Event #2, $1500 No-Limit Holdem

Hey, look at me in action.  First image I've seen of myself in the box at this year's World Series of Poker.

Today was the first big $1500 No-Limit Holdem event.  The lowest open field buy-ins are very, very popular.  The past few years the WSOP has opened with one of these events on a Saturday and the fields have grown to around 3000 players.  In fact, they are so popular, that this year we are breaking up the first day into two flights, about half of the players start on Saturday and the rest will play on Sunday, only to meet for the first time as a complete field for day two action on Monday.  We have about 200 poker tables available right now, approximately 150 in the four quadrants of the Amazon room, a dozen in the regular casino poker room, another dozen or so outside of the Buzio's poker room, and maybe a few more than two dozen in the Tropical room, which are normally dedicated to satellite play.  In about a week, another convention space opens up that will be big enough for another 60 tables.  I think I heard that total capacity by the time of the next big $1500 event (and during the four days of the main event) will be 276 tables.  But right now, our capacity is about 2000 players, and the first day of this event has been sold out for a few days.  With 1300 or so already registered for the second day and anticipation that it may sell out as well, the field for this tournament will break all records for shear size in number of players for any live poker tournament in history - if you exclude the last three WSOP main events.  In 2004, the first year Harrah's operated the WSOP, when Greg Raymer was the champion, the main event had 2576 entrants.  Since then, the main event exploded to over 8,000 players, with a slight correction last year due to online qualifying restrictions.  So, this will be the fourth largest poker tournament field, period.

I was originally scheduled to be off yesterday.  Then I was scheduled for live action at 2pm, and then I saw notes posted stating that all dealers need to report at 11am for the second bracelet event.  There was a scheduling error and they were concerned that not enough dealers would be available.  It turned out to be somewhat of an over reaction that resulted in pretty inefficient use of labor resources.  We were largely up and down all day, and I got cut loose early.  I only dealt four downs in over five hours, on what was supposed to be the busiest day of the whole tournament.  It was disappointing because I needed the work and was looking forward to a long busy day, but since they called everyone in at 11am, we had a dealer glut, and I presume that also created somewhat of a need in other areas during the hours that I was not around.  Not sure about that.

I did recognize a few faces at my first couple of tables, but there were no notable professionals.  I was scheduled to push into a table that had both T.J. Cloutier and David Grey, but a mistake by the dealer coordinator created an unfortunate fiasco that resulted in me getting yanked from the table after I had signed the card, sat down and started shuffling.  I was assigned to the tournament tables in the regular cash section.  This quadrant of the Amazon room has red table placards.  As soon as enough players bust out, they try to open up tables in this area in order to get enough cash games started to keep the players here at the Rio and keep them from wandering off to other casinos.  Smart, right?  Well, the execution wasn't so good, at least for me.  

When a table breaks in this area, the dealer currently at the table is responsible for straightening everything out, returning the tournament materials, and preparing the table for the next cash game.  A dealer coordinator takes their employee badge and changes their paycode for tax purposes, as we have to withhold a specific amount per hour per a tip compliance agreement with the IRS when dealing cash games.  The dealer that would normally push into this table is instructed to "push around" that table and just go to the next tournament table in the string.  This happened to me a couple of times, and unfortunately, both times the table that broke in front of me was designated as a break table, meaning that the dealer exiting that table would first go on break before resuming the string.  I ended up in the break room for three consecutive downs.  Then, after the last one, I was all set to finally deal to Red 25, the table with Cloutier and Grey, when I get an immediate tap that interrupted my first shuffle.  The dealer coordinator explained that she made an error and sent two dealers to this table.  She pulled me in favor of the other dealer, even though, I was rightfully in line to deal and had actually confirmed my assignment with her before going to the break room.  I held my tongue and kept my attitude in check, but I tried to let her see my disappointment, at least in my eyes.  I never got back into the tournament after that and was released for the day.  

It was a letdown after yesterday was so much fun, but this sort of thing was all messed up because of the schedule.  I am not much of a complainer, but I blew off some steam to my friends Dusty and Heather from Chattanooga and then watched some of the Event #1 restart.  Then my friend Tim called and he had a friend playing in the $1500 event, so we watched her for awhile.  In this picture she has about 12,000 chips, four times the starting stack, so she had a good start at least.  I had to take care of some things with my time card and badge, so I didn't catch up with them after the player break, but it was nice to see her doing well.  Go Jinjui!

I will be dealing in the live action area late on Sunday afternoon.  I'll try to post some stories about what I have been hearing from those games later.