Don't Believe the Hype
2007-06-03 12:19:24
By: Gene Bromberg
It's almost certain that the field for the 2007 Main Event will be smaller than last year. Harrah's policy of not allowing online poker sites to directly buy seats for players who win satellites probably guarantees that. And when that happens you'll doubtless read articles and columns saying that poker has peaked, it was just a passing fad, the game is in decline.
Don't believe a word of it. Yesterday's $1,500 NL Hold-Em event had 2,998 players, the biggest non-Main Event field in poker history. There were players who waited for four hours or more in line to register...and then found they were on the alternates list. There were nearly 400 alternates who had to wait outside the Amazon Room and wait, wait, wait for other players to bust out so they could grab a seat.
It was chaos. Masses of people jammed the hallways, some still waiting in line to register, some trying to fight their way to the poker tournament room. I managed to find a side door that was cracked open and wedged my way inside, only for a Harrah's official to tell me that NO ONE was allowed in, not even me with my backpack and computer and orange press pass. I hacked my way back to the media room and, ten minutes later, tried again. No way. There was gridlock, and I didn't see smiles on too many faces. "Excuse me, pardon me, coming through," was NOT going to work.
This picture doesn't do the scene justice, but imagine that crowd in the center doubled and duplicated down the hallway to the left...and to the right...and you'll get some idea of what it was like:
;)
Fortunately I learned of a secret, underground route so I didn't need my machete to hack my way through the throng. Thing is, once I got inside the situation wasn't much better. Players searched for their seats, alternates milled around, and spectators gawked at the spectacle. I found a tiny table for my laptop (I didn't find a chair till a bit later) and tried to stay out of the way.
;)
Once the spectators were removed, once the alternates moved out into the hallways, once the players were seated, some semblence of order was returned. The room was jam-packed with tables--and that didn't even include the 50 tables in use in the new poker structure erected for the World Series. It's a huge, hard-top tent, and the first thing I thought when I saw it was, "Man, is it gonna be HOT in there". Well, apparently it was--at one point it was hotter inside the tent than outside. Imagine arriving at the Rio at 5AM, waiting in line for four hours to register, jostling with a massive, unruly crowd for four more hours waiting for the tournament to actually start, and when you take your seat it's about 90 degrees.
And then imagine you got knocked out on the first hand. Almost immediately there were calls of "Seat Open!" after players busted out. My heart went out to those folks, I can only hope they didn't go out to a bad beat. Life shouldn't be that cruel.
The tournament was so huge that I couldn't see but a little slice of it. Names would appear on the leaderboard and I'd say, "Wait, he's playing today?" One of those players I didn't see was Phil Hellmuth--until he was seated at the table right next to me. I looked over the chip counts and saw that he had a very healthy stack for so early in the proceedings.
Here's the thing--I'm starting to think that I'm a cooler. It happened in Aruba--I'd walk over to see how someone was doing, and five minutes later they'd be walking out of the poker tournament room with a disgusted look on their face. I met up with some friends my first day in Vegas who were on a hot streak and witnessed their run at the craps table turn sour. I was following a hand at another table when suddenly a group of players stood up behind me and I saw that all of Phil's chips were in the middle, and that he'd been called down. Hmm.
Phil turned over two red Kings. His opponent? Two Jacks. I'm sure you've heard about how hard it is to read those new Poker Peek cards, but it wasn't hard to read the big "J" printed on the card in the window. "Unreal," I thought. But a sharp-eyed player to Phil's right pointed out that all three cards were hearts (it's VERY hard to tell the suits on the picture cards from a distance) and so Phil had a flush draw. Those words were barely out of a his mouth when the case Jack hit on the turn. The other player had Phil covered, and that was that.
Everyone expected Phil to blow up, and he did mutter for a few moments about the folly of calling off all your chips with pocket Jacks (especially, as Phil pointed out, when he'd shown down just one hand at the table and that'd been a set of Queens). But he shook everyone's hand, commisserated briefly with a player at another table, and he marched off to the exit. "Whoo, I'm shakin'!" he said with a grin as he pushed through the doors.
More and more players fell by the wayside, tables were broken and consolidated. Cash games broke out at the tables in front of me and I tried not to be distracted by the pretty stacks of Benjamins and candy-colored chips. I had a job to do and I did it as best I can. The World Series of Poker is big. Really big. Massive, even. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
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