2010 World Series of Poker:The Needs of the Few (Day 31)

Yesterday was Day 1 of the Tournament of Champions. It started at noon and was scheduled to play four levels, ending at about 4:20pm (Bob). And so yesterday was the first day when most of the rest of the poker world learned that the needs of the many don't mean shit compared to the needs of the few or the needs of Harrahs.

All summer, Day 2 and Day 3 restarts have gone off at either 2:30pm or 3pm, depending on the event. Yesterday, restarts were pushed back to 4:30pm. Why? So that the 27 players that were playing in the TOC wouldn't have to worry about having their stacks blinded off if they were alive in other events.

I was scheduled to cover Day 3 of the $5,000 PLO8. 21 players were returning. Exactly one of them, Erik Seidel, remained in the field. And so the other 20 players, all of whom paid the same $5,000 as Seidel, were thrown into a state of confusion when their restart didn't go off at 3pm like they had been told it would. In fact, many of them couldn't even get a precise answer as to when it *would* restart. At one point, the best answer I got was, "Not before 4:10pm".

Don't get me wrong. I'm not faulting Seidel. This was a decision that was made by Harrahs. If I were in Seidel's shoes and Harrahs said to me, "We're going to delay your restart," I'd be fine with it too. But it's a stark reminder of where Harrahs true interests lie, and that's not with the players at large. It's also a stark reminder that some players are more equal than others.

Harrahs and ESPN need these "tv" players to play the made-for-television TOC and to pump up the overall WSOP television ratings. That directly translates into money in ESPN's and Harrahs' pockets. God forbid any of those players should have to make a choice between pursuing a deep run in a bracelet event -- a real poker tournament -- and playing for the $500,000 first prize in the TOC.

I guess the lesson here is, "Nothing gets in the way of the money."

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2010 World Series of Poker: Unlucky in Cards (Day 28)

One of the things I failed to mention in my odds and ends update yesterday was the protest that occurred at the WSOP Seniors Event.

Wait, what?

There was no protest at the Seniors Event, of course. You'd think that the people who claimed they were protesting the Ladies Event as discriminatory and sexist and not on-par with a bracelet in an open event would have been there to protest the Seniors event as discriminatory and ageist and not on-par with a bracelet in an open event. But they weren't, which just further goes to show what a bunch of bollocks the whole Ladies Event "protest" really was. And before you tell me "but the NGC allows the WSOP to age-restrict the Seniors Event", understand that the underlying principle is *exactly* the same. The fact that the Seniors Event is state-sanctioned is irrelevant.

**

We're 40+ events into the WSOP now and reaching the stage where player's bankrolls have been decimated. There are plenty of players who are "0 for the summer" so far and who start coming up with creative excuses about why they've decided not to play the later-in-the-schedule, big buy-in events. Some are better at hiding their losses than others, just as some are better than others at fooling themselves that it's a case of run-bad rather than a case of being overmatched and/or lacking the proper skills.

It's hard to differentiate bad luck from bad play, to be sure. That's one of the things that makes tournament poker so frustrating. During any of the large-field NLHE events, there might be 100 players who play optimally and wind up with nothing to show for it. The question becomes, "Am I playing optimally and getting unlucky? Or am I not playing optimally?"

Not surprisingly, given the egos involved, most players think they're getting unlucky. I asked a friend once to give me an example of a hand he played poorly. He couldn't do it. The best he could come up with was getting coolered with KK into AA. It is exceptionally rare that I hear a player admit that they didn't play well. Most are usually "playing great and getting unlucky".

It's the one thing, more than any other, that will prevent those people from ever being great players.

**

If you haven't been watching the World Cup, you missed arguably the most important -- and the most exhilarating -- moment in U.S. soccer history on Wednesday afternoon. Landon Donovan slotted in a goal one minute into stoppage time to send the U.S. through to the knockout stage. It was a moment that had been building for 16 years, ever since the U.S. hosted the World Cup back in 1994.

America may have finally caught up to the rest of the world as a footballing nation.

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2010 World Series of Poker: Odds and Ends (Day 27)

* A sure sign that we're four weeks into the 2010 WSOP: I haven't posted in a week. The sleep deficit is building after some incredibly long nights at the Rio. These days I'm sleeping almost until the point that I have to go back down there. World Cup isn't helping.

* Numbers continue to be up at the 5pm tournaments and in the non-NLHE games. With what I've witnessed in many of the fixed-limit games, I think the statement, "In poker in 2010, players with a skill edge are better able to exploit that edge in fixed-limit games" is at least worthy of debate. When I see Phil Ivey correctly value-betting third pair, and some other players not getting obvious value for top pair, it starts the gears turning in my head. After all, fixed-limit poker is all about extracting the extra bet when you're best and saving it when you're not.

* There was a power outage last night in parts of Las Vegas for about 5-10 minutes while I was covering Day 2 of the $1,500 PLO8. They kept playing in a semi-darkened Amazon Room using emergency lighting.

* Watching Phil Ivey dismantle Bill Chen heads-up in the $3,000 HORSE event was a thing of beauty. Chen started with a lead of 3.3 million to 1.0 million. Within 10 minutes of the start of heads-up play limits increased to 60,000 and 120,000. Ivey had all the chips in less than 2 hours, whereas almost every other heads-up match at this WSOP has taken 3.5 to 4 hours to play out.

* My streak of not covering a single hand of poker in the Pavilion Room was snapped on Day 25. I was scheduled to cover $1,500 PLO8 in the Pavilion Room at noon, but because the $3,000 HORSE ran so late I was bumped to the 3pm restart of Day 3 of a $1,000 NLHE (my first 9-handed, "simple" NLHE event) in the Amazon Room. At about 4pm it was decided to swap me back to the PLO8. If the original swap had held, I would have made it all the way to Event 51, $3,000 Triple-Chance NLHE, without setting foot in the Pavilion Room.

* Is the Main Event really 11 days away?

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2010 World Series of Poker: Another Day Would Be Nice (Day 20)

Yesterday (today?) I covered Day 3 of the $10,000 Limit Omaha Hi/Lo World Championship at the World Series of Poker. We started with 23 players. When I looked at the structure, I knew I was in for a brutally long day.

"Bet the over on 5am," I told Abe Mosseri when he asked me how long I thought it would take to play to a champion. "And it's a lock."

7am. That's what time it was when Sam Farha eliminated James Dempsey to end the tournament. It was a 16-hour day that started at 3pm. The players played 31 one-hour levels across three days -- eight levels on Day 1, ten levels on Day 2, and 13 levels on Day 3.

That has become a common pattern at the 2010 WSOP. Of the first 25 events, I believe only two reached the final table by the end of Day 2. Typically the final table of a tournament is a day in and of itself, but 23 of the 2010 WSOP events have started Day 3 with more than one table of players and have had to play multiple levels on Day 3 before the final table was reached. That has made for many long Day 3s.

The length of tournament days was a huge problem in 2008. Event 2 of the 2008 WSOP, the first event I ever covered, still had 18 players remaining at 6am on Day 2. Last year the WSOP tried to combat the problem by instituting a new rule (I'm too lazy to look it up, but I believe it's Rule 96) that states that no level on a Day 2 will start past 3am. The problem with the rule is that it simply makes Day 3 the super-long day -- the day when the biggest money is on the line and the decisions have the most direct impact on a player's results.

It's all a question of math. You can stop play for the day at a certain time of night, but the length of a tournament is a function of the total chips in play and the structure. Right now the size of the fields and the pace of the structures create a WSOP tournament that takes roughly 30 levels to play out.

I'd really love to see the WSOP move to 4-day tournaments instead of trying to cram everything into three days. Triple chip stacks and the size of the typical WSOP field justify such a move. An EPT model could be used, with eight levels played every day. Very, very few tournaments would have problems reaching the final table by the end of Day 3, and then the players wouldn't be bone-tired at the final table while trying to make decisions worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. An ancillary benefit is that dinner breaks could be scrapped, since players would never play more than eight levels in a day. Noon tournaments would wrap up by 9pm; 5pm tournaments would be done by 2am; 3pm re-starts would finish at midnight.

Four-day tournaments will never happen, of course, for two reasons. First, the WSOP schedule would have to be lengthened. It's already unwieldy and too long at 7 weeks (see Katkin's Pokerati Op-Ed for more thoughts on this) and lengthening the schedule would cost money. There is absolutely no chance Harrah's is going to create more costs for itself than are minimally necessary to run the WSOP. Theoretically the number of bracelet events could be reduced in order to provide room in the schedule for four-day tournaments... but that would also reduce the rake paid. No dice.

The second reason the WSOP won't move to four-day tournaments is because a small but vocal minority of poker pros -- the ones who play 20-30 events every summer -- wouldn't be as able to play multiple events. The WSOP has tried for hard to broaden its appeal to a wide, "casual" audience while also leaving plenty of things intact for the hardcore tourney grinders. Those grinders constitute a small percentage of the overall WSOP player population but also constitute a not insignificant percentage of the rake paid.

The WSOP has been an evolving beast the last couple of years as it has encountered, and attempted to resolve, problems caused by growing pains. This is one problem that I suspect will never be addressed, and that's really too bad for all involved.

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2010 World Series of Poker: Checking in on the Numbers Again (Day 18)

We're almost halfway through the preliminary events of the 2010 WSOP, so it's time to check in on attendance again:

Event 1 - $500 CE NLHE: 866 in 2009; 721 in 2010 (-17%)
Event 2 - $50,000 PPC: 148 in 2008*; 116 in 2010 (-22%)
Event 3 - $1,000 NLHE: 6,012 in 2009; 4,345 in 2010 (-28%)
Event 4 - $1,500 O8: 918 in 2009; 818 in 2010 (-11%)
Event 5 - $1,500 NLHE - 2,791 in 2009; 2,092 in 2010 (-25%)
Event 6 - $5,000 NLHE shootout - 280 in 2009; 358 in 2010 (+28%)
Event 7 - $2,500 2-7 TD - 257 in 2009; 291 in 2010 (+13%)
Event 8 - $1,500 NLHE - 2,506 in 2009; 2,341 in 2010 (-9%)
Event 9 - $1,500 PLHE - 633 in 2009; 650 in 2010 (+3%)
Event 10 - $10,000 7CS - 142 in 2009; 150 15 in 2010 (+6%)
Event 11 - $1,500 NLHE - 2,638 in 2009; 2,563 in 2010 (-3%)
Event 12 - $1,500 LHE - 643 in 2009; 625 in 2010 (-3%)
Event 13 - $1,000 NLHE - 3,042 in 2010
Event 14 - $1,500 2-7 Draw - 147 in 2009; 250 in 2010 (+70%)
Event 15 - $10,000 Stud Hi/Lo - 164 in 2009; 170 in 2010 (+4%)
Event 16 - $1,500 NLHE 6-max - 1,459 in 2009; 1,663 in 2010 (+14%)
Event 17 - $5,000 NLHE - 655 in 2009; 792 in 2010 (+21%)
Event 18 - $2,000 NLHE - 446 in 2009; 476 in 2010 (+7%)
Event 19 - $10,000 2-7 Draw - 96 in 2009; 101 in 2010 (+5%)
Event 20 - $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha - 809 in 2009; 885 in 2010 (+9%)
Event 21 - $1,500 Seven-Card Stud - 359 in 2009; 408 in 2010 (+14%)
Event 22 - $1,000 Ladies NLHE - 1,060 in 2009; 1,054 in 2010 (-1%)
Event 23 - $2,500 LHE 6-max - 367 in 2009; 384 in 2010 (+5%)
Event 24 - $1,000 NLHE - 3,289 in 2010
Event 25 - $10,000 Omaha Hi/Lo - 179 in 2009; 212 in 2010 (+18%)

What a difference a week makes. It seems that the smaller-field events are drawing better than they did in 2009. Are players shifting their thinking to the idea that trying to slog their way a 4,000-player field in an event with a fast structure is not the best value for their money? Or is it just that the non-NLHE games are gaining more popularity than they previously enjoyed?

The $1,000 donkaments seem to have settled around 3,000 players each. Presumably that's a number that WSOP officials will be happy with. It's well above what the $1,500 events were typically drawing, but not so crazy out of control as to be a logistical nightmare to organize and operate.

Things are looking up for the WSOP

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2010 World Series of Poker: Ladies Event Post-Script (Day 17)

A few more thoughts on the Ladies Event: PokerGrump's comprehensive post, Change100's Op-Ed "Don't Rain on My Parade" at PokerNews; California Jen's post comparing the Ladies Event to racial segregation.

I agree with some of what these authors wrote; I disagree with some of it. But each piece is worth reading. I'm surprised that some other people who have been very vocal on this issue in the past have chosen to remain silent. But my bottom line is this: whether or not you agree with the existence of the event doesn't give you the right to crash someone else's party and shit on it. There are better, more respectful ways to try to induce change.

--

Yesterday I was on Day 1 of the $10,000 Omaha Hi/Lo. It was a fairly sedate day, with about a third of the field eliminated by the end of the night. I'll be back on it today and tomorrow.

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2010 World Series of Poker: Ladies Event Controversy Again (Day 15)

Today I intended to write about the flap over the live-reporting coverage of this year's WSOP. That was before a group of men entered WSOP Event 22, the $1,000 Ladies Event. Some probably are going to accuse me of being too emotionally close to this issue because of the people involved, but I have a lot to say about this stunt.

It seems every year the Ladies Event causes controversy. Some people are in favor of the event as a way to bring more women into the game. They believe a women-only event makes women who might otherwise be intimidated to "get their feet wet" playing poker feel more comfortable at the table. Others are against women-only events, largely because they find the existence of women-only events demeaning to women. They believe there's nothing stopping women from competing on an equal footing with the boys in open events and that women-only tournaments suggest that there's something inherently "male" about playing poker.

The issue has been debated interminably for years and years. Personally, I believe that ladies events are a solution in search of a problem. But I'm willing to concede that each side may have some valid points. In this post I'm not going to champion one side or the other.

What I am going to do is blast the guys who entered the Ladies Event and the people who supported them in doing so.

I understand that there is no way that Harrah's can prevent men from entering the Ladies Event. But just because it can't be prevented doesn't mean it should be encouraged. After all, what does a man competing in an event designated as a Ladies Event accomplish? Why, exactly, are these men doing it? I suspect there are a number of different dynamics at work, none of them mutually exclusive and all of them incredibly misguided.

1. Guys who think it's funny. Some of the guys dressed up in drag to play the Ladies Event. I'm guessing that they thought doing so would be hilarious. News flash, guys: it's been done.

Dressing up in drag for a ladies event might have been good for a few chuckles when the TiltBoys first did it six years ago at Bay101. Since then, however, it's been done so often that it's become unoriginal and derivative. There's nothing chuckle-worthy about it anymore. If these guys want to dress up in drag, the Fruit Loop isn't far from the Rio.

Dressing in drag to enter a women-only event also overlooks the fact that these guys are turning the Ladies Event into their own personal joke at the expense of the people who take the event seriously. I wonder how disgusted those same players would be if CareerBuilder.com entered a chimpanzee into the Main Event.

2. Guys who think they're making a statement. Some guys entered the event (not in drag) to protest the existence of ladies-only tournaments. Here's my question: what statement, exactly, does a man playing a women-only event make? Are these guys trying to force the women who believe in the value of a women-only event to play against men?

I just don't understand what the participation of these men in the event is supposed to prove. All it does is shit on the women who actually believe in the value of women-only events. It also makes those men look like incredibly selfish, juvenile assholes. I'm told that the whole room applauded upon the elimination of the first guy from the event. What does that say about the "statement" the men were trying to make?

If these men were really interested in change, if they were really interested in the removal of women-only events from poker festivals, if they were really interested in bringing more women into the game on an equal footing with men in open events, the guys who entered the ladies event would work to effect that change continually. They'd try to find avenues to the levels where the decisions to host women-only events are made. They'd do that continually, repeatedly, over time. They wouldn't do it by playing a women-only poker tournament one day out of the year and then ignoring the issue the rest of the year.

Where are those guys to protest the Seniors Event? Where are those guys to protest the Casino Employees event? The same principle is at work in those events but I don't see these guys entering those events to "protest" their inclusion on the WSOP schedule.

If the argument is that the existence of a women-only event is demeaning to women, the LAST way to make that point is to enter the tournament. Because here's the thing: a LOT of the women (not all, but a lot) who play women-only events believe in the concept. By entering the tournament as a man, all you are doing is demeaning those women and shitting on their beliefs and values because you think you're being clever or because you think your beliefs and values are more valid than theirs.

3. Guys who think the field is weaker than an average field. This category is not mutually exclusive with categories 1 and 2. Don't kid yourself. If the men who entered women-only events were ONLY interested in doing it for chuckles or were ONLY interested in doing it to make a statement, they wouldn't try to so hard to win the damn things. What these men are doing is attempting to take advantage of a field that is perceived as softer than average. These men can dress it up as a ha-ha, they can dress it up as a political statement, but like everything else in poker (and in life) it's as much as about the money as it is anything else.

Again, it's not the first time this has happened. In 2007 Jose Canseco and five others entered a ladies event at the Cal State Champs. In 2009, Abraham Korotki won the $300 Ladies Event at the Borgata, good for $20,000.

Some people are pissing in the wind when it comes to this issue. They can react with all the mock indignation and outrage that they want when Harrah's apologizes to the field for the inclusion of men, but Harrah's was right to apologize. The event was marketed as a Ladies Event, an event where women could play only against women. It was not marketed as an open event. Harrah's can't prevent men from entering the tournament but Harrah's can certainly encourage them not to, can certainly apologize to its target audience for the disruption of the event by a few misguided, juvenile individuals.

There are good ways to protest something and bad ways to protest something. The people who entered the Ladies Event, whether out of humor, misguided political statement, or to take advantage of the field, rightfully deserve the scorn of everyone in poker. That includes those who believe in the value of women-only events and those who believe that women-only events should be removed from the schedule -- but believe in effecting that change in ways that are respectful to all involved.

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2010 World Series of Poker: A Day for People (Day 14)

Last night, for the first time in two weeks, I wasn't the last person to leave the Amazon Room. The 6-max tournament played down from 16 to a champion in 6 hours of play, thanks in large part to the freakish run-good of eventual champ Carter Phillips. I actually had time to go have a few drinks at the hooker bar with AlCantHang. We were eventually joined by BadBlood before TheMark dragged him off for some late-night PLO cash action. Lacey Jones even joined us, all agog about a big announcement coming tomorrow.

For all my talk of playing satellites, last night would have been a great opportunity. In fact, I was in the Pavilion Room for more than 2 minutes for the first time all WSOP. But one of the things I've been lacking with my very late nights is quality socializing time with the friends I've made in this little wacky poker world. Yes, I've talked at length recently about all of the negative personality types that dominate the game but there are also some damn fine people. I provided comedic relief to the crew that was covering the $2k LHE event and also chatted with a few friends playing in that event before Al and I headed off to grab drinks. All of that was more important than playing. There will always be time to play.

Today is another day off, a day I'll use to catch up on some other work. Funny how life doesn't stop just because the WSOP is in town. Tomorrow, maybe, I'll play some satellites. The day before a donkament seems like a good satellite day, don't you think?

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2010 World Series of Poker: Quiet in the Amazon Room (Day 13)

When I arrived to the Amazon Room yesterday at 1:30pm, it was empty and dead silent. For several years I have thought of the Amazon Room as being the hub of the World Series, the room that is always going 24 hours a day for 7 weeks. This year, that room is the Pavilion Room, and oddly enough through two weeks of the WSOP I have yet to set foot inside the Pavilion Room.

For me, then, the WSOP is lacking a certain energy this year.

That's fine. I don't need it to be a non-stop carnival of poker action. When Wicked Chops, a few years ago, said, "It's just like high school," they weren't kidding. Even once you discount the youth factor of a lot of the "Internet generation" of poker players, there are too many poker players whose insecurity is so crippling that they cope with it by trying to prove how poker-smart they are to anyone who will listen or by winning some poker.

At least in the Amazon Room I don't have to deal with a lot of that, don't have to deal with the endless bad-beat stories. Poker players, as a group, are the unluckiest people in the world. You'll rarely find one that played a hand or a tournament badly. They either got unlucky, were bad-beated, ran bad, or whatever other variant you want to call it. It's just another form of the poker ego manifesting itself.

I do like to see the genuinely nice people who catch a heater, play well, or otherwise run good and hit a nice score. They're the ones who are genuinely happy with their accomplishment, rather than feeling entitled to it or deserving of it or vindicated by it. Those nice people exist at the WSOP, they just tend to be much quieter than their asshole, insecure counterparts.

Today I'm covering the last three tables of the $1,500 NLHE 6-max, Event 16. Hopefully the winner will fall into the former category of player rather than the latter.

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2010 World Series of Poker: Side Trip to the Nugget (Day 12)

In a weird quirk of scheduling, yesterday was my second day off in a row. I initially intended to use the day for satellites at the Rio but Sunday evening I was persuaded to hit the Grand Poker Series' $235 PLO8 tournament at the Golden Nugget. For what it's worth, I've played exactly one previous PLO8 tournament in my life, but variety is good and I expected the field to be soft.

Not so much. 150 players came out -- a very surprising number given that only 68 played the PLO at the WSOP-Circuit at Caesars in April -- and I recognized many of them. Last year the $235 HORSE tournament that I played at the Nugget was filled with people who seemed like they had nothing better to do at the time. Yesterday's PLO8 field had a few of those players but they were outnumbered by players who clearly had played some Omaha before.

For sure, PLO8 is not a game often offered in live tournaments (watching dealers try to split pots was frustrating). The Omaha junkies might therefore have come out for a tournament at a price point that they might otherwise have ignored. But it still surprised me that some of the people who were there would bother with such a trifle as a $235 tournament.

I got donk-lucky to stay in the tournament all the way to the money bubble, then got donk-unlucky on the bubble. Somehow I squeaked into a min-cash, a frustrating result for 11 hours of play but better than the alternative, given that I was down to just 2 big blinds on the money bubble.

Today it's back to the grind at the Rio. I can't say I'm looking forward to the slog but writing about poker is better than playing poker for a living.

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2010 World Series of Poker: durrrr-Nguyen's Natural Selection (Day 11)

I had the day off yesterday, so I missed the durrrr circus (durrrr-cus?) last night. I'm guessing the atmosphere in the Amazon Room was electric but to be honest I didn't much care. Tom Dwan is good, no question. But the thing that created the atmosphere was the fact that he's an absolute degenerate with millions of dollars on the line for winning a bracelet. That's something that makes me shrug.

The night before I witnessed the spectacle of Men Nguyen capturing bracelet No. 7. It was, in a word, disgraceful. He acted like a child for much of the final table, by outright laughing at his opponents to their face, by sulking and muttering under his breath when he was on a downswing, by flinging his cards at the dealers and sidling to the edge of verbally abusing them when he had bad luck, and even by cajoling Brandon "Bryan" Adams into playing the last hand blind. Nguyen treated his river card like he was playing baccarat.

Welcome to the World Series of Squeezing.

To be fair, two nights ago few people were rooting for Nguyen, a player who has the reputation of a cheater. A well-known member of the media sent me a text during the final table that read, "For all that is holy in the universe... I hope Brandon wins." On the other hand, last night most people were rooting for durrrr, even though his heart is no less degenerate than Nguyen's. Probably the only people who weren't rooting for him were the pros who made bracelet bets against him.

Welcome to the World Series of Sweating.

Is all this really something to admire and to aspire to? Do intelligent, interesting, ambitious people look at the poker scene (not the game itself, mind you, but the scene, the industry, the people who have forsaken all else for poker) and think, "Yes, that's the way to go"? Or do they look at it and find it all kind of sad?

I'm not sure. There are good people in poker, for sure. But there's a reason they say it's a tough way to make an easy living, and when you see what that does to people like Men Nguyen -- and maybe one day Tom Dwan -- it doesn't exactly inspire.

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2010 World Series of Poker: The Numbers Game (Day 9)

A little scoreboard watching through twelve events:

Event 1 - $500 CE NLHE: 866 in 2009; 721 in 2010 (-17%)
Event 2 - $50,000 PPC: 148 in 2008*; 116 in 2010 (-22%)
Event 3 - $1,000 NLHE: 6,012 in 2009; 4,345 in 2010 (-28%)
Event 4 - $1,500 O8: 918 in 2009; 818 in 2010 (-11%)
Event 5 - $1,500 NLHE - 2,791 in 2009; 2,092 in 2010 (-25%)
Event 6 - $5,000 NLHE shootout - 280 in 2009; 358 in 2010 (+28%)
Event 7 - $2,500 2-7 TD - 257 in 2009; 291 in 2010 (+13%)
Event 8 - $1,500 NLHE - 2,506 in 2009; 2,341 in 2010 (-9%)
Event 9 - $1,500 PLHE - 633 in 2009; 650 in 2010 (+3%)
Event 10 - $10,000 7CS - 142 in 2009; 150 15 in 2010 (+6%)
Event 11 - $1,500 NLHE - 2,638 in 2009; 2,563 in 2010 (-3%)
Event 12 - $1,500 LHE - 643 in 2009; 625 in 2010 (-3%)

That's six events that are down in numbers, 3 events that are flat, and 3 events that are up. One of the "up" events -- the $10k Stud -- could easily just be a statistical aberration. I wouldn't expect to see Stud make much of a comeback any time soon.

If we add up all the numbers, we find that attendance is off 17% so far to start the 2010 WSOP. Andrew Feldman at ESPN states on Twitter that we can't say that the WSOP isn't succeeding based on donkament numbers. And I'm not suggesting that the WSOP isn't succeeding. Sure, if you get 2,000 players for a tournament, that's a great turnout.

But declining numbers surely have some meaning -- the question is what that meaning is. Total donkament numbers so far are off 19%, a shade worse than what the total WSOP is off. Donkaments are what the WSOP has become. There are 13 on this year's schedule of 57 events, not counting shootouts, 6-max events and non-open events. If we're not going to judge the WSOP on donkaments, what *are* we going to judge it on?

(Prediction, by the way: the $1,500 NLHE shootout will see a huge increase in turnout this year.)

I'm going to mull over what I think it all means while I continue to watch the entrants on an event-by-event basis. In the meantime, today I'll be working the $10K stud final two tables. It's quite a line-up, so check out the live updates on PokerNews.

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2010 World Series of Poker: Jim Joyce's Second Job (Day 8)

Dealer errors happen. Floor errors happen. I wrote a few days ago about how making mistakes can actually be very instructional. And if that's true, than the 2010 World Series of Poker is quickly proving itself to be the most instructional WSOP ever. Jim Joyce would be proud.

This is my third WSOP. I'm well-acquainted with the fact that it's difficult to find a few thousand qualified, well-trained staff (dealers, floors, etc.) to drop everything for 7 weeks and move to the middle of the desert. But the errors I'm seeing this year extend to every level of the operation. There were the poor decisions made regarding Event 3, which almost reached the money on independent Day 1s; there was the Amnon Filippi registration miscue of a few days ago; there are basic floor decisions being botched horribly; and there are dealer mistakes as egregious as skipping a player during a hand of Stud on seventh street.

The floor errors are the most problematic. The floors are the arbiters of the game, the ones who are supposed to make sure the rules are applied properly and fairly. They're not doing a good job of it. Towards the end of the night in the Stud event yesterday, Matt Glantz completed to 1,200 before David Singer threw out three chips (two T500 and one T1,000) chips behind him. Even though Singer made a mistake and meant to just call, his action was *clearly* a raise. It was more than half of a raise and was not just a single over-sized chip. The table requested a floor ruling. Somehow the floor who came to the table initially ruled Singer's action a call! There was such a howl of protest that a second floor was summoned who reversed the call.

The human element is what people were deriding earlier this week when Jim Joyce botched a call in a baseball game between the Detroit Tigers and the Cleveland Indians that cost Armando Gallaraga a perfect game. In Joyce's case, it was a "judgment call". At the WSOP, bright-line rules are supposed to prevent those kinds of botched calls by taking judgment out of the equation. But that only works if the rules are properly applied.

For $420 of juice a head in a $10,000 event, asking that the rules be applied properly doesn't seem like it's asking for too much, no matter how "instructional" mistakes in the application of those rules might be.

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2010 World Series of Poker: Back At It (Day 7)

Looks like I didn't miss much while I was away from the Rio yesterday. I really do want to get into several of the single-table satellites at some point but yesterday wasn't the day. Neither is today. Despite not starting work until 4pm (for the 5pm $10K Stud event), I just won't have the time.

Allen Kessler spent some of his time two nights ago during a break in the 2-7 triple draw event complaining to Jack Effel and Ty Stewart about what he felt was the event's horrible structure. (Kessler would go on to make the money, finishing in the final three tables.) Stewart just bit his lip. Effel replied that he doesn't take complaints after 5pm, and that Kessler should send Effel an email -- an email which, I'm sure, will be promptly taken to /dev/null.

Kessler is a well-intentioned guy, but "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". At this point, Kessler is becoming a caricature of himself. He's even spawned a gimmick Twitter account.

As I've written before, there are times when I really despise the poker "scene". Maybe more often than not. I think that shows that I've still got some sanity left, because I'm not really sure otherwise how anyone with any intelligence and ambition would allow themselves to buy into it all and be sucked into it.

But, as Mike Matusow would say, that's negativity. For now I'll be happy with my place at the freak show.

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2010 World Series of Poker: Blessed Rest (Day 6)

For the first time in five days, everything ran smoothly yesterday. I predicted Event 4 would play down to a winner sometime between 3am and 5am. One of the floor supervisors scoffed and said surely it would be done by 2am. No such luck. The last hand was dealt at about 4:15am. I win?

One of the things I don't think I've ever written about is the back hallways at the Rio, the "guts" of the place. Like many of the journos, I park my car in the employee parking lot and come in to the Amazon Room through a back door. If I have to move between rooms at the Rio, I move via back hallways. Typically it's a more direct route; also, I don't have to deal with 1,000 donkeys in the hallway. This is a favored tactic of many of the name pros as well. All of those autograph requests can get tedious.

There's not much back there in those hallways. The floors are poured concrete floors, there are stacks of those god-awful Rio chairs (try finding one that's level), and there's a bar where cocktail orders are filled. The dealers also have a break room, but that's about it.

Still, the back hallways are a place that you can find a little peace and quiet if you need it. That's a scarce commodity at the World Series of Poker. Even in the press box, people are constantly coming and going. Some are welcome; some are not. Two days ago a random railbird approached me and Nolan Dalla, hard at work side-by-side in the press box.

"You all seem so focused!" he said. In fact, he had to say it three times to get our attention, thereby breaking our focus. He was just being friendly, I guess. Sometimes it's hard for people to understand that their spectacle is my office.

Today is a blessed off day. After five nights where we didn't ever finish before 3am, I can relax and lay low. I'm very tempted to play some of the ridiculously juicy single-table satellites, but dragging myself to the Rio on my day off seems like blasphemous. I'll probably chase a white ball for a few hours with some donkey instead. That seems like a better way to ruin a day off.

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2010 World Series of Poker: Ghost in the Machine (Day 5)

Yesterday's Day 2 of the $1,500 Omaha Hi/Lo event didn't go smoothly for Harrah's. About an hour into Day 2, my blogging partner asked me how come Amnon Filippi wasn't in the PokerNews chip counts. The night before, at the end of Day 1, Filippi bagged up what I described in the end-of-day post as "low 30s" in chips. It made him a Top 10 stack heading into Day 2. Yet Filippi was not listed in the the overnight counts we received directly from Harrah's. We both pored over the counts, double-checked a couple of different resources, and were flummoxed. No Amnon.

Normally we'd just add Filippi by hand and be done with it. But this year we're using a new blogging platform that runs on duct tape, paper clips and hamsters. It is, at best, functionality-challenged. Figuring out how to add a single count by hand on a Day 2 requires a map and the Rosetta Stone. We put in a call to EIC Matthew Parvis. Parvis was surprised by Filippi's omission and said he'd look into it for us.

About 15 minutes later WSOP TD Jack Effel showed up on the floor and headed to Filippi's table. While Effel was talking to Filippi, we looked up Filippi's starting Day 2 seat. It was assigned to someone named Steven Aarons of Colorado.

Hmm.

Straight up I should say that nobody suspected Filippi of anything nefarious. But it did look like he was playing a ghost stack, or playing someone else's stack. It was clear that a major fuck-up had occurred.

Through cage logs and cameras, Effel determined that the cashier who took Filippi's buy-in registered Filippi for the tournament under the TotalRewards number of the player ahead of Filippi in line (a player who registered for the $1k NLHE event). In the end it all got sorted. Filippi was credited for his buy-in, Stevens was deleted from the list of registrants, and Filippi was added.

Getting to the bottom of the problem turned out to be an academic exercise when Filippi busted just short of the money. But this was a breakdown at every level. It was a breakdown by the cage, for making the error in the first palce. It was breakdown by the dealer at Filippi's first table, who clearly did not match Filippi's ID to his registration card. It was a breakdown by the overnight chip counters, who managed to somehow match Filippi's tag and count to Stevens' name. And it was a breakdown by Filippi himself, who should have checked his registration card before leaving the cage.

Just another day at the 2010 World Series of Poker.

26 players will be back for Day 3 of the Omaha Hi/Lo. Updates, when the site isn't broken, at PokerNews.

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