2007 WSOP Blog

The Get Lucky Strike?
The best change for the WSOP this year was the addition of the Lucky Strike bowling alley at the opposite end of the Rio from the tournament area. The night before the WSOP was set to begin I decided to bowl a couple of games and down a few pitchers with some new friends at the Lucky Strike.

I was bowling pretty well and catching a little buzz, when all of a sudden I heard a great deal of commotion on the other side of the alley. I watched as security rushed over to the scene and finally caught a glimpse of the action – a hooker attacking a very large man who looked big and strong enough to be a professional wrestler. It took security over a minute to separate the two, and once they did, they kicked the hooker and her two co-workers out of the place. The macho man put his shirt back on and appeared to be crying after the humbling experience that turned into the perfect way to welcome me back to the WSOP.

Shuffle up and Delay
The next morning I got to the Rio about 15 minutes before the media check-in was scheduled to begin. I took my rightful spot at the end of the hour long line, but my spirits weren’t dampened because I was excited to have official media credentials in 2007 after having been repeatedly denied access in 2006. I waited about an hour while Harrahs did their thing and eventually a guy called my name holding an official badge for pokulator.com.

I had a few questions about the media guidelines so I went into the room and asked the people at Harrahs. No one knew the answer for sure, but the consensus was that I was allowed to take pictures in the hallway outside of the tournament area, despite this being against the media guidelines that was asked to sign. I said “ok, thanks,” and headed out the door to take pictures in the hallway of the huge lines that had formed of people waiting to register for the various tournaments. Rumors spread that people had been waiting in line for over 4 hours and they eventually had to delay the start of the casino employee tournament due to the huge lines.

<img src=“/img/wsop_cards.jpg” align=“right”If 6 was 9
Harrahs unveiled a revolutionary new card design for event 1 of the WSOP and it was an immediate problem for most of the players. Many players couldn’t read the cards on the board let alone the cards in their own hands. The sixes and nines were extremely difficult to tell apart and players were standing much of the day to determine the suits of the board cards as well. After two hours the tournament director announced that the new decks would be replaced, but it would take a few days for the reinforcements to arrive. Score one for the players! Anyone looking for a new deck of cards that would help piss off a home game should stop by Harrahs’ gift shop because they should have almost 30,000 slightly used decks available soon.

Bad Beat Blues
Jennifer Harmen busted out of the first tournament of the WSOP, the 5K mixed hold’em event, on a bad beat. As she walked out of the tournament area she was visually frustrated and was shaking her bottle of water as she walked. Eventually the water must have gotten too heavy for Harmen because she dumped it out on the tournament floor just before heading out the door.

A Fair Deal?
Things weren’t so fair for Ryan Fair as he took his seat for day 2 of the $1,500 NL event. He removed his chips from his bag then counted, recounted, then counted again. He found that his stack was 38,000 short of his total of 154,400 from the night before. He realized that the mistake must have happened when his chips were colored up after he had already counted them. The tournament director asked him why he didn’t recount after the color-up and he said, “it was late, i wasn’t thinking about it, i had already counted them.”

Other players at Fair’s table soon came to his defense and testified that he did indeed have a monster stack of chips the night before and a much smaller stack beginning day 2. After 4 players at the table agreed that Fair was shorted, the tournament director decided to award Fair the extra 38,000 chips that he had earned the day before.

We can’t come to the phone right now…
Don’t bother calling Pokerlistings.com this week because the line will most likely be busy. Pokerlistings did the WSOP a favor by hiring a very cute new tournament reporter named Leanna, and sent her off to arrange interviews with some players.

She ended up giving her cell phone number to a few pros in order to schedule interviews, but little did she know that her phone would soon be ringing off the hook, mostly by Raymond Davis and Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott. Devilfish called after 10 pm to suggest going to a show together, but somehow Leanna resisted.

2007 WSOP Blog

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