And just so it's clear, Harrah's IS screwing up so much at this World Series.

I think other people are writing this, too, but here is a partial list:

* The registration process - It took hours and hours for people to register and buy in to the first few events. That may have abated but as far as customer service and first impressions, it was a gigantic negative. It's all the more puzzling because this is the third year Harrah's has run the WSOP at the Rio. How could they not be prepared, or not anticipate problems, or not have something better than last year?

* The payment process - I had to spend about an hour and a half after I busted out of the $1500 NLHE to get paid, and it was a miserable wait. First, I had to go upstairs to the back part of the Final Table Studio. Why they situated Step A of payouts where they hold final tables, WHILE A FINAL TABLE WAS GOING ON, is a mystery. Then a person escorted me and five others out of the Amazon Room and across a hallway to a series of offices with the sign "Payouts." My information (including my driver's license and players card, so I didn't have the option of just leaving and trying at some later time) was handed to someone behind a desk and I was told to wait out in the hall. After more than a half hour, my name was called and I was led to a desk. The clerk then took down my information - the same information I provided when I registered the day before - by hand on a printed form. They had a bank of computers in the room and individual computers in front of each desk, but they must have been props. It was all done pen-to-paper. After this, I was led back to the Amazon Room to a line of people at the cashier's cage. At the end of THAT line, I finally got paid. Again, they've done this for two complete WSOPs. Why is it like this after all that experience?

* The cards - To remedy the problem of playing cards with the durability of toilet paper in 2006, they decided each table would each day have a fresh deck of cards. They even came up with a "special design." Unfortunately, the special design was unreadable and there were numerous conspicuous errors - suits were almost impossible to divine, sixes and nines were difficult to distinguish. They replaced the cards with new ones after the dinner break on Saturday night.

* Parking - This is my personal problem. All the spaces closest to the convention center have been turned over to the valet. The best self-park space is further from the door than the worst valet space.

* Round for hand - Last year, they came up with a great idea to substitute for the interminable hand-for-hand delays at the bubble. They played round-for-round, designating a certain number of hands and having each dealer deal them out and stop after reaching that number. Every person eliminated in that round was deemed eliminated at the same time. It sped things up, the players liked it. It was smart and innovative. So when I got to the bubble last night, what did they do? Hand-for-hand. It took about a half hour to play five hands. Why did they stop doing something that worked so well last year?

I swear, sometimes the operators of the World Series are like the guy from Memento; every day they wake up with no memory of anything that came before.

BUT ... and this is a big but: They have done several things well.

* Commitment to charity - They score huge on this. They came through in a big way for Ante Up for Africa, the $5000 buy-in tournament on July 5, hosted by Annie Duke and Don Cheadle, for education about and relief for the victims of genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. Phil Gordon told me they were great with his Bad Beat on Cancer. And the VIP Lounge hosted by the Nevada Cancer Institute got a great assist from the Rio. The Lounge is supercool, with food, drinks, couches, TVs, and a putting green. It also comes with valet parking access as well as use of Rio facilities like the pool and the gym. It costs $1000, all of which is a donation to the Nevada Cancer Institute. ALL OF IT. That means that Rio comped everything - the food, the space, all the amenities.

* They fixed the playing card problem - After some monster mess-ups on Day 1 of Events 1 & 2 on Friday, they had U.S. Playing Card Co. ship them new cards with a standard design and they were in play by the end of the dinner break on Saturday. When Jeffrey Pollack announced this at the start of play on Saturday, he was booed. But he and Harrah's were very stand-up about it. They tried to correct a problem from last year. They tried to do something "extra" - make the cards more player-friendly. They ended up botching it up. I don't know if they didn't test the design or they trusted U.S. Playing Card Co. when they shouldn't have, but it was obvious after one second that the cards were unusable without major risk of error. But then they fixed it as fast as they could. And Pollack stood there knowing the players were going to boo him, and they didn't let him down.

* Final Table Studio - That's my name for it but they set up a final table area that is designed to accommodate live spectators. The last two years, the final table was situated to ESPN's needs and they clearly didn't care about the live audience. I haven't looked very closely at what they did, but it looks nice. The Amazon Room in general looks better and B.J. Nemeth, final-table journalist and photographer extraordinare, told me the lighting is a lot better this year.

And there are some good things (as well as some bad things I missed).

After three full days on site, though, I now get it. Harrah's is the newly-divorced dad.

You know how the newly-divorced dad takes you to the ballgame but doesn't pay the dentist bill? How he gets you the new video game system but acts all squirrely about paying his half of the camp fees? That's Harrah's.

Harrah's seems interested in going out of its way to be the cool dad - charity, making the playing cards special, sprucing up the final table - and they clearly care. But they don't understand that the most important thing about being a dad is to be dependable and responsible.

I hope they eventually get it. They make a lot of money off this, which is fine. But if this is truly "A Franchise," they need to be dependable and responsible. It's not about whether they'll spend money or not spend money - they spent money on some of the nice things they've done and they've even spent money on some of the lousy things they've done. It's about making it a priority to do well at the thankless tasks that you never get credit for doing well, but catch heat when you do it poorly.

I have my doubts because this is the second, third, or fourth year for this crew, depending on how you definte "crew". In any event, they are not rookies. But the fact that they are trying means there's hope. And poker players complain all the time, but they are also suckers for hope.

Addendum - After writing this, I was with Shannon Elizabeth when she bought in for tomorrow's $1500 LHE event. (Oh yeah, I'll be writing that ASAP.) There was an issue about the WSOP release; apparently someone forgot to have her sign it before the other events she played. In time, Ty Stewart and Jeffrey Pollack were involved and it got worked out. I was standing next to Shannon at the cage and, though Ty and Jeffrey - okay, Stewart and Pollack - didn't acknowledge my presence, I was right there with a media badge and they never asked me to leave or asked Shannon if they could discuss it with her privately.

Contrast this to an identical situation that arose involving Chris Ferguson and Steve Lipscombe. Before the 2006 WPT Championship, Ferguson was hopeful that issues with the WPT's release were going to be worked out. They weren't and he wasn't allowed to play. Lipscombe was supposed to discuss what went wrong with Chris, and Chris (standing outside the tournament area with me) called out to Steve as he exited the Fontana Bar at the Bellagio. Yes, Lipscombe said, they could discuss it. "Come on with me," he said. Chris asked me to come along. When Steve heard that, he exploded. "You expect me to talk about it with HIM listening?" He was furious and walked away fast, yelling at Ferguson. As far as I know, that was their last conversation before Chris sued the WPT.

Either the WSOP people are not paranoid lunatics like their counterparts at the WPT ... or they didn't notice my media badge.

(I should also say that the WSOP release is much, much different from the WPT's. Apart from dispensing with the "throughout the Universe" language in the WPT release, it seems encompassing and harsh, but only (I think - I admit that I signed mine without looking at it) about using the player's performance for its performance and to promote the performance and the WSOP. Near as I can tell, they language doesn't allow them to use your image to hustle people off the street to play at a St. Louis casino or put your face on a slot machine.)