small wsop trip report:

[Comatose_Soul 0]

Hopefully people are not sick of these already, but here is a small report from my Vegas trip back on the 2nd I plan on updating my blog in a few days with more detail about my trip and all the poker I played. But for now, here are my thoughts on the WSOP.WSOP – Trip ReportMy buddies and I arrived in Vegas around 5 p.m. I had wanted to go directly to the Rio to sign up for event # 2, but apparently my buddies did not have the same urgency. We got checked-in to our hotel and headed to the Plaza to play their 7 p.m. tournament. One of my buddies busted out early and went over to Binion’s for their 8 p.m. tourney.During a break I call to find out what he is up to. Apparently some people at Binion’s are telling him that Event # 2 is full already. Bleh! I make the final table of the Plaza tournament (only had like 32 players or so,) but bust out on the bubble in sixth when my K10o doesn’t catch anything against a Q9o that catches a 9 on the flop. So now one buddy is in the money for the Plaza tournament and the other is at Binion’s.Soon enough we’re all wrapped up (one friend busted out of the Binion’s tourney, and the other finished third in the Plaza tourney.) We jump in our rental car and speed on over the Rio. I had never been in the Rio, and was very impressed with their convention area. It was HUGE, and very nice. We walk up to new player registration, and the line did not look too bad (maybe 50-75 people waiting.) There was one worker with a WSOP badge that we tried to get some information from. He knew absolutely nothing. The best information we could gather was from other people in line; ~2070 players registered for event # 2 and there was talk of them allowing another 100 alternates.We figure we’ll look around a bit before we decide if we want to be an alternate or not. We round a corner and bam, at least 100+ maybe even 150+ people waiting in line to pay for event # 2. Looking at a 2-3 hour wait, the two of us that were going to play event # 2 decide against it (maybe a poor decision in hind-sight, from what I heard ALL 300 alternates got into the event within the first 30 minutes.)Looking around, the event room was the largest I have ever seen. In fact it was a bit too much for me. They had event #1, cash games and single table satellites all running in different sections of the same room. The staff were all very friendly, but very clueless. The flow of information was horrendous. Ignoring the lack of information about the actual series, the cash game setup was nice. Very easy to get signed up and in a game, and easy to see where you were on the list. It looked like they had brand new tables, new cards and the chips looked new as well (I didn’t see the chips up close because we didn’t play a single hand at the Rio that weekend.)So my first impressions were basically that the room was impressive, almost intimidating, the tables looked nice, and the sign up process sucked. Hopefully next year, we will be able to sign the ESPN release online and print our own player registration cards. In addition, it would be nice to have some more online payment options – or at least be better prepared for the opening day madness. Finally, the staff need to carry head-sets and be better informed.It was not until Sunday that I broke away from my buddies to actual watch some of a WSOP event. I strolled in about a half hour into the Limit event. I was pretty surprised about how loose and unorganized things appeared. Access to the tournament tables was pretty much wide open. I even saw someone getting an autograph from Doyle during the action (Doyle was out of the hand, but still) – this floored me. Doyle was awesome about it, and all smiles, but damn, can’t you wait for a break or something? There were flashes going off left and right. At times there were even people sitting directly behind a player for a little chit-chat during a hand (not something I expected to see at the WSOP.) I have no idea how the pros feel about all this, but I wanted a bit more separation. Just seemed like the fans had too much access to the players during the events.The other interesting/surprising thing I witnessed was the first blind change. There was a pretty visible tournament clock with the blinds posted, and when it switched, I heard Doyle’s dealer say that they don’t actually change until the tournament director announces it. All well and good, except after five minutes, there was still no announcement and the other tables had already started using the new blinds. Again, a little more unorganized than I had expected.All in all it was exciting, and that is all that matters really. Hopefully next year (or even further into the events this year,) they will be a little bit more organized, and figure out how to better handle the large numbers. It would have been nice if the Rio/WSOP staff kept better track of the tournaments. I would have liked more monitors in the room with event information. Posting event results somewhere would have been nice too – was pretty lame that I had to go to the cardplayer booth just to get information about the previous day’s events.