My Time in the Tent

I’ve been coming out to watch the WSOP for many years now.  In the last few years I’ve been lucky enough to be part of the large media teams that cover it.  But never until this year have I had a chance to play in it.  And now I see that both Craig and I chose this week to play, with almost exactly the same result.

It seems that 2:30am on Day One of play sounded the death knell for both Craig and I.  With just thirty minutes to  play, we both busted out in our respective tournaments; his in the mixed hold’em event and mine in the pot limit Omaha hi/lo.  I have to say that it was an incredible experience to get the opportunity to play.  During the day my tablemates included David Benyamine, Brett Jungblut, Chau Giang, Rafe Furst, Surinder Sunar, and Billy “the Croc” Argyros.  And although dead money is dead money, I outlasted Joe Hachem, Michael Binger, Kathy Liebert, David Benyamine (in his defense I think he was preoccupied with his finacee’s final table appearance),  Johnny Chan, Layne Flack, Humberto Brenes, Eric Lynch, Jon Turner, and Alan “Bodog Ari” Engel, etc.

There were only two things that marred my perfect WSOP outing, 1) my pants and 2) playing in that god awful tent.   I thought long and hard about what to wear.  I wore a top with the suggestion of cleavage, but with no real death defying plunge.  I wore a pair of jeans that would prevent exposing any butt cleavage.  I know my fellow photographers and I was not going to become an installment on a “guess this butt crack” web page.  I also wore a short sleeve shirt, as the tent can be warm.  I also brought a heavy hoody (stolen for me by Grubby), because the tent can be freezing.  I liked all my clothing choices - that is until I sat down.  I heard a strange noise and felt cold vinyl on my ass.  That’s right.  My pants ripped in back of my right leg, just below my ass cheek.  Ah well.

As far as the tent went, it was both hot and cold.  At my starting table we were calling the 3 seat Egypt and the 7 seat Alaska.  If you’re not sitting directly under an air conditioning vent (read that hole in the plastic bag duct work) it’s hot.  If you are, you’re in an artic blast.  The blast is so strong that they finally had to break our table out of schedule.  It wasn’t because of the complaints about the cold.  It was because the blast kept flipping the cards over as they were dealt.  It wasn’t the dealers’ fault.  They tried to slide them across the felt instead of pitching them.  But we had four misdeals in about ten hands.  I understand another table was worse.  They got four hands successfully dealt in a forty minute period. 

The floors are - well - temporary - and deflect when people walk on them.  If you’re sitting on an outside row, as I was for two of my three seats, you are jossled every time someone walks by.  One player complained that they were developing sea sickness. 

I guess it could have been worse.  It could have been windy.  My understanding is that Harrah’s paid over $1 million for this temporary structure.  Considering all the adjacent conference room space, it seems a poor choice both financially and functionally.  But then I don’t run the poker world…never did…never will.  

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 9:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized.