WSOP day 1 - thoughts and results

[Scooterdoo]

Arrived in Vegas early afternoon and headed to the Rio about 5pm. Lucky for me I took several people's advise on this forum and pre-registered and sent my money for the the first two events ($1,500 NL tomorrow and $1500 pot limit on Sat) prior to coming. There was no line at the will call desk to pick up my table assignments but the line to register in person for tomorrow's tournament was about 3 hours. Last I heard they are up to 1800 people and expect it to sell out. In fact I heard a rumor that they will be taking a few hundred alternates. I also heard that the tournament might now last over 3 days. We'll see.

It does seem to be fairly well organized. The lines for the sats were pretty short; I played in 4 $175 sats the most of the lines were only a few minutes -- once I waited for about 10.

Results:

first 1 table: got down to final 3 with blinds at 300/600 and all of us essentially equal we decided to split it -- 540 each. Okay, not a bad start.

Second 1 table: lost in first level, $175 + $50 last longer. I was still in my very loose mode from the prior end of the other sat so I made a pretty stupid call late in the first round with an A weak kicker and a flop of Axx.

Third Sat: $175, won it. Did a $200 save with the other two guys when we were 3 way, so I won $1620 - $400 for $1200. Plus we had a $50 5-way last longer and I split it when we had 2 left.

Fourth $175: won a 6-way $100 last longer for a nice $500 profit. Got heads-up with a guy who really didn't know how to play heads-up (he was playing for good cards and seemed to be folding much too much). He was practically begging for a split when we were 50/50. Once I got to 70/30 with 300/600 blinds he suggested a 65/35 split. I didn't want to, but I had a bad feeling that it would come back to haunt me (even though I felt I was much better) and I wanted to end the night on a good note. So I now have 6 $500 tournament chips and I did net just under $3,000. Not bad for day one!

I have sossman's cell and tried calling him around 9pm. He had just arrived at the airport and was heading over to the Rio to signup for tomorrow. Hopefully he gets in... I do think there's still room.

I look forward to hooking up with some of the other guys tomorrow. If anyone at the WSOP is reading this we're meeting at Starbucks at 10:30am. I assume it's the one near the convention center and not the one in the main casino. We'll see. Be sure to send me a private message and we can exchange cell #'s. I'll check the forum prior to heading out in the am.

Good night!

[Degen]

gl man...make us proud!


Andre

[Punker]

Stop making so many deals. Geez.

[Lloyd]

I thought I'd share my thoughts in this thread as well to keep things nice and tidy in the forum. I echo much of what has already been said. Except I think the WSOP staff and dealers don't have a clue!

They have 3 to 4 people working the cashier where literally hundreds of people have constantly been waiting in line for over 3 hours. The line never shrinks. To make matters worse their computers went down tonight as well. And this is all after you wait in a previous line for registration. Here's an idea - combine the lines! Fortunately I had my entry for tomorrow pre-paid so I just went to the will call booth. And just so you know, it's not just us ordinary people who are standing in lines. I was registering for a tourney and saw Barry Greenstein and Mike Matusow in the big 3 hour line. I knew this, of course, when Matusow started talking (i.e. screaming) to Barry while Barry was about 6 feet away.

There are plenty of ring games and satellites going on. The satellites range from $50 up to $550 and go hire when there's a demand. I played in a few of the $175s and the level of play was pretty comparable with Party 215s.

The competency of the dealers is really concerning. Granted it's the first day, but they don't know how to deal with blinds and the button when people bust out and other pretty standard rules. It seems like they weren't briefed or required to read the Tournament Director's Association rules prior to dealing. In one satellite I was playing, a guy bet T500 on the flop. The next player put in 10 T100 chips - a raise to T1000. The dealer said it was a call because he didn't say raise. OOOOKAY. Somewhere in his mind he's remembering some rule about being required to say raise (the one chip rule usually pre-flop). I know these folks are working hard but you'd think the staff would do a better prep job.

Each night at 11PM there's a $225 NLHE tourney with a 1st prize of around $14K. I entered tonight but the dealer at my satellite was so slow, and was doing things like changing the deck after each 15 minute level, that I missed the first 45 minutes of the tourney. My fault for cutting it so close but I figured we'd be done in an hour. By the time I got to my seat the blinds were 50/100 and I had T875 after being blinded off. I stole a few blinds and when it was 100/200 (and I had about 900) I called an all-in by a short stack with AQ. He had A8 and after a nice flop hit 8s on the turn and river to knock me out. Oh well. Lesson learned.

The tourney tomorrow is supposed to have 2200 sold seats and another 300 alternates. It's now been extended to 3 days. It's really amazing to see how many people are here and it's definitely exciting to be a part of the largest poker event in history.

All in all I had a great day. It wasn't profitable (I essentially broke even), and it was delayed by many avoidable problems, but you gotta love being in Vegas for the WSOP. It's definitely an experience to cherish.

Until tomorrow . . .

[Lloyd]

[ QUOTE ]
Stop making so many deals. Geez.

[/ QUOTE ]
FYI, the sats are winner take all except for some of the $50s.

[FrankTheTank]

keep the stories coming please! us clods who aren't in vegas need some second-hand action.

[Scooterdoo]

[ QUOTE ]
Stop making so many deals. Geez.

[/ QUOTE ]

You really need to in most cases because the levels are very short (only 15 minutes) and the dealers are not very good so there are just not enough hands so when you get short-handed the blinds are usually too high. For example, in the first table when we made the 3-way deal we were at 300-600 blinds and we all had approximately 3-3.5k in chips. What is the skill in playing that out?

I like to usually NOT do a deal and do a save where we agree to give the loser his/her buyin. That said, when someone offers me something reasonable I'll usually do it. In the 3rd table I normally would not have made the 65/35 deal but as I said earlier I had already made $600 from the last-longer and I wanted to end the night on a good note.

The other thing I noticed yesterday was that there were virtually no pros playing the sata and a lot of inexperienced passive players. This makes things easier, but it also makes the play much slower. FYI, I was really short-stacked but the only way I was able to come back was to push a few times with any two cards and I never got called. Also, when it came to my blinds when I was really in dire straights I was able to steal from the SB and nobody called me when I was in the BB! I did have my AJ beat QQ once.

[meow_meow]

[ QUOTE ]
Arrived in Vegas early afternoon and headed to the Rio about 5pm. Lucky for me I took several people's advise on this forum and pre-registered and sent my money for the the first two events ($1,500 NL tomorrow and $1500 pot limit on Sat) prior to coming.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've been wondering about this. Aren't you worried that you make the final table (that sounds wierd!) of the first event, and have to forfeit your buy-in for the second. Or worse, they make the 1500NL a 3-day, you make it to day 2, but finish out of the money, just as your 1500PL stack is blinded off...

[Perseus]

I've been here for four days now and the Rio had totally underestimated how many people were going to show up. They had a three hour line with 3 people signing up new players and a couple cashiers signing up people in the tournaments.

The dealers are very new and they are literally pulling any they can find off the streets. One guy said he came in for a job and they had him dealing within 15 minutes. Most of the dealers are terrible but it's only day one and they are making some mistakes they sure won't make twice...

My experience playing the ring games at the Belligio has been great, up 1700 in two days there. The single tables however are a different story. God I love/hate poker.

I got locked out of the 1,500 today because, like an idiot, I waited till the last minute to sign up. Looks like I'll be playing pot limit tom or limit on Sunday instead.


I'll be posting updates throughout the month if anyone is interested.