Change100 at PokerWorks

I got the equivalent of an E/O on my first day at the WSOP. Pokernews was in “all hands on deck” mode for the first day of play, and by 9 PM, the field of Event #1– the new $5K Mixed Hold’em event– was more than halved and after spending the day on the floor troubleshooting and helping out some of our new junior reporters, I got to pack it in at a relatively early hour. Pauly had to stay on for a few hours more, so I decided to stick around and play a satellite, not knowing when I’d get the chance again, at least in the next week or two.

There’s already been a lot of ink on the Day 1 chaos, some of it my own. Lines thousands deep, pre-registration fuck-ups, and those god-awful “PokerPeek” decks where the sixes and nines are visually interchangeable. When I decided to hit up the satellites that night, I got to experience it all first-hand.

I waited in line for a seat for over an hour. The guy in front of me in line had come to Vegas for his birthday and wanted to celebrate it by playing in the next day’s $1,500 NLHE event. After only 15 minutes in line, he was bitching and moaning about the wait to anyone who could hear, and after this gross display of impatience, I secretly hoped he ended up at my table.

“What the fuck is taking so fuckin’ long? Seriously, if Harrah’s put me in charge of this thing, everything would be fixed in like, 10 minutes!”

Keep dreaming, buddy.

While standing in line, I tried to discern what the hold up was. First of all, there were maybe 10 empty tables in the satellite area, but not enough dealers to get them all going. There were also maybe four or five tables that had players seated at them, but hadn’t started playing because they didn’t have cards or chips yet. After getting through about half the line, the floorman made an announcement that players were no longer able to buy in through the new automated registration system (where you paid your entry at a kiosk and got a seating card in return) and that they were reverting to the old-fashioned way, where cash, casino chips, or lammers (for $500 and above satellites) would be paid at the table. Half of those tables waiting to start were registered through the automated system, half were not, and they were attempting to straighten that out.

Finally, about five new dealers came over and they were able to seat a few more tables. I took a seat in a $125 buy-in single table, sandwiched between a tall, broad-shouldered guy in a Bicycle Casino hat on my left, and a 21 year old kid in a hoodie and a Full Tilt hat who identified himself as an online player called “Kenny05″ and let us all know that he had already won his Main Event seat online. We all sat there for over 30 minutes before the cards went in the air. First, there were no cards. So a player called a floorman and we got a couple of decks. Then, there were no chips. Another wait for the chips. Then, no timer or structure sheet. The Asian guy in the 10 seat popped up, walked over to an empty table and swiped a timer while another guy went looking for a structure sheet. Then, the dealer didn’t know what to do with all the buy-ins. It was about that time that the satellite manager cruised by our table and half the table started bitching and moaning about the hold-up. So, from the time I got in line to the time I was dealt my first hand, over 90 minutes had elapsed.

The guy on my left looked so familiar to me I had to find out who he was. Turns out he was Brian Somerville, who had made the final three tables of the $5,000 WSOPC Event I covered last month at Caesar’s Palace. He won his way into that event on a satellite, and was trying to get into a few WSOP events on the cheap.

In the smaller buy-in satellites ($335 and below) players receive 1000 in chips and blinds start at 25-25. On my first hand, it was folded to me in the cutoff and I raised to 150 with the A-9 of clubs. The Asian guy in the 10 seat made it 500, and I had to fold. He flashed pocket kings. I didn’t get much in the way of hands for the next couple of orbits and folded away while trying to get a feel for the table. Kenny05 was pretty aggressive and the bespectacled man with the stringy gray hair in the 4s was playing pretty well. I picked up the blinds with K-Q when no one called, and on the very next hand, I looked down at two black aces. Some donk had limped in and I raised to 300. The Asian Guy called and Mr. Impatient moved all in for about 1400. The limper-donk folded, I called, and the Asian guy folded. My A-A held against his A-K and I suddenly had one of the table’s healthier stacks.

On the very next hand, Kenny05 raised to 350 and I looked down at Q-Q.

“Make it 1000″ I said, as I cut out ten orange 100 chips.

“Oh man, that can’t be good” Kenny muttered, shuffling the 600 he had left. “I guess I have to call.” He tabled A-T and my queens held up.

“Holy Mary Mother of God, I have 40% of the chips in play now” I thought as I looked around the table. There were two micro-stacks left along with me, Stringy Gray Hair, and Brian Somerville.

I busted Somerville when I raised with T-T on the button and he moved all in from the small blind. I called and the tens held against his 5-9 of clubs. Stingy Gray Hair took out the micro-stack and I busted the Asian Guy with the lowly 3-5 of hearts vs his Tourist (A-7o). He was all in in the big blind and I made a straight on the river, though it took me a minute to see it with all the sixes and nines out there on the board.

Stringy Gray Hair and I looked at each other thinking the same thing, but he said it first.

“So, what do you think about a chop?”

We counted out our stacks– I had 4800, he had 5200 and we agreed to split it down the middle. We each got a $500 lammer and $60 in cash. I tipped the dealer $20 and practically skipped back to media row to tell Pauly the good news.

“I’m gonna go sell it” I said. “The registration line is still all the way down the hall.”

“Hang on to it… you never know. What if you win another? Then you can play the ladies event” he said.

Hmmmmm….

I probably won’t take the plunge on that one, but I’ll certainly be back to the satellite tables when I get the chance.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 12:36 am and is filed under Uncategorized.