Event #1, World Championship Pot Limit Holdem

I finally settled on some temporary housing in Vegas this morning.  I had spent a few days at the Sahara and then almost a week on the floor at my friend Tim’s while checking the For Rent magazines, CraigsList want ads, etc looking for a place.  My problems wasn’t so much a lack of available rooms, but lack of funds and indecisive potential roommates.  A few days ago, I decided on just finding something for myself, and after a few rent a room from someone’s home opportunities didn’t end up fitting my criteria, I rode the buses and walked to most all of the rent-by-the-week furnished apartment complexes, and ironically, I settled on the same complex that I stayed at last year.  It just turned out to be the most economical and its on a main bus route to the Rio.  Its nice to have a bed again.

I might have jumped the gun giving props to the dealer coordination being much better organized with respect to scheduling.  During my first two off days, it turns out that the posted schedule has changed a couple of times and its still pending further modifications.  I know that it must be a huge job to coordinate this many dealers, but I never even got a phone call about the changes, if friends who were not scheduled to be off hadn’t called to fill me in, I wouldn’t have gotten to work on time my very first day, as my report time had changed from 1pm to 11am.  But that’s all good, because I need and want the work.

I was originally penciled in to work live action today, but the registration for Event #1, Pot Limit Holdem exceeded expectations and they needed more dealers for the first bracelet tournament event.  I was VERY happy to be redirected to this event, as I love dealing pot limit and seldom get the opportunity.  Add to it that this event had such a high buy-in and would likely be packed full of professional players, and this was one event that I did not want to miss out on, even if I might have needed the tokes from live action to meet short term expenses.

In fact, if I were a big time player with nearly unlimited resources, I think this would be the premier bracelet event that I would be looking forward to.  Pot limit is such a better format than no-limit or straight limit, in my opinion.  Also, the field should be much more reasonable in size than the main no-limit event, and yet large enough to have a very nice sized prize pool. As it turns out, the field required nearly 40 tables, topping out at just under 400 players, creating a total prize pool in the neighborhood of $4 million.  This is the first of what the WSOP is calling “World Championship” events.  In the past, the main no-limit holdem event was the only $10K buy-in, but a few years back they added the higher buy-in H.O.R.S.E event for the top professionals, and for the first time, this year they are also having $10K pot-limitOmaha and Holdem events, as well as limit Stud, Omaha 8, Holdem.

I set up my table and anxiously awaited for the first few players to come to my table.  Embracing the Rio’s commitment to service, I greeted each player with a smile and friendly “Welcome to the 2008 World Series of Poker” tag line as I handed them their 20K starting chips and an all-access bracelet.  One of the first players to show up was Vince Van Patten, the color commentator for the World Poker Tour broadcasts on the Travel Channel.  I would later deal to his partner, Mike Sexton as well.  The table started short handed as we had several purchased seats show up late, most of them were young foreign players, a Russian girl and a couple of Scandinavians.  One of the last few to arrive was the lovely Isabelle Mercier, now blonde, and it felt strange asking to see her photo identification as play was in progress.  I think I read somewhere that she used to be a dealer at the famed Aviation Club in Paris, France before becoming a tournament pro.

There are a ton of floor persons on staff, it seems.  I wonder if that is a reaction to some sort of criticism from last years players.  There does seem to be a small army of them, and from what I overheard during processing at human resources and orientation, they went through a much thorough training session this year (two full days and a test).  But even with all of them around, when a player on my first table spilled his coke all over the table and cards, I couldn’t seem to get any help from them, nor the wait staff, despite several calls for help.  I had to use my little flop sweat towel to clean things up.  Icky sticky and of little use to me the rest of the day.

We were on two and three table pushes most of the day, then just before the dinner break I actually strung together five downs without a break.  When on break, I did notice that the dealer room was well-stocked with much better food selections, they really seem to be trying to take care of us in that manner.  It is a very, very long walk to the employee dining room and not possible during a 20-25 minute break.

On one of my early tables I had Tommie Venas, from Houston, his chips already nearly doubled up, and Daniel Negreanu, whose stack had taken an early beating.  It’s impossible for me to be certain, but I wondered if they tangled on a big hand before I got there.  A nice mannered gentlemen with a few years on me comes to the table and asks if its alright to drink beer at the table.  I chuckled and told him that he’d have to show me his identification, which I needed to verify his registration card, and then said, “Yup, you’re 21, it’s ok” and got a smile from him and some levity from the table.  He had arrived almost an hour late, but was pleased as punch to see Negreanu ad the table and told him that he always wanted to play with him and loved his televised play.  Negreanu replied with a friendly “you must have me all figured out then” and handled the admiration with very comfortable conversation.  He must get this all the time.  The new player than proceeded to play every hand for well over a full button revolution and called off most of his 20K starting chips during my 30 minute down.  He was still hanging on when I left, but the professionals were feasting on him pretty well.  It must be nice to be able to have the resources to plop down $10,000 for such short prospects in a tournament like this, but I can tell you that he was enjoying himself far more than anyone else in my first few tables.

On another table, just following a player break, I had my freshly setup decks washed and shuffled just before the tournament clock ticked down the final few seconds for the player break.  Then I heard the tournament director announce that we would have about a two minute delay as they uploaded something to fix a timing anomaly.  I waited patiently with my cut card on the table in front of my ready deck for direction to start and noticed that a few players hadn’t yet returned, or perhaps came by and left once again.  When the “put the cards in the air” direction came over the public address system, I cut the deck, picked it up and pitched out the first hand.  The player at the button, and at least one other, weren’t at their seat, so I mucked their hands and got the action started.  After a few players made their initial actions, Lee Watkinson sat down at the button and asked in a rather perturbed manner, “How the hell could you have shuffled up and dealt the entire table in less than 15 seconds?”  I shrugged and tried to appease him with an apologetic glance, but he didn’t let go of it and made a couple more comments.  I stated that the TD had delayed things by a few minutes and that my deck was verified, washed, shuffled and ready by the time the clock was started.  He continued to grumble and I didn’t get any sort of support from other players, I presumed they either agreed with him or were just tired of hearing it, but I still thought to myself that his complaints were out of order.  He could have returned in time and if not quite late, would have heard the announcement and realized the delay actually afforded him extra time to take his seat.  A few hands later, another player got up from his seat to talk with a friend, but got back just before my last card was dealt to the button.  Watkinson didn’t miss the opportunity to let me know that I had killed his hand under what he thought were similar conditions.  I had to tell him that, in fact, the other player was at his seat, if not in it, when the last card was dealt to the button.  I left it unsaid that he had not been anywhere near the table well after several players had acted.

Over the eleven tournament downs that I accumulated before being relieved, I dealt to many more notable professionals, including: Thor Hansen, Jean-Robert Belande, Jason Lester, Burt Boutin, Eric Seidel, Keith Lehr, Jamie Gold, Phil Laak, Jeffrey Lassandro, Vanessa Rousso, Jared Hamby, Duey Tomko, Ted Lawson, Bill Edler, Beth Shak, Andy Bloch, Max Pescatori, Dario Mineri and Roland deWolfe.  Of course there were many more recognizable faces on the tables that I didn't get to.  I hope that I get to go into the restart for this event at 2pm on Saturday.