I made it to Vegas and I'm ready to go

I arrived in Vegas after a bumpy flight around 6:30 p.m. and after getting my bags, discovered the shortest taxi line I've ever seen at the LV airport. For those of you who haven't seen, it the Vegas airport taxi line must be one of the seven wonders of the transportation world. It consists of 5 rows of dividers each about 100 yards long that lead people up and down a stretch of sidewalk like they were waiting for an amusement park ride. Sometimes, like today, you walk straight to the front and get in a cab. Other times, like a Friday night, (when everyone who's just in town for the weekend has arrived) you can find yourself waiting behind over a thousand people. The cabs swoop in, in groups of 20 and scoop up passengers only to be followed by 20 more so even though you're standing in line it's more like a constant slow walk. The first time I saw that line on a Friday I thought we'd be in line for the entirety of our three day trip, but it only took about 15 minutes. It's really quite amazing.

It's also very unusual for me to arrive in Vegas, head straight to my room, and stay there all night. Usually I push the hotel room door open, chuck the bags in, and am back in the elevator headed for the tables before my bags hit the ground. But, this is going to be a different kind of trip. No drinking, no table games, all business. I'm going to take any edge I can over my opponents and if that means getting to sleep at 11:30 p.m. in a town where some of the bars don't open until 2 a.m. then that's what I'm going to do.

Tomorrow the 2006 WSOP kicks off with a $1,500 No Limit Hold 'em event. Last year this event drew 2,305 entrants, 1st place was $725,405, 9th was $54,075 and 200th paid $2,225. Also of interest, a fellow named Charlie Huff (no relation) finished 6th and won $136,780. This year there should be at least the same turn out. I wouldn't be shocked to see 3,000 people show up wanting to play, but I'm not sure they are set up to accommodate that many players at one time (they split the first day of the main event into several days to handle the huge fields). I'm already signed up so I won't be one of the one's getting shut out. I'll post again tomorrow and let you all know how it went for me (hopefully it won't be over and I'll be preparing for day 2 of my first event). It would be great to start out with a money finish, but this tournament is only 5% of my $30,000 bankroll so if I don't succeed it will be a minor setback at most.

Doesn't look like $30,000 does it?

For those of you who've always wondered if those sneaky Hollywood executives have been tricking you, now you can see for yourselves what thirty grand looks like. Sometimes I've seen in movies where they use a briefcase or even a duffel bag to carry $50,000, but clearly it's for show. Hopefully I'll show you all what a much much bigger pile of money looks like in a few weeks.

A fun story from last years WSOP

I've had a request to tell a story from last year's WSOP that was a little amusing. One of the coolest things about going to the WSOP was getting an in person look at the worlds best and most famous poker players. They were walking around everywhere. I found myself doing double takes left and right. I'd be sitting at the table playing and I'd think "wow that guy looks an awful lot like Johnny Chan....holy shit that's Johnny Chan!" This happened no less than ten times.

Even cooler than strolling by the world's best was getting a chance to play against a few of them. Among the best were Julian Gardner (the main event runner up in 2002), Layne Flack (who won back to back preliminary events in 2002), and Howard Lederer (who has won multiple World Poker Tour (WPT) events and is a fan favorite). In most competitive arenas where money is at stake you want to play against weaker competition, but having one extremely strong player at your table in a poker game is not particularly detrimental. About 80% of the time I look at my first two cards and fold them and for the most part other good players do the same, so it's rare that you butt heads with one specific player over and over. I looked at it as a positive to play against the star competition so I could observe their tactics (I also thought it was just plain cool). I didn't get to observe Layne Flack for very long, however, because I busted him 30 minutes into the tournament.

And then there was Phil Helmuth. In 1989 Helmuth became the youngest main event champ in history by winning it at age 24. He has 9 WSOP bracelets (3rd most all time) and last year became the first player to ever have 50 career money finishes at the WSOP. Around 3 p.m. in my second event, I was moved to a new table and found myself sitting directly across from Phil. Two hours later we'd been playing for five hours total and were still over an hour short of the dinner break. Phil was starting to get hungry and mentioned that fact to the table. A few minutes later he asked if anyone had any food. No one did. Of course there was food relatively near by at a snack bar area, but it would take at least five minutes to meander through the hundreds of poker tables, make a purchase and return to the game. Phil was running short on chips and so every hand was critical. Between hands he stood up and went over to Chris Ferguson (the 2000 main event champ who always wears a cowboy hat and is often called "Jesus" because he has long hair and a beard) and asked if he "had any snacks." Chris did not and Phil found himself back a square 1. Suddenly he looked down on the floor. EUREKA! He reached down and pulled up an open box of graham crackers. There were a few left inside and he said to the guy next to him "are these yours?" The fellow replied "I just got here." I could see the gears turning in his head. He asked if they belonged to anyone else but it seemed they were up for grabs. So with everyone's attention on him he took one out, looked at it and was about to take a bite when I said "Come to Las Vegas, where you can see a millionaire eat food he found on the floor." Everyone including Phil and the dealer had a good laugh. When the laughs died down he put them back on the floor (perhaps for some other hungry player to find) and a few minutes later ran off to the snack bar.

What do I really expect to happen

The most likely result of my trip is a loss. If I was to go play this same set of tournaments 1,000 times I have no doubt that my net result would be positive, (and that's why I'm going). But, it would probably be the result of 750 losing trips and 250 winning ones. The key is the wins would tend to be much, much larger than the losses.

Last year (in my first year at the WSOP) I played in three events and even though I had a net loss I would classify the trip as a success (probably a B or a B- on my scale). The first event I played in was a $2,500 No Limit Hold 'em event and I finished 72 out of 1050 which paid $3,750 gross ($1,250 net). Unfortunately in my second event ($2,500 Pot Limit Hold 'em) I finished about 100 out of 450 and in my third event ($2,000 No Limit Hold 'em) I finished about 250 out of 1100. So even though I was better than the 25 percentile in all three tournaments I lost $3,750 (actually I personally only lost about half that since I had investors who had put up half the money). Maybe the best thing about that trip is I've already done it once so now I'm not going to be nearly as nervous as I was last year.

What are my goals

I'm bringing $30,000 to Vegas for the WSOP events (as well as some side action or smaller "second chance" tournaments and satellites) and I've given a lot of thought to what my goals are. I've got plenty of them, but rather than make it a simple success or failure I've come up with a letter grade system much like you'd have on a test. This is how I'd rate my level of success.

A+ Making any final table or winning more than $50,000
A Making the Money in 50% of the events I enter or winning more than $25,000
A- Making the money in 40% of events I enter or winning more than $10,000
B+ Winning at least $1 or making the money in the main event
B 3 strong money finishes or Coming home with more than $25,000
B- 3 weak money finishes or coming home with more than $20,000
C+ Coming home with more than $15,000 and two money finishes
C two weak money finishes
C- Coming home with more than $10,000
D+ Coming home with more than $5,000 and 1 money finish
D Coming home with less than $5,000 and 1 money finish
D- Coming home broke with 1 money finish
F Coming home completely broke with no money finishes

A money finish is exacly what it sounds like. The top 10% of finishers in every event win money and everyone else loses. A weak money finish would be just sneaking into the top 10%. For this kind of finish you get your buy-in back plus a little extra. A strong money finish might be one where you win several times the initial buy-in (ie winning $8,000 in a $2,000 buy-in event).

Of course my letter grades aren't a perfect system, but it will give me a record of pre WSOP ideas about success that I can look back at when I'm done. Not included on the list are a few off the chart results such as winning a bracelet (the winner of each event gets an engraved gold bracelet as a sort of trophy), multiple final table appearances, winning over a million dollars etc. I figure I have about 1 in 150 chance of winning an event, about a 1 in 600 chance of winning $1,000,000 or more and a 1 in 6,000 chance of winning the main event and $10,000,000. Not great odds but light years better than the lottery.

My Schedule

All of this poker and WSOP stuff is great, but what the hell will you actually be doing!? I'll be staying at the Rio (where all of the events are taking place) from June 26th until July 9th for the preliminary events. I'll be heading back to Vegas again on July 27th for the main event, which could last 5 minutes or 12 days depending on how I do. Here is my exact itinerary with the dates, the variety of poker and the buy-in for each tournament.

Tue June 27 No-Limit Hold'em $1.5k
Wed June 28 Pot-Limit Hold'em $1.5k
Thu June 29 Limit Hold'em $1.5k
Fri June 30 No-limit Hold'em Short Handed, 6/table $2.5k
Sat Jul 1 No-Limit Hold'em $2k
Sun Jul 2 Limit Hold'em $3k
Tue Jul 4 No-Limit Hold'em $5k
Wed Jul 5 Seven Card Stud $1.5k
Thu Jul 6 Limit Hold'em $1.5k
Fri Jul 7 No-Limit Hold'em $2.5k
Sat Jul 8 No-Limit Hold'em w/re-buys $1k (3K-5K total commitment)

Fri Jul 28 No-Limit Texas Hold'em World Championship Event $10k

Sure looks like a lot of poker when I look at it this way. But the chances of me playing all of these events is remote. The first 11 events are theoretically 3 day events. The first day consists of about 15 hours of play (there's a 15 minute break every 2 hours and a 1 hour dinner break about 6 hours into each event). The next day whoever is left (about 5%-10% of the starting field) comes back and they play down to the top 9 players who come back the next day for the televised final table. So if I make it to day 2 of an event I won't be playing day one of the next event. I expect the first event to have over 2000 entrants (like it did last year) and even the smallest events (some of the limit hold 'em events or the stud event) will still have at least 300 or 400 so making day 3 is going to be extremely difficult. If I make it that far in ANY event the trip will be a huge success monetarily and otherwise. Conversely if I don't see day 2 of any event the trip will be a spectacular failure. Keep in mind, however, that these are not chess tournaments or golf tournaments where the best players always tend to do better than the worst. The short term luck factor (notice I said short term, because in the long run everyone gets the same distribution of cards and skill alone separates the winning players from the losing ones) in poker can destroy the best laid plans. In poker the best player in a tournament can be the first one out and the worst player could win outright. Of course it's much more likely to be the other way around. One of the great things about the WSOP is they give you time. The longer the tournament lasts the more skill comes into play. Hopefully I'll be able to avoid the rough spots early and give my skill a chance to come into play.

A little WSOP History

The first World Series of Poker (WSOP) was organized by Las Vegas pioneer Benny Binion and inspired by a 5 month heads up match between Nick "The Greek" Dandolos and Johnny Moss which had taken place in 1949. During that historic match Moss reportedly won between two and three million dollars, but more important to Binion were the crowds that gathered to watch the spectacle. The first World Series of Poker which took place at Binion's Horseshoe in 1970 was nothing more than a high stakes game that went on for several days designed to draw people into the casino. The game was populated by seven of the foremost players of the day and the champion was determined by a simple popular vote among the players. The following year the event adopted a tournament format and 13 entrants each put up $10,000. All of the money went to the winner, Johnny Moss, who was not coincidently also the previous years champion. As the tournament grew, more events were added with smaller buy-ins. While players competed in various forms of poker during these preliminary events (in 1988 there were 12 events total), the main event remained No limit Texas hold 'em.

A few revolutionary happenings came together around 2003 that led to an explosion in poker popularity and shaped the WSOP as we know it today. In 2002 the travel channel made a deal with the organizers of 13 of the largest existing annual poker tournaments to film the play of the final six players. This wasn't the first time poker had been on TV, but the key difference between these and previous broadcasts was tiny cameras in the table (called lipstick cameras) that allowed the viewers to see every players hole cards. In the past watching poker had been like watching paint dry, but now all the bets, bluffs and blunders were there for everyone to see. The following year ESPN jumped on the poker bandwagon when they filmed the 2003 WSOP in a similar manner. The main motivation for this endeavor was the NHL hockey strike which left huge holes in ESPN's prime time line up. They filled these holes with poker.

The internet also played a huge role in poker's growth. While you could play poker for money online as early as 1998 it took a few years to work out the bugs and even longer for people to trust that the games were fair, safe, and secure. But, once that started to happen it meant that people who didn't live within 500 miles of a card room or casino could get in the action. In fact the eventual winner of the 2003 WSOP main event was an unknown accountant named Chris Moneymaker (his real name!) who got into the tournament by playing a $40 internet qualifier. He parlayed that $40 into a 2.5 million dollar payday after beating 849 of the worlds best (and a few of the worst) players. The following year the size of the field in the main event tripled to over 2,500 entrants. In 2005 the tournament grew by leaps and bounds again to over 5,600 entrants (that's a prize pool of over 56 million dollars!) with a first place of 7.5 million dollars (plus everyone in the top 9 won at least a million dollars). This was the biggest cash prize in television history and in fact even if you won all 4 of golf's major tournaments (The Masters, The U.S. Open, The British Open, and the PGA Championship) you'd still come up short of the prize money for first at the WSOP! This year there are 45 events scheduled and the main event is expected to draw around 8,000 entrants. I'll be among those 8,000 and while 7,200 of us will be coming home with nothing but a story I'm planning to be one of the 800 winners.