The Comedy of Getting Your Seat (Vegas Retrospect, Part 1)

[shipitfish]

[ I expect I'll have two weeks of posts about my trip to Las Vegas. Much of it will admittedly be boring to those who have been to the WSoP and/or just Vegas before, but it was all new to me, and it will probably be of interest to those who've never been. ]

W.D. and arrived on Monday in the early afternoon. We waited for my bag for far too long (I hate being that guy who brings too much carry-on luggage even though I could have gotten away with it). I walked outside, and my eyes felt surrounded. I felt that the entire surface area of my eyeballs were surrounded with heat. It was a surprising feeling, but not a bad one. It was unique, and I actually enjoyed it. It would be more or less the last time I liked Vegas outside.

We got in the cab line, and quickly were headed to the Wynn. W.D., like he always does so well with people, got the cab drive off and talking completely comfortably about all sorts of things. I'm always impressed about W.D's ability to make other people comfortable. It's going to be a huge poker skill for him when he finally gets to the level where he knows for sure what he needs the other player to do (and he's getting close).

We checked into the room, and it was everything that Greg and others had told me it was. It's a wonderful place and very comfortable: a huge bathroom, new beds, a large plasma TV and a smaller one in the bathroom. The poker room waiting list available right on those very screens. A wonderful large window with a full view of (in our case) the old strip. It did take us two tries to realize that there was a fully automated remote control to open and close the shades — a great feature even though it wasn't IOMCO.

Once we were moved in, we headed out to walk to the Rio. W.D. had discovered the (apparently well-known) short cut along Industrial Road. I didn't mind the walk; the sky was overcast and the heat was dry. Although, I noticed quite clearly how quickly the Vegas heat tires the body.

We got to the Rio, and it was like a poorly organized conference. There were people everywhere and few signs. Eventually, we followed the crowd and booths began to appear. It was the floor of a trade show, only a bit smaller. There were the so-called “booth babes”, useless give-away plastic junk, and the standard “jump through the right hoops at the booth and you get an actual t-shirt”.

Like every trade show I've been to, the “big companies” had full suites. In order from the main entrance, we walked passed the suites of Poker Stars, Full Tilt, Bodog, Ultimate Bet and Doyle's Room. We poked our heads in each, and finally wandered into Full Tilt where I was to check in for my buy-in.

I was somewhat surprised at how disorganized that process was. The Full Tilt staff vaguely knew what I was talking about — enough to say Stand here and wait for Dave. So I stood, and waited. For about 25 minutes, as other more players showed up waiting for their buy-ins, too. A small gaggle had congregated by the time a middle-aged woman (who, it seemed, doubled for adult supervision around the Full Tilt suite), pointed and said, that's Dave who just walked in with the red hat. After being accosted a few times on his way to us, he finally reached our the group and counted us down, saying come on, let's go. We were out the back door of the suite before I had time to tell W.D. where we were headed — heck, as if I knew what was going on to tell him.

I had expected we'd go over to a computer of some sort to look up and confirm our entries. Instead, Dave tossed down his tattered Jansport and pulled out a crumpled and unstapled stack of sheets. He began doing a sequential search for our names. He found three of us quickly, and asked for our registered email addresses (which I could have read upside-down off the sheet anyway, so this wasn't really an additional security check). He matched our IDs to names on the sheet, and said, ok, let's buy you in. He stopped for a moment to converse with the guy whose name he couldn't find on the sheet. This fellow apparently had a main event seat, which was another list entirely, and had to wait for someone else (they should have told the poor guy this before making him wait for Dave, of course.) The fellow was also trying to decide whether to take the Full Tilt or Poker Stars seat; he'd apparently won two. Dave gave his pitch about how evil Poker Stars was and how he'd never get Poker Stars to give the cash unless threatened, and we were finally off to the Rio's poker cage.

The line, of course, was far out the door. The entire grand ballroom of the Rio had been procured as a huge, albeit temporary, poker room, and they'd set up a cage in the north east corner. The line ran through a series of retracta-belt line posts that held about 40 people, and the rest spilled out of the ballroom and back passed some of the booths toward the bathrooms. When we joined it, we were about 20 people from the ballroom door.

Dave began to chat about the annoyance of the line. The line was actually for the cage of the entire poker room, including cash games and tournament entry. I agree with him that was silly. Then, his rant fell into complaint about how Poker Stars got expedited service through the line, and how that wasn't fair. I went along with his argument for a while, but as W.D. pointed out to me later, Full Tilt should have been more responsible in negotiating their needs with the Rio.

All this made me really glad I'd left all of Monday afternoon to get my entry sorted out; it was now taking a big chunk of it to get it done. We finally reached the cage window; Dave explained our purpose, and the teller asked for our Harrah's players cards. Now, I had one of those, from my trip years ago to the Harrah's in New Orleans, but I didn't have it with me! Dave looked at me and said, Didn't we just go to get to them for everyone? No, of course we hadn't. How out of it was this guy in charge of tens of thousands of dollars in Full Tilt buy-ins, anyway?

So, I pushed back through the crowd out of the ballroom to the other line of people at the special WSoP Harrah's Players' Club desk set up among the show booths. There was some debate about the fact that my ID (a passport) didn't show a mailing address, compounded by the fact that Harrah's had my address on file from New Orleans as the “Doubletree of New Orleans”. (I always give hotel addresses where I'm staying rather than my own when I can get away with it). I gave a valid New York City address and we were settled. She took a moment to remind me that if the address turned out to be invalid, I wouldn't be able to get paid in the tourney if I cashed. (I wonder — how and when would they check?) Anyway, I assured her the address was valid (it was, I wasn't lying). Give me my card, please. I ran back to the cashier, knocking over some unsuspecting bad beat storytellers on the way.

Fortunately, Dave was still at the cage arguing with the poker room manager about how Poker Stars got expedited service and Full Tilt didn't. Now, it turned out, the tourney was “sold out”. This is the biggest comedy of entry into the WSoP. Harrah's set a cap on every tourney that was unreasonable (in this case, 1,000 entrants), and then went through some goofiness upon each registration thereafter to “open the tournament to more registrants“. In the end, the event 2,803 entrants, many of whom were set up as alternates the following morning. Why did they have us stand there and wait to get permission to be entered in this tournament that was theoretically capped at 1,000, but was obviously going to go way over that?

So, finally, I had my little slip of paper confirming my entry, and the $10 food coupon (which I forgot to use). I signed my likeness rights for the next three days over to ESPN, and we were trudging back to the Full Tilt booth for the special tournament entrant's goodie bag. In the end, it turned out to be a bunch of a Full Tilt-branded Kiwi lip balm, a few rubber I-Pod holders, two chip-sized key-ring bottle openers, two mouse pads, two baseball caps, a tote bag and the proverbial “I got to play in the WSoP through Full Tilt, but all I ended up winning was this lousy T-Shirt”. (Ok, it doesn't literally say that, because that would be much cooler; I think it actually reads “Full Tilt WSoP Team 2006” or somesuch.) Anyway, If anyone wants any of this junkstuff, let me know.

W.D. and I had our gratis drinks at the Full Tilt bar and walked back to the Wynn for cash games.

It was quite an ordeal just to get signed up for one tournament. The whole place is a mad house, and I'm sure it's only gotten worse as the main event rages through its many Day Ones and Day Twos. I know many of the pros don't like the riff-raff of all us amateurs showing up. But, the WSoP has become “the poker player's convention”. Walking around, it reminds me of many of the early Open Source and Free Software conferences. There is a sense that everyone there is just the second generation in something that is so very huge that the world is about to discover. Sure, I still think the poker boom won't last too much longer, but like Free Software, and comics, and Star Trek, and Harry Potter, and so many niche loves before it, poker will become a staple part of the mainstream, and the WSoP will for the years to come be the annual event that defines that world. I just hope I can win a main event seat for next year.

Comments

Junk

[(Anonymous)]

I would like the Full Tilt Shirt, one of the bottle openers, the Ipod case, a baseball cap, and the mousepad.

-Erich