RSS Feed2008 WSOP recap
The World Series of Poker is finally over. Congratulations to Peter Eastgate on becoming the youngest player ever to win the Main Event at only 22 years old. I have a feeling it’s going to be a LONG time before anybody is able to beat that record.
This year, rather than playing out the final event of the World Series until there was 1 player left, when they eliminated the 10th place player, they put the tournament on hold and sent the players on a break. A LONG break. A 3 month break. If you are asking yourself why they would do something like that, well, you are not alone. Back when they first announced that they were going to do this, the explanation that I heard was that they were going to send the players home and invite them back in November to play out the final table live on TV. This would give ESPN time to show all the preliminary events, and the action from the main event up until the point where there were only 9 left. This sounded like an awesome idea. Last year I paid for the Pay-Per-View of the final table and watched about 7 hours of the event. I was definitely ready to watch the final table again this year. Unfortunately, that information was incorrect.
Over this past weekend, the “November Nine”, as they were so cutely named, took over the Penn & Teller theater and with about 1000 people in the audience, they played down to the final 2 players. The following evening, the final 2 came back and played it out until Peter Eastgate held all the chips in play. Of course all of this action was filmed, but there was no live broadcast, no pay-per-view, no extra content to be had at all. Instead, the well produced condensed version was shown on ESPN just like every week leading up to the final table. So why did they make the players wait? I have a guess; money.
If they had completed the final table back in July, even the most casual of poker players would have found out by now who won the WSOP. It’s not like the SuperBowl, but if you are in to Poker, you are going to run across the information on a website, magazine or word of mouth. But, by making everybody wait, they have a built up of excitement to find out who wins. This could cause poker players who may not normally watch the ESPN telecast to turn it on to find out who wins. Face it, most poker players don’t actually watch televised poker. ESPN wants those eyes watching. So anything they could do to build SOME excitement has got to be good for them.
I was pretty bummed when I found out they weren’t going to show the entire final table. But, that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to watch the final show.
There were a couple of really ugly beats to knock people out, but I have to say, every player at this final table conducted themselves with a level of professionalism not normally found at the final table. When Scott Montgomery lost on the river to a one-outter, he simply smiled, shook everybody’s hand and walked away. It was a very refreshing sight.
ESPN did one thing during the telecast that is my biggest pet peeve when it comes to televised poker. When they were down to 8 players, they came back from a commercial and they are showing Kelly Kim shaking hands with some of the players. The announcer says that Kelly Kim has just been eliminated. Are you going to tell me that this player fought his way through more than 6800 players and you don’t even have the decency to show his final hand in the tournament? I don’t care if it’s the most mundane hand ever played, he deserves to have his final hand shown.
One other side effect of having a 3 month layoff before the final table, it gave all the players a chance to get sponsorships from dozens of companies. I had made a joke that it looked like we were watching a NASCAR event with everybody covered in sponsorship badges. For the players I’m stoked. Why shouldn’t they get an extra quarter-million if they can work the deals? However, for the viewers at home, I’m a little embarrassed. I would like to think that if I were to ever make it to a televised final table, I would pass up the sponsorship money and instead wear a comfortable suit that actually looks nice.
I’m really curious to hear the plans for next year’s WSOP event. I plan on playing in a couple events next year and want to know what surprises I have ahead of me. I guess I have to wait and see.
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Grand Opening, Casino Style
When it comes to Las Vegas, everything is done in extremes. Hell, even when they demolish a casino, they pull out all the stops. So this weekend when the Eastside Cannery was set to have their grand opening Thursday night, I was expecting an “over the top” spectacle. Since this was my first time attending the grand opening of any casino, I didn’t really know what to expect. In my mind I was seeing fireworks, laser lights, fog machines and a chorus line of show girls a mile long. Much to my surprise, there was none of that. Honestly, I didn’t miss any of it. The low key approach was much more to my taste!
I’m not normally the kind of guy who’s going to rush out to a casino the night of their grand opening. But, since my wife is an employee of the new Cannery, we figured we’d go and check it out. They were set to open at 8PM. We made the mistake of showing up at about 7:50. The parking lot was filled to MAX capacity. The line to get in the building was wrapped around the building. We ended up parking down the street and walking a 1/4 mile back to the casino. We nearly got a jaywalking ticket when we chose the exact wrong spot to try to cross the street while the place was littered with cops directing traffic. By the time we got to the doors, everybody had filtered inside and the place was packed. The line to get a player’s card was a mile long. We skipped that line and went right to the poker room.
We sat down at an empty poker table, bought some chips and within a few minutes we had enough players to start a game. I’ll put it on record that my first ever hand at the Cannery casino was playing $2/$4 limit poker and I was dealt a 2 of spades and a 4 of hearts. I folded. We played for a couple hours. The poker room filled up and at one point I believe all 8 of their tables were full or close to it. I finished with a $45 profit and we headed home.
Sunday morning I planned to drop my wife off at work since the employees were not allowed to park at the casino during the opening weekend. They all had to park up the street at Wal-Mart and be shuttled to the casino. I decided to go in and play poker for about an hour. 5 hours later I cashed out and headed home. I pretty much broke even.
On Monday morning they held their first poker tournament. A $25 buy-in, 4 table, No-Limit Texas Hold’em tournament. They start you out with only $1000 in chips, but they give you bonus chips if you play live poker for 1 or 2 hours prior to the tournament. $500 tournament chips per hour, maximum of $1000 in bonus chips. I was there for an hour before so I I started the tourney with $1500 in chips. I busted a few people out early and built up a nice chip stack. I then played some aggressive poker to continue building my stack. When all was said and done, I ended up chopping the pot with 2 other players. I had a chip lead on both other guys, but the blinds were so high it wouldn’t have taken but one unlucky hand to knock me out in 3rd place. Splitting the pot 3 ways guaranteed us each better than 2nd place money.
So far I haven’t eaten anything at the casino, so I can’t tell you how the food is. Though I heard several people talking about how great the chicken noodle soup is. Next time I go I’ll try out the diner. Plus I plan on getting some more information about their concert venue which apparently is going to host MMA matches. I’ll keep you posted on what I find.
More info to come later.
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