Last month I wrote a piece complimenting the tournament staff for remedying the problems of 2006 and keeping the ship afloat and pointed in the right direction in 2007. One reader commented that I was “seeing things through seriously rose-tinted lenses,” but his objections to my argument seemed laughable to me then and, upon revisiting them, still do now. Even though he had yet to set foot inside the Rio, he labeled the present state of the World Series as “very corporate, very soulless.” Well, here’s the reality: a corporation owns and runs the World Series of Poker, hence it’s always going to feel corporate. That doesn’t, however, mean it has to feel soulless. For me, the real question is: what kind of experience is Harrah’s providing for players and fans in return for the healthy amount of juice they earn for hosting each event?
I have to give Harrah’s very high marks for the way they have addressed past problems each year. In 2005 the major complaints were mostly about infrastructure, long lines at the bathrooms and the inaccessibility of food. In 2006 Harrah’s trucked in a bunch of Porta-Potties and created the Poker Kitchen. The biggest complaints that year were that there were too many no-limit hold’em events relative to the number of other events, an average day in the H.O.R.S.E. tournament was way too long, and more tables were needed. Harrah’s addressed these issues in 2007 by adding a bunch of non-no-limit hold’em events to the schedule, expanding the H.O.R.S.E. tournament to five days, and creating the Poker Pavilion out back where the Poker Kitchen used to be.
Harrah’s has done an even better job this year as they were able to take care of many problems on the fly instead of waiting a year to address them. During the first week of the Series there were incredibly long lines just to enter certain events. By Week Two that was no longer an issue. The new cards implemented this year were quickly found to be seriously lacking… so Harrah’s immediately replaced them with better cards. Yes, the food in the Poker Kitchen got no better (and many would argue worse), but all the food inside the Rio sucks so where do you expect them to find better fare? Besides, most of the poker players I know aren’t exactly culinary experts. Give them an ass-meat burger and a Red Bull and they’re perfectly happy.
The biggest problem I had with Harrah’s this year was their creation of the sequestered tent, which I have already written about several times. It’s hard to defend this as anything more than one more way for them to make a buck—by not allowing fans or media to watch the action at these final tables they’re able to charge people to watch the coverage online. As a member of the media I have an especially big problem with this. My job is to write about these tournaments. I would have loved to have written about Phil Hellmuth winning his 11th gold bracelet, about the reaction on his face when he won the last hand or the things he did when he stood up from the table and moved off-camera, but I wasn’t allowed to. Sure, I could go back and watch the footage, but it’s not the same. Writing about an event through the filter of a television or computer screen dilutes the experience.
As good a job as Harrah’s has done in 2007, there are still plenty of aspects of the World Series that need to be fixed. Here are some suggestions of what I think should be done this “off season”:
Scrap the sequestered tent. I have already given my reasons above. If they don’t scrap it, may I suggest they simply remove the black cloth. That way, fans and media could watch the action in real time, and Harrah’s could still charge people to watch the action on their computers. If someone is willing to pay $50 (or whatever it is) to watch the final table of a poker tournament, they’re not going to spoil the occasion by following the action on someone’s blog.
Address the spectator issue. Two years ago, too many fans were allowed inside the Amazon Room during the main event and it made life difficult for everyone involved: players, media, tournament officials, as well as other fans. This year, not enough fans (or at least the right ones) were allowed inside the room and they all left pissed off. I think there should be a lottery for the general public that would allow a few lucky ones the right to watch the ESPN final table. That way, there would at least be a system in place instead of the mayhem that ensued this year. Some fans waited in line for an hour, only to get kicked out of the tournament room after ten minutes once the action came to a break. I would also allow each player one guest pass so they could have a wife or brother or friend watch them. For $10,000, that only seems fair.
Institute a more specific cell phone rule and enforce it. Nothing caused more confusion for the players and dealers. The problem with the present rule is that it leaves a lot of room for confusion. If you’ve just folded your hand, can you then talk on the phone? Can you send or receive a text message while a hand is going on? Dealers rarely said anything to players about their phone use until the David Singer Incident. On occasion I saw a dealer say something to a player using his phone, but generally they seemed to ignore it. A part of me wouldn’t mind seeing cell phones banned from the room entirely. Imagine this scenario. A player keeps his phone on vibrate in his pocket and whenever a confidante believes he should fold a big hand that friend calls him and lets it ring twice. Don’t think that some players haven’t tried to do something like this. As long as poker has existed, there has been cheating, and nothing makes cheating easier than technological devices such as cell phones.
Tournament structure. Last year, the players asked to be given more play so the tournament officials doubled the size of the players’ starting stacks. While this appeared to be an excellent solution, it was actually a charade because the starting limits were also doubled. In effect, nothing was done. If they really want to give the players more play, they should keep the starting stacks where they are now and cut down the size of the initial limits. For the main event this would mean going back to $25/$25 blinds or at the very least $25/$50 instead of $50/$100.
Expand and take over the room next door. The Poker Pavilion hasn’t been the greatest success. No player has been happy to discover that he’s starting one of the events in what amounts to a playground in Brooklyn when his compatriots are playing in Madison Square Garden. Whenever the air conditioning wasn’t working optimally, which seemed to happen a lot, the tent quickly grew very hot. Although the temperature was supposedly quite cool when Eskimo Clark had his first stroke at the table, if it had happened during one of the warm spells the press would have had a field day. Can you say, lawsuit? With or without the Pavilion, there’s a serious need for more room. Let me suggest that during the main event the tournament be allowed to take over the giant room next door. Hold the Gaming Expo a week earlier (or scrap it altogether) and let half the starting field play in this room. This would allow Day One of the tournament to be finished in two days instead of four and would allow for a smoother experience in general. I can already hear the argument against this idea, and it centers around money. Harrah’s can charge a pretty penny for use of that other room and using it would require them to buy 200-300 more poker tables and hire that many more dealers and staff, but oh how nice it would be for the rest of us.
As much as I would love the Poker Kitchen to serve gourmet fare, I’m not going to waste my breath. I’m also not going to spend any time discussing one of the most important issues to emerge in the poker world in the past several years: players’ rights. The World Poker Association seems to be gaining more power with each passing day, and hopefully they will continue to look after their own. In a Series where one player nearly died at the table and refused to stop playing (Eskimo Clark) and another seemed to be mimicking the demise of Stu Ungar (Vinny Vinh), it’s become more apparent than ever that the players need someone to protect their interests. I believe Harrah’s understands what an amazing event it inherited from the Binion family and will continue to do everything it can to make sure that the quality of the experience improves from year to year. Hopefully, Clark and Vinh will still be around next year to enjoy it.
This is the new reality of the main event of the World Series of Poker: the pros are the underdogs. It seems almost blasphemous to say, but it’s true. If I was to bet on who this year’s winner is going to be, I wouldn’t pick Gus Hansen or Carlos Mortensen or Lee Watkinson or J.C. Tran or Huck Seed or Robert Mizrachi (all of whom are still very much alive). I would bet on the Field, that nameless faceless mass of amateurs who combined still have less experience at the tables than Doyle Brunson. Why the pessimism?
Exhaustion. Many of the amateurs in the main event didn’t play in any of the preliminary events. They’ve been home sleeping in their own beds, resting up for the biggest poker tournament of their lives. They’ve probably been eating well—at the very least they haven’t been subsisting on the ass-meat the Poker Kitchen calls a hamburger. They have probably played in the occasional home game or a few hours a day online, but that’s it. Meanwhile, the pros have been here for six weeks playing poker every single day. Many of them have made Day Twos in dozens of events, which means they’ve put in 14-hour workdays but not necessarily made any money doing it. Many of them have even played in two events at the same time, entering a new event while still battling it out on a Day Two of another. Many of the top players stay at their homes in Las Vegas or at the Bellagio so they’ve been living comfortably, but a high percentage of them have been staying here at the Rio, so close to the action that sleep becomes an afterthought. In short, they’re exhausted. Chris Ferguson is usually one of the more upbeat players I know. He’s always laughing about something. But when I saw him on the eve of the main event he was falling asleep at his table during the $5,000 2-7 lowball event, which may explain why he’s already busted from the main event.
The luck factor. When Johnny Chan won his second world championship in 1988, he had to survive 12 coinflip situations. There were only 167 players entered in the main event that year. Imagine how lucky you have to get to survive a field of 6,358? And it’s not just the race situations you have to win. With thousands of hands being played each hour, we have seen some pretty amazing ones this year. Usually set over set is considered the ultimate cooler. You flop a set of 7s and put all your money in the pot, only to discover that your opponent flopped a set of jacks. Well, how about quads over quads (which actually happened the other day)? Or having your opponent make a royal straight flush (which also happened)? No matter how good of a player you are, there’s nothing you can do in these situations. All you can do is hope they don’t happen to you.
On my way back into the Amazon Room last night I found the entrance by the main cage clogged with people. A short balding man with glasses was holding up the line. He had a woman at his side, and they were trying to talk their way into the room, but the security guard wasn’t having any of it. I started to step around the couple—my media badge is like an EZ pass on the highway—when I noticed who it was: Robert Varkonyi and his wife, Olga.
Today’s portion of the field has been condensed into a cluster of tables that only takes up a third of the space inside the Amazon Room. The players have also been separated into the haves and have nots, the big stacks and those just hanging on and hoping to double up. One of those big stacks belongs to Jared Hamby, who finished second in the Mandalay Bay Poker Championship in May.
One of the few past champions left in the field, Huck Seed, has 98k at the dinner break. He got a little boost when, after he limped in from early position, the player on his immediate left moved all in for 16.7k more. Seed called and showed pocket 8s. His opponent had pocket 9s. Seed was in bad shape until the flop came 
Day 2A continues to proceed at a frenetic pace. After losing over 200 players during the first two-hour level, and over 100 since then, only 700 of the 1,037 players who started today are left. They are supposed to play five levels today with a projected finishing time of 2 a.m., but things could get complicated if too many players bust out early. The money bubble can’t be reached until after the field is combined on Thursday.
Day 2A of the World Series is a welcome change from the craziness of the Day Ones. Those four days added up to the longest day of my life. There is actually room to breathe inside the Amazon Room, and it’s getting more spacious with the passing of each minute. Everywhere I walked during the first level today I heard the heart-pounding cry of “All in and a call!” One of the quietest tables I came across was table number 65. The fact that Berry Johnston, the 1985 world champion and a man known for not wasting words, was sitting there did nothing to change the table’s tranquility.
For weeks, even months, people have been wondering how many players would enter the main event this year. The great unknown in the equation was what effect the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act would have on the numbers. Many speculated that the number of entrants would drop sharply from last year’s record of 8,773 because it was assumed that the online poker sites would be sending far fewer satellite winners. The first over/under line I heard was 5,000. Others put it as high as 7,000. All agreed that the number would be less than last year’s total, and they were right. After three and a half days of play, the official number of entrants was just announced: 6,358.
Phil Hellmuth just arrived, and in grand style too. Having (supposedly) wrecked the Ultimate Bet sports car, he stepped out of a limo moments ago wearing a NASCAR-style black racing suit with his name and that of his many sponsors splashed all over it. He was accompanied by a retinue of similarly dressed women (dressed similar to him and each other). There were eleven in all, a nod to his having won eleven bracelets. Hellmuth stood in the center of the hallway with his racing helmet tucked under one arm as hundreds of photographers and film crews captured his (ridiculous) image. I am trying to imagine some of the past champions like Johnny Moss or Jack Straus ever pulling such a stunt, and I just can’t.
Say what you want about Phil Hellmuth, but you can’t deny he’s entertaining. The man isn’t afraid to open his mouth, which generally—but certainly not always—makes for good theater. I plan on spending some time peeking over his shoulder at some point during the day, but he has to get here first. As is his habit, his seat remains empty an hour and a half into Day 1D. There’s a rumor swirling that yesterday he wrecked a race car sponsored by Ultimate Bet in the Rio’s parking lot. I am sure I will hear all about it. In the meantime I have had to make do with watching Daniel Negreanu. Not a bad second choice.
