WSOP Event #2 Nightmare

[BREWMANCHU]

I just wired my money for the June 22 $1500 NLHE. I got spooked about being able to play with these over booked stories.

The Rio is impossible to get a hold of, anyone know what the people who pre-register and pay do when they get there? Do you have to wait in that same line?

[Kevmath]

From what I've read at other sites, the best thing to do is pre-register since you'll only have to go thru one line.

Kevin...

[renodoc]

One guy told me that they are 7 days behind on finding the money that people sent in to preregister. Yikes.

And, they made event #2 a 3 day event with play scheduled to end at 0300 this morning as well as tomorrow morning. I would hate to bubble in this one. (oops, I don't have to worry about it now....)

[OrangeCat]

[ QUOTE ]
I was planning on playing in this event as well and had the exact same concern. Also, what really scares me as that the tournament director (from what I can gather and I may be wrong on this point) has NEVER managed a tournament before and now he's starting with the World Series? This makes no sense to me. Why did they get rid of Matt Savage? He seemed to do a good job last year. Does anyone have any insight on this? I expect a lot of problems this year at the WSOP.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here is what I heard from a friend who is a Harrah’s employee. The team that managed the WSOP last few years wanted a fee for doing it this year. I don’t know how much they were asking for but the result is that Harrahs decided to put their own people in charge. This was expected because Harrahs has a reputation for being a very cheap organization run by bean counters who don’t understand big time poker.

The guy Harrahs hired, Ken Lambert, was formerly the poker room manager at Binions Tunica. KL may be a competent guy but it takes a large team of experienced people to make an event of this size and prestige run smoothly. That is something Harrahs does not have and Savage could have brought. In short, Harrahs made a big mistake and disaster is likely. Well, not a complete disaster because Harrahs will still make money off the TV revenue but for the participants, it will suck big time.

My friend also says Harrah’s decided to reduce the dealer percentage because Harrahs thinks the dealers made too much money last year. Supposedly this has led to a boycott by some dealers.

[Kevmath]

Regarding the "TV revenue" Harrah's is allegedly making, they're still under the old contract Binion's made with ESPN which was a very small figure, given the current size of the event. This is the final year of that contract, and Harrah's will surely be looking to make up for the lost revenue.

Kevin...