A day without live poker

I spent my first day without playing any live poker since my arrival in Vegas today. I've been pounding on-line all day since I got up around 3:30 and have had some good success. I pulled another all nighter and got back to the hotel after 10am.

I had a really fun night last night. Pretty much exactly what I needed after the disappointment of the last WSOP event I played.

A Canadian, a naughty librarian, and a sexy nurse walk into a casino.........what's the punch line? Nothing but a kick ass evening. The two girls I had met playing craps a couple of nights earlier extended their stay in Vegas for a few days and were going to be flying out at 11am so wanted to pull an all night gamblefest before they headed back to Michigan. Being the true gentleman that I am *wink wink* I of course obliged and met them downstairs at the Imperial Palace for a few drinks. We played some electronic roulette and some craps without a ton of success and decided to book it downtown to old Vegas. I just absolutely love gambling down there, usually at either Binions or the Golden Nugget. We had varying degrees of success at blackjack and I think the girls made some money at craps while I seemed to press my bets at all the wrong times and lost a few dollars. Thanks Toni and Sarah you definitely made it the best night of my Vegas trip so far. Somehow, wandering around Vegas with a couple cuties just makes everything better. The electronic roulette here was pretty fun. They have what is called a "Dealertainer" pit where they have people dealing the games in costume who periodically perform songs throughout the night. It's a really fun atmosphere and certainly good for anyone who wants to gamble a bit but might be stressed out about sitting at the regular tables. They still use a real roulette wheel it is just surrounded by a bunch of touch screen machines that you sit at so everyone handles their own bets without the need for any chips. It is super fast paced and you can bet small limits and the drink service here is fast so all around win win situation....oh and I made a few $$ to boot.

Tomorrow it is back to the grind of trying to make a decent live score. I am going to play the Caesar's $340 Megastack again. It is just too good of a structure for me to think about going anywhere else. I really need to hit a nice tournament score before my buddy John gets here as we will be chopping all tournaments we play together after he arrives. The only thing better than winning a tournament is winning a tournament when John doesn't have a piece of the action. ;-) I am definitely looking forward to more people getting into town. The trip has been a lot of fun so far in spite of some real horrid luck in key hands. I've met a lot of good people so far but Vegas is always enhanced when you have some good buddies in town.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the World Series of Poker in regards to how it is run. This is THE biggest poker series in the world and yet it really disappoints me in a number of ways. If this is to be the truest test of tournament poker prowess then give the players what they want. I find it laughable that the structures at the WSOP are inferior to at least 4 other events being run in Vegas as we speak. As an example let's take the $1,500 NL Holdem event I started out with. I started with 3000 chips and the blinds increased each hour. Tomorrow, I will play a $300 NL Holdem event that gives me 12,500 starting chips and 50 minute levels. Any true card player wants a deeper structure that gives them a better chance to withstand some rough hands and facilitate more play. It seems as though the WSOP has turned into nothing but a massive corporate giant that is concerned with nothing but promoting the recognized professionals and raking in millions upon millions of dollars. Now, the attractiveness of the WSOP, I suppose is that everyone who is a somebody in the game comes to play at the WSOP and the field sizes are big so the prize pools are huge. Huge prize pools are going to draw better players, but why not give better players deeper structures? I know not everyone wants things dragged out over 3-4 or more days but mix things up a bit. At least start offering some deeper stacked tournaments and see where the players go, that will be the truest test of who actually wants what. When you see fields of 400-600 players at a Caesars $300 event and then you see fields of 150-200 players at the Rio for their evening $300 event you tell me what people want? You draw 500 people to come specifically for one tournament, whereas you have nothing but poker players filling an entire casino and it only draws 150 players with a structure that is about 25% as deep? Hmmm??? I guess the biggest thing is that I don't think Harrahs' really gives a shit about promoting poker whatsoever, they simply have the rights to a huge cash cow and are going to milk it as long as possible. Until they get some actual competition of similar sized buy in events people will forever flock to the WSOP.