Much ado was made this year about Harrah’s flattening the payout structure for the main event.  And that indeed is a good thing.  But if you played any of the preliminary lower buy-in events this year, on average fewer people in your field were paid when compared to last year - and you paid more juice than last year.  Kudos to Change 100 for being the sparky one and figuring out there was something amiss with the Ladies event this year. Read the rest of this entry »

I know I’m supposed to be an unbiased reporter here at the WSOP, but yesterday when Bill Edler entered the Sequestrium (the curtained off and  isolated final table) my best wishes went in with him.  It was going to take more than my wishes, as Bill started the final table as the short stack with a 5-to-1 disadvantage when measured against the chip leader. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

I knew Pauly was playing his “A” game, when he slipped me the stealth bird while I took his picture.  And damn if the boy isn’t in the money, heading into Day Two. 

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I wish I could say that I spend my days off from the WSOP playing back-to-back drunken tournaments around town until the wee hours.  While many of my collegues have the stamina for that, I’m afraid my days off have been tame; like today for instance. Read the rest of this entry »

As the Razz event moves on to its unscheduled third day today, I had a flashback to 2005.  It was my job to cover the Razz event back then and it became one of the most surreal experiences of my 2005 WSOP.   Read the rest of this entry »

“Intelligence gets me there.  Stupidity takes me out” - Andy Black Read the rest of this entry »

After my fifth day at the WSOP, I came “home,” hopped into bed, and plugged into Dave Brubeck’s Time Out.  I definitely needed a mellow, but clever, vibe to end my day.  I’ve heard both Brubeck’s Quartet and Brubeck’s son Dan’s group, The Dolphins, perform Take Five live a few times - but not for a number of years now.    Read the rest of this entry »

Well I safely arrived in Vegas on Monday and was swiftly scooped up by wildbill and the Poker Shrink at the airport.  While I did have to get into Vegas a couple of days early for pre-WSOP meetings, another motivating force was to get a little poker out of my system. Read the rest of this entry »

As more and more women were taking to the felt, I was beginning to worry that our gender edge was in jeapordy.  But as I read a recent post on 2+2, I was able to rest easy again.  Damn.  Thank goodness a lot of guys still view a woman’s ability to play poker with a johnson filter over their lens.  Read the rest of this entry »