03 August 2006
What do I have in common with Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan? If you answered that all four of us are tied with 10 WSOP bracelets apiece I truly appreciate your intentions, but the correct response is that we all got knocked out of the World Series Of Poker on our first day of play. Thousands of others suffered the same fate but that shouldn`t be our concern here.
The fact of the matter is that the 2006 WSOP is designed to make bad things happen to good poker players. The sheer size of the beast dictates that you need to get lucky, a lot, and more importantly not get unlucky.
My personal experience was that I hit all the wrong notes. When I needed a spot of luck none was forthcoming (not a single drawing hand arrived for me in my six hour sojourn), and when I needed to avoid unlucky outcomes (all-in with my AA against a big stack with KK) fate had other ideas on the day.
A lot of players will have sadder bad beats, and to be honest there will be many who played better than me yet still suffered the same ignominious elimination. Most disturbing of all is that of the 800 odd players who advanced from each of the first four` flights` a mere 1 in 4 will cash. Another 2500 souls who did survive the cauldron of Day 1 will stay in Vegas a few days longer but still get nothing for their laudable efforts.
I am writing this at the airport - I need to leave Las Vegas for awhile to return to reality - but there were many incredible moments on this trip, and I`ll write them down shortly...Marcel Luske belting out tunes to a stunned crowd at the Bluff party, Pamela Anderson descending on the Bellagio with a posse of men on either side of her best features, and of course Mikey the poker-playing chimp with a breast fixation and a weakness for being tickled (the more I think about it the more convinced I become that Mikey and I really do share the majority of our DNA as those evolution-preaching "scientists" have always claimed).
I`ll leave you with some travel advice: Remember that if you want to cause a big splash in this town, nothing commits your face to memory like under-tipping. It`s worth it just for the looks of disgust you get when you slip one of the millions of sponges in this town a crisp single, and thank them loudly for holding open a door for you, or bringing you a $12 cocktail.
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