The Rio WSOP Tourney Area

[Shaman]

Overwhelmingly HUGE!!!!! At least 4 football fields could fit into that place. Wow!

Anyone know where's the best place to park? Had to walk two miles from the covered parking lot to the tourney area.

[Vincent Lepore]

Park at the Gold Coast

Vince

[Vincent Lepore]

Valet might be better yet!

Vince

[Shaman]

Gold Coast would make the walk even longer. Valet would cut it short a bit but still probably a mile.

[Jedster]

Park behind the convention center if you don't mind leaving your car in the daylight. THe way I get there is taking industrial and taking the via del rio drive, going straight into the rio, then going past the main parking garage on the right...eventually you hit a T intersection where you'll go left (this is past the palazzo suites entrance).

Then park as close as you can to the pavilion doorway -- the hall is just a short walk away.

And yes the room is huge. I was pleasantly surprised -- they seem to be working through the kinks!

[Shaman]

It is starting to look like they are actually going to do a good job. I underestimated them in the earlier thread.

[Jedster]

I agree with you -- I think they are getting their act together. Of course, that might be famous last words.

In particular, I think Bev Cheney today did a great job with satellites. Basically she's running 20 single tables at a time without having enough chips or dealers.

Anyway, here are some of my observations:

- The room is huge. It will be a zoo during tournament time, but a fun zoo. The lighting is really great.

- The signup process is lame. You have to go through a longish line to get a WSOP Players Card, and then on another line to register.

- I'm glad that I got a table near the doors when I registered, however! (One thing I didn't see but I assume they'll have are monitors with the time remaining on the level.)

- Bev said that by tomorrow all the satellite chips should be on site and that they should be able to run 50 single table satellites at a time. WOW. The structure has been reported on in other threads. (I played one, donkey style, losing rather quickly.)

- THe tables themselves are really nice for tournament tables. Most importantly they don't have those horrible legs which you bump your knee with. The felt is new and the cards glide quickly across it.

- The customized WSOP cards seem decent, they are by a company called conga cards or somesuch. They don't look quite like kem cards, and they use a weird font, but they are good enough for me.

- Unfortunately, cocktails are served by convention waiters, not hot rio girls!

Overall I'm much more upbeat about how things will be run. But I'm still interested to see how they are going to handle event #2 (I think they had 1400 already registered by last night alone).

Oh one last note, they didn't seem to have the cash games going in the room yet. It's just gonna be crazy when they've got 2nd chance tournaments, satellites, cash games, and the regular tournament all going at once!

[Shaman]

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- Unfortunately, cocktails are served by convention waiters, not hot rio girls!

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I'm getting a refund. I will not be playing this year. [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]