"I'll take a root beer.  And a Sprite."

"You gonna mix those together?"

"I might just do that." *

In between laughing at the relentless ragging four buddies from Vancouver were laying on each other, I was wondering how these goofballs became some of the best poker players in the world.

 

 

 

Here's the scene:

          • Shawn Buchanon just made the final table of 10 at Mandalay Bay World Poker Tour event
          • Greg "Full Blown Tilt" Mueller was scrambling around, well, pretty much everywhere between the Bellagio sports book and Mandalay Bay poker room searching for a winning receipt for the Cavs/Pistons game
          • Kyle "krisqueen" Wilson (who's at least 10 years younger and 20 years more grown-up) was ribbing FBT while Adam Schwartz laughed it up in the background

 

 


Fast forward 24 hours and:

  • Shawn was resting up for his first WPT final table;
  • Kyle was winning a nice chunk of change in the $25/$50 No Limit game at the Bellagio;
  • And the guy who couldn’t find a piece of paper the night before did find himself ending the first day of the first WSOP event as  chip leader

I’ll be honest—I’m kind of pissed at these guys for ruining this great three-part feature story I’ve had planned for the last several weeks.  I had this great idea of following FBT, Shawn, and Kyle through the Series because each one of them has been playing some great poker on the circuit (and online) over the past several months.  I figured one of them would have their breakthrough moment at the WSOP and I would look like some kind of genius poker analyst for giving them lots of coverage before anyone else…

Thanks a lot, guys, for letting the cat out of the bag way too early.   You could have at least waited until I was able to write about your discussion of the different stages of tournament play I had planned for this weekend.  Or, better yet, wait until I was actually hounding you all day, blogging about each stage of a tournament from your perspective.   I’ll probably get around to doing those sooner rather than later since…

…ahh, never mind.  Just keep playing lights out poker on Saturday so you can bring a WPT and WSOP bracelet back to Vancouver with you.

 

 

 

*Author's note: As it turns out, the Root Beer/Sprite combo seems to be FBT's magical poker juice** as he ended the day with the chip lead.

**Patents pending.