

Now if I could just figure out how to turn my life around like that...

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2009 WSOP: The Pain of 6-Max

Two years in a row, I've been tasked with covering the $1,500 6-handed no-limit hold'em tournament. Two years in a row, it seemed like it was a race to the final table, with players busting out faster than you can say "LOL Donkaments". And two years in a row, play ground down to next-to-nothing at the final table.

I guess I understand the "deer in the headlights" phenomenon of playing on the feature table for a WSOP bracelet, but the heads-up play last night was brutal. I used to be able to say I had never seen someone turn the nut straight and check-call it the rest of the way in a heads-up match. I can't say that anymore. It took more than three hours to eliminate the runner-up and it should have taken (at most!) an hour-and-a-half.

It wasn't ALL bad. I had dinner and a beer in the book with MeanGene and America's Wingman, which was plenty enjoyable (as those things usually are).

We also had some entertainment at the feature table. "Colonel Sanders" was in the audience for a while (he seems to have obtained a seeing-eye dog this year) and "Gandalf", a regular in Tunica, was also spotted floating around. It's an interesting mix to see some of these guys and the very haggard-looking Sapphire Pool strippers mingle in the hallways. Makes me wonder if the strippers have been introduced to "the Colonol's secret blend".

Today's a day off. It's a beautiful day for this time of year in Vegas, so it's off to the links.

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2009 WSOP: Drache's Tragedy is Everyman's Fairy Tale

Well, I thought we'd be done with Stud last night by about 2am. It turns out I was wrong -- it was 3am.

Since the game was Stud, it was no surprise that the final two players were old-timers: NYC and Atlantic City stud regular Freddie Ellis and the original WSOP tournament director, Eric Drache. Benjo has a great look at them both over on the Tao of Poker today. His piece, I admit, makes me a bit jealous. I wish I had the freedom (and talent) to put together a story like that. Unfortunately the demands of live reporting don't leave all that much time for casual conversation with others -- I'm either chained to the desk or intensely sweating the action. I had a few moments to chat with Steve Z about Eric but that was it.

Benjo did ask me why we were pulling so hard for Freddie. I couldn't give him a proper answer. Just, having watched the guy since Day 1, he had the type of affable personality that you want to win. Maybe that's true of all the stud old-timers -- they're from a different era of poker and have mellowed in their old age to boot. No crazy antics. No shouts of "Hold!" or "One time!". Just bets into pots and letting the cards fall where they fall, and then a quiet handshake at the end of the night. Maybe in that regard Freddie was no different than half of the other players in the tournament (though watching him repeatedly school Daniel Negreanu over the course of three days was a delight).

Yet as much as Benjo laments that Eric Drache didn't receive his due by winning the Stud World Championship -- Benjo goes so far as to label Ellis a fish in his piece -- I think he overlooks one important angle on the story of Freddie Ellis. The fact that a "fish" can win the whole she-bang is what makes poker such a compelling game for many people and a livelihood for others. Where would poker be without the fish of the world? Without the terrible amateurs who turn a $40 satellite into a $2.5 million victory? Without all those other legions of lovable losers who make the games so good? Where it would be without the Freddie Ellises and their dreams of winning a gold bracelet that -- sometimes -- come true? That fairy tale victory is what keeps people coming back, year after year. "This year, why not me?" they think.

It might not be just for Freddie Ellis to win a gold bracelet instead of Eric Drache, but it's what the game is all about. In poker, more than any other "sport", any given team can win on any given day. We should all give silent thanks for that.

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2009 WSOP: Rule 96!

When I got to the Amazon Room and looked at the structure yesterday, I knew it was going to be a long day.

"We're probably going to be hear until the hard cap," I told my blogging partner, Eric. One of the WSOP rule changes in 2009 is Rule 96, which states;

On Day 2 for any non-televised/broadband event, play will be suspended at 3 a.m., and will resume the following day at 1 p.m.

This is an excellent change, preventing players from having to play ridiculously long Day 2s (and preventing over-worked media types from having to report them). Based on the number of players left in the tournament, I was confident we would have an application of Rule 96 by the end of the night.

At 3am, there were 11 players left in the field. TD Steve Frezer stopped the clock, bagged up the chips and told players to come back today at 1pm. Or maybe 2pm? The players haggled on this point, trying to push the re-start back to 2pm. Frezer was willing to allow it if all players agreed, by Tim Phan and Jeff Lisandro objected. And so 1pm it is.

Once we got to the last two tables and into the money, play really ground down. That's the boredom section of the night. I was playing $10-$20 6-max LHE online while Eric was watching TuffFish videos.

Not much else to say about Day 2. Stud players are either boring or dead. Tomorrow I'll be on a 6-max NLHE tournament, which should provide plenty of fodder for my (and your) amusement.

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2009 WSOP: Stud Starts Off Slowly

Talk about easing into the World Series -- I got the first four days off and then drew a 5pm event with only 142 players in the field on Day 5. More than half of them were "recognizable"; this was $10,000 Stud, one of the pros' best chances to capture a bracelet. They were out in droves. Of course, the triple chips and an accidental extra level meant it took four full hours for the first player to bust.

Yikes.

The most curious aspect of the tournament was how it started. Eric and I set up our gear in the media box near the empty "Orange" section of the Amazon Room. Almost every Day 1 that I can think of ever covering has started in Amazon. At about 4:45pm, Benjo came up to me and asked why I thought there were no dealers or chips anywhere in Amazon, 15 minutes before the start of the tournament.

Damn fine question, Benjo.

We did some investigating and determined the tournament would take place in the back right corner of Brasilia. Why this should have been the case, I'm not sure. There were definitely twenty tables available in Orange; no need to worry about not enough spacee. It just seems like another decision by Harrah's to sweep stud games under the rug as much as possible. But then again the re-start today will be in Amazon Orange, so who really knows.

Random other tidibits:

* WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack had a bottle of Veuve Clicquot delivered to Table 234 (Yuval Bronshtein, David Benyamine, Jen Harman, Nick Schulman, Barry Greenstein, Eli Elezra, Andy Bloch and a random named Pawel Andrzejewski about whom Greenstein Twittered "Everyone at my table is a well-respected player, except for an unknown Polish kid, and he's better than most of them") to celebrate Andy Bloch's 40th birthday.

* Johnny Chan spent a good portion of a post-dinner level last night looking at porn on his iPhone. At the table. Stay classy, Johnny!

* Michael Mizrachi surveyed his table regarding whether they felt safer in a plane or in a car. He does not seem to like planes; everyone else at the table said that's where they felt safer.

Back to the Rio for Day 2 at 2pm. 102 down to 8 could be a long-ish day. Fingers crossed that it's not.

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2009 WSOP: Today's the Day

After four days on the sidelines it's finally time to dive into the 2009 World Series of Poker. My assignment for the next few days is to cover the $10,000 Seven-Card Stud event. It will not be the most scintillating poker but at least it's not a split-pot game. Those are the worst. Providing coverage will also come with the silver lining that it will take up most of my attention. Lately I've been feeling that my entire life is out of control -- and for someone who's always had a solid idea of what he's doing and where he's heading, it's a discomforting feeling.

Cards are in the air for the $10K Stud at 5pm local time. As always, the action is under the Live Reporting tab on PokerNews. Any amusing tidbits I come across in the Amazon Room will probably make it onto my Twitter feed.

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