The Last November Nine?

I was perusing my own archives yesterday, ostensibly to select some of my better pieces as writing samples for prospective employers. Not that there are any of those knocking my door down these days, but better to be prepared, right? In between my realization that I had not composed a traditional resume in over 12 years and the desire to bathe my scratchy throat with a glass of ice-cold chocolate milk, I came upon a list of op-ed ideas I'd scribbled down on October 4, 2010. One of them jumped out at me.

"Has the November Nine run its course?"

I didn't end up penning that one. I probably could or would have written the opposite side of that argument in 2008 or 2009. Back then, it was an innovative idea that had the potential to generate a lot of revenue for Harrah's and the "Niners" alike. And for a while, it did.

Later that day, I read this PokerListings piece, in which writer Arthur Crowson questions WSOP communications honcho Seth Palansky about the future of the November Nine.

“We’re committed to it but I think what we learned over the summer with the live and taped programming is that we’re going to have to revisit the concept after this November,” clarified Palansky.

My, how one year changes everything.

More than six months post-Black Friday, we've seen the poker television landscape decimated. Poker After Dark? No mas. NBC Heads-Up? No mas. My favorite new poker show The Big Game? No mas. And ratings for everything else, including the slickly packaged Mori Eskandani-produced WSOP broadcasts? In. The. Shitter. I'll go out on a limb and say that even if the events of Black Friday hadn't occurred, the drastic culling of poker TV hours was still an inevitability-- it just would have taken more time.

Bottom line? People just don't seem to want to watch it anymore, no matter how many bells and whistles are tacked on. Heck, even I don't watch it anymore and I'm supposed to be one of those "hard-core fans" producers and advertisers and network execs count on. These days, if I'm going to dedicate hours to watching poker, it's in the form of a strategy video or a final table replay-- something that can (and has) enabled me to make more money in live games. Because I'm sure not making it in the media anymore. And living in San Francisco sure is expensive.

This year's November Nine will more likely than not be the last one we see. One of the primary reasons for creating the four-month delay was to give the Niners the opportunity to pick up sponsorships, do a shitload of publicity, and "build anticipation" for the final table. Now, with poker's principal advertisers and sponsors (online poker sites) sidelined in the United States, what sort of deals are these guys going to get, if any? Mainstream corporate sponsorship has been the holy grail the Harrah's brass has sought for the WSOP since the boom, but their quest has largely come up empty in terms of the November Nine (and not for lack of trying. Really really trying). Rather than wearing patches touting Nike, Red Bull, or Mercedes-Benz, the Niners have largely shilled PokerStars, Full Tilt, and various online training sites. Oh, and that patio furniture company that threw a few bucks at The Grinder last year.

Not only has poker's sponsorship model drastically changed/disappeared, the game's delivery system has evolved. Rather than sticking with a produced, tightly packaged episodic format aired months after an event's completion, more and more of them are being live streamed online. Broadcasts like Live at the Bike and EPT Live pioneered this concept as far back as 2005, and it's now being widely used on the WPT, the WSOP-Circuit, and the WSOP itself. It provides instant gratification for the viewer, and technological advances have made it much cheaper and easier to implement. What sort of hard-core fan will still sort through hundreds of hands on a live blog trying to extrapolate the action when he or she can simply watch it all unfold on a 15-minute delay?

Put it this way. I watched the live stream constantly while the WSOP Main Event was playing down to a final table this July. But I haven't watched a single packaged WSOP episode on ESPN this year. And I'll probably watch the live stream again next weekend when the cards go in the air inside the Penn & Teller theatre.

Fans haven't changed, but their appetite for certain delivery systems has. I don't watch movies in 2011 the same way I watched them in 1999 and I don't follow poker the same way I did in 2007. Only three years ago, I made the bulk of my income live-blogging tournaments and now it's a method that is nearly obsolete. The optimist in me thought the death of tournament reporting and the rise of the live stream might give way to a rebirth of longer-form poker writing, but Black Friday put a stop to that when the taps of the two online behemoths pumping cash into the industry were abruptly turned off.

Magazines and online sites I once wrote for have precious few advertising dollars rolling in. Some have folded altogether. Others will no doubt follow in the coming dark years of the game, before the U.S. Government gets their shit together and finally legalizes online poker. But I have no more faith in those charlatans and snake-oil salesmen than I do in Full Tilt Poker, who still owes me $1,945 of my own money.

I believe there's a larger reason why folks have stopped watching televised poker. It's not only that the casual fans stopped tuning in as the boom drew its last breaths. It's not only that Black Friday effectively stopped the influx of new American players to the game. It's not only that televised final tables were increasingly made up of people folks had never heard of rather than familiar old-school pros. It's all of those things, but it's bigger than that.

People aren't just broke, they're broken. They are so fucking broken they're actually starting to turn off the Real Housewives and rise up out of their self-induced collective coma against the institutions rigging the game in this country. Russ Hamilton's crimes are downright quaint when held up against the shit Goldman Sachs gets away with every single day. With economic depression, high unemployment, falling wages and a bleak future facing the citizens of our hopelessly sold-out country, who the hell wants to watch a bunch of 23 year-olds in hoodies play cards for millions of dollars? Why give a rat's ass about the newest poker-minted millionaire when you can't even play a $10 sit-n-go in your own home anymore thanks to our government?

Think about why people got hooked on televised poker in the first place. Not just because they found it exciting and suspenseful, but because they knew anyone could win. Anyone could ship a satellite package online and parlay that into tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in a live event. Anyone could end up under those lights, popping champagne with Mike Sexton. Lots of "anyones" did, and millions were inspired to play. Without that carrot, it's well, just an empty stick. Live streaming will sate the diehards and perhaps the Main Event will always live on in some form of edited package, but I expect even more programming to die out unless online poker makes a quick, legal comeback.

On April 15, thousands of people who once had a way of supporting themselves outside the system had their way of life taken away with one stroke of Preet Bharaha's pen. When it comes to the fall of online poker in the U.S., the powers that be weren't getting their "fair share" of that juicy green pie. So they leveled the industry altogether in order to eventually weasel their way in. It won't happen in the short-term, but it will happen eventually. There may be time pressure for those clinging to the last vestiges of the industry, but there's no time pressure for them. Our money will always be there, ready for the taking the minute that tap is turned back on. Perhaps when the big banks finally start collecting all those precious transaction fees from online poker players we'll see someone in a JP Morgan Chase patch at the final table. Remember, guys. You're only allowed three. B of A gets three too, and so does Citibank.

I didn't apply for a press credential to last year's November Nine. I drove out there, saw some friends, dropped off Pauly and was back on I-15 south before cards went in the air. I didn't apply for them this year either, even though I will be in Las Vegas when someone finally holds that bracelet aloft. You're more likely instead to find me somewhere off the Strip, in a cash game or a nightly tournament, iPod in my ears and 16 oz. of steaming coffee in my cup holder, trying to grind out the rent money. After all, I do have another skill set that has thus far helped me avoid complete financial ruin. I might as well use it.

For what it was, though, the November Nine certainly had its moments. And most of them revolved around the friends, family, and fans of the players who came out to support them, often in matching specialized shirts (seriously, who doesn't love a group costume?). I'll miss their infectious energy and I'll miss the spectacle, but they'll no doubt be channelled into whatever new delivery system the Harrah's brass conjure up. A 48-hour delay? A week? Maybe I'll be around to cover it live, maybe I won't.

But I'll surely be watching the stream.

2011 November Nine photo by Jay "WhoJedi" Newnum

Impressionism

When the WSOP schedule was released I was confronted with a decision-- play the Ladies' Event or travel to upstate New York to attend a three-day Phish concert. If the Ladies' Event fell on any other weekend during the WSOP, there was about an 80% chance I would have played. Despite the score I had earlier this year, it still would not have been sound bankroll (or liferoll) management to buy in to any $1,000 event directly. Of course, there were other avenues available-- single-table satellites, selling action, and even at one point pre-Black Friday, sponsorship. The more I thought about it, however, the more it turned into hardly a decision at all. Of course I was going to choose to spend Fourth of July weekend seeing my favorite band with the love of my life over a poker tournament. And, as it turned out, I couldn't have picked a better weekend to leave Las Vegas and the World Series of Poker temporarily behind.

Stand too close to an impressionist painting and it is, in the inimitable words of Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, "A big ol' mess." Move back a few feet and shapes start to form. Make it a few yards and you'll begin to see the scene for what it really is. I had to get 2,500 miles away from the Rio to do just that.

We returned just in time to witness the final table of the $50,000 Players' Championship, where Phil Hellmuth is making his third run this summer at his record 12th WSOP bracelet. Although its a little strange NOT to be live-blogging the whole thing from start-to-finish, I can't say I miss it. At this point in my journey as a writer, I have a far better perspective standing further back from this particular painting. The same goes for the Main Event, which roars to a start tomorrow. My time is far more profitably spent these days grinding out rent money in the $1-2 and $2-5 NLHE at Venetian. No amount of words I speak or write will do anything to change the dramas that constantly repeat themselves in the poker world. And for that healthy dose of perspective, I have to thank the 30,000 strangers who gathered around a racetrack this weekend in Watkins Glen, my boyfriend, who encouraged me to join them, and four guys named Trey, Mike, Page, and Fish who put on one helluva show.

Good luck to everyone chasing the dream in the Main Event. I'll see you at the tables.

Guest Post on Tao of Poker: Apocalypse Now

With Pauly out of town on his first Phishing adventure of the summer, I filled in this weekend with a guest post on the Tao of Poker. Head on over and check out Apocalypse Now.

Moving back over to the featured table now, where Maria Ho is about to go heads-up with Allen Bari for the $5k NLHE bracelet. Hit up WSOP.com for chip counts and updates, because my badge is off for this one.

In Which I RISE to the Occasion

Some of you may have figured it out by now, but I'll make it formal here. In addition to writing dispatches on the Tao of Poker, I'm also part of the team behind the RISE Poker blog. A partnership between Poker Royalty, RISE clothing and Zen Gaming, RISE Poker is a subscription-based online poker site that is 100% legal in U.S. America. We have a sick lineup writing and doing photography for the blog including Pauly, F-Train, Benjo, and WhoJedi. It's sort of like every superstar free agent got together to form their own ball club and I'm proud to be a part of it.

Here's a few posts I've already penned for RISE:

Phil Ivey Breaks Silence, Sues Full Tilt

2011 WSOP Day 3: $25k Heads-Up Finds its Final Four

2011 WSOP Day 4: Jake Cody Wins $25k Heads-Up, Completes Triple Crown

Phil Ivey Suing Full Tilt, Won't Play WSOP

A dramabomb did detonate on the first day of the 2011 World Series of Poker. It just wasn't the one anyone expected.

For weeks, the poker community has been speculating as to which members of Team Full Tilt would show up at the WSOP and whether or not they would don the red and white patches that have become synonymous with their public personae. Although former Full Tilt president Howard Lederer did return to the United States a few days ago to attend to a personal matter (his mother's memorial service), most folks in media row believe he wouldn't dare show his face inside the Rio until a plan was in place for Full Tilt's U.S. customers to be paid out. Other Team Full Tilters, however, weren't quite as concerned about potential face-to-face confrontations at the Rio with angry players. I spotted a patchless Phil Gordon early this afternoon at the Bad Beat on Cancer booth. A few hours later I saw John Juanda in the satellite area and he was wearing a patch. The $25,000 heads-up event that began at 5 p.m. today was littered with red pros, many of them logoed up including Erick Lindgren, Patrik Antonius, Brandon Adams, Huck Seed, David Benyamine and Juanda. Lederer didn't play, of course. Neither did Chris Ferguson or Andy Bloch. But the most glaring absence was Phil Ivey. This is a man with some serious bracelet bets, not to mention a solid favorite against the field.

As Dutch blogger Remko "happyfreaked" Rinkema wrote on his Twitter account earlier today, "Biggest upset of the first day is obviously Phil Ivey not showing up. Is he out for the summer?"

Turns out, he is.

As the first round of the $25k drew to a close, Ivey posted a statement on his official Facebook page that ignited a frenzy. Although the veracity of the statement was briefly in doubt, it was quickly confirmed by the Entities at Wicked Chops Poker via a conversation with Ivey's manager. Released in six parts, here is the complete text:

For many years, I have been proud to call myself a poker player. This great sport has taken me to places I only imagined going and I have been blessed with much success. It is therefore with deep regret that I believe I am compelled to release the following statement.

I am deeply disappointed and embarrassed that Full Tilt players have not been paid money they are owed. I am equally embarrassed that as a result many players cannot compete in tournaments and have suffered economic harm.

I am not playing in the World Series of Poker as I do not believe it is fair that I compete when others cannot. I am doing everything I can to seek a solution to the problem as quickly as possible.

My name and reputation have been dragged through the mud, through the inactivity and indecision of others and on behalf of all poker players I refuse to remain silent any longer. I have electronically filed a lawsuit against Tiltware related to the unsettled player accounts. As I am sure the public can imagine, this was not an easy decision for me.

I wholeheartedly refuse to accept non-action as to repayment of players funds and I am angered that people who have supported me throughout my career have been treated so poorly.

I sincerely hope this statement will ignite those capable of resolving the problems into immediate action and would like to clarify that until a solution is reached that cements the security of all players, both US and International, I will, as I have for the last six weeks, dedicate the entirety of my time and efforts to finding a solution for those who have been wronged by the painfully slow process of repayment.

In a word, (well, actually two,) holy shit.

Ivey's page was immediately flooded with supportive statements from players and fans. It's the first official word anyone's heard regarding the payout situation from a member Team Full Tilt, who have all supposedly been muzzled by lawyers. Ivey, no doubt, has a substantial sum of his own money tied up on the site. The seven-figure-per-month dividend checks have stopped coming. So why not file a lawsuit? Not only is it a good PR move to do Bill Clinton's "I feel your pain" routine and align himself with the disgruntled U.S. players, but he's also one of the (very) few Full Tilt Pros who can actually continue to support himself in the lifestyle he's grown accustomed to by playing poker. Ivey loves the game, he'll put in the hours, and he'll take on anyone. Did Howard Lederer cart his bags of money over to Bellagio and step up to the plate in high-stakes cash games over the last couple of years? Of course not. And why would he? Lederer is smart enough to understand that at this point, he lacks any sort of edge in those lineups.

Ivey's statement, however, was not the only drama circling Team Full Tilt today. After losing his Round 1 match to David "Bakes" Baker in the $25k, 2010 WSOP-Europe Main Event champ James Bord hung out on the rail and waited for John Juanda to finish his match before confronting him with a barrage of obscenities. I believe the words "thieving prick" and "disgusting human being" were tossed around before Bord threatened to attack Juanda in the parking lot. Security intervened, and the two were physically separated.

It will be interesting in the next few days to see if similar confrontations pop up. I'm never one to condone violence, but people are angry, quite a few are broke, and after 45 days without moving even a small step closer to returning player balances, they want answers. They're mad as hell, they're not going to take it anymore, and today, Phil Ivey was effectively canonized as their patron saint. Could other Full Tilters fall in step? Yeah... somehow I doubt that. The situation, however, is reaching UB proportions and will grow worse by the day inside this building until someone from Full Tilt other than a low-level PR monkey steps up and starts communicating.

Slow news day, huh?

**Update**

11:45pm: Pauly, Benjo and I recorded a Tao of Pokerati podcast on the Ivey/Juanda drama. Check out Episode 2: Ivey suing Full Tilt and Juanda harassed.

Darkness on the Edge of Town

I'm seated on a camping chair in the cement-and-gravel backyard of my seventh Las Vegas residence in six summers. It's so perfectly clear and pleasant outside I could almost weep. I hear a bird chirp and it reminds me of the dead one Pauly found next to the back wall only minutes after we arrived. I know that there's another bird carcass around the corner beyond the padlocked fence painted a shade on the lighter end of the cream-to-adobe spectrum that covers nearly every square inch of surface, man-made or not, in the Las Vegas Valley. Taking a look at our parched surroundings on the edge of town it's not difficult to figure out their cause of death.

The din of Los Angeles had been eating at my patience over the last six weeks I spent there-- the leaf blowers, circular saws, and car alarms, the bickering couple upstairs and their boundlessly energetic kitten, the can fairies pillaging the dumpster outside our bedroom window, and the relentless crush of traffic, whatever the hour. It's quiet out here, save for the goat that woke Pauly and Benjo early this morning. Apparently a few of them live in the rogue structure behind our subdivision in a fenced-off square of land. I'm enjoying the brief silence before turning my life over to the World Series of Poker for the sixth straight year less than 24 hours from now.

Although I know my frame of mind will undoubtedly change over the next few days, there's just something more zen about my outlook as I approach the Series. I'd say about 90% of that is due to the fact that I'm no longer a slave to live updates. What I will be doing at the WSOP in terms of media will reveal itself in the coming days and I will certainly be playing a lot more than I have been able to in past years. I look forward to being able to write within a different structure, one far more akin my first WSOP than the five that followed. And as usual, if you're snapped wearing a heinous outfit-- it's not slander if it's the truth!

I keep going back to a conversation I had in a bar back in Los Angeles earlier this year.

"Something big is going to happen at the WSOP this year, I can feel it," she said.

I didn't believe her at the time. The media veteran in me won out. But it was also two months before Black Friday.

I'll see you at the Rio.

WSOP Flashback: Leaving Los Angeles, 2008

I was told on more than one occasion that the "jail sentence" metaphor I conjured up in this post led to my eventual sacking from a certain media outlet more than two years later (can you concieve of a more bullshit excuse?). Nevertheless, I believe it speaks honestly to what we all feel around this time each year as we prepare to bunker down for seven weeks in Las Vegas.

Desert Calling
originally posted 5/26/2008

In many ways, it's like preparing for a jail sentence. You get your affairs in order, leave sets of instructions, close up the house, give the keys to its caretaker. You say goodbye to your loved ones and warn them that you may not call a lot because the hours are messed up and one day tends to bleed into another as the sun rises and falls, rises and falls over the parched Nevada desert. You know that in a week's time words like Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday will cease to matter; only Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. You know that 2 a.m. will, at some point start to feel like 2 p.m., that meals will happen whenever there is time, and that little time at all will be spent in the scorching outdoors.

Your new home is a room the size of an airplane hangar cooled to the temperature of a refrigerator and you'll spend over 500 hours serving time in there over the next seven weeks. You've committed no crime, but you're a repeat offender. You know the consequences, you understand how punishing the grind will be. But you're still drawn there. Drawn to the lights in the desert. Drawn to the clatter of chips and the promise of fortune and the patches of darkness that lurk around every corner of the city. Year after year. Summer after summer. Three of them now.

The sun, unforgiving. The heat, persistent. Oppressive. Unfathomably dry. The valley, overflowing with identical tract houses in various states of construction or foreclosure. The roads, newer and wider the further you drive away from the highway. Mile upon mile of chain restaurants, discount superstores, anonymous office parks, and subdivision after subdivision after subdivision. The Strip, it's grimy sidewalks sizzling, overflowing with tourists from California, from St. Louis, from North Carolina, from Utah, from London from Stockholm from Melbourne. They come to escape. To gamble. To get married. To find Elvis. They come to see America. They come seeking a dream. They come seeking a quick fix. They leave and come back, leave and come back. But always come back. They always come back. I always come back.

We wonder how we got here, how any of us got here, and why, after all we know, we continue to return. On every drive through the desert I wonderwhat were those slings and arrows of fate that turned me off Wilshire Boulevard and onto this two-lane highway?

24 hours. To pack, to prepare. To plot. To brace. To sleep. To inhale those final lungfulls of ocean air and enjoy the comfort of a cool breeze.

The lights in the desert are calling. I have to answer.

Media Banned from Playing WSOP Bracelet Events

Via a tweet from Lee "@Chingster23" Davy it leaked out this morning that an "unwritten" WSOP rule forbids credentialed members of the media from playing WSOP bracelet events.

"Just been informed by WSOP that I cannot play in a WSOP event if I am also going to carry out Media work. Just saved myself a lot of money," he wrote.

I guess the year of the poker media is over, at least when it comes to World Series events.

I've spent the last five summers doing nothing but promote the WSOP. I've spent every June evening since 2006 grinding out live updates, and now the powers that be are telling me and everyone else who has worked their ass off on media row that their money is no longer welcome in the Amazon Room. And in such a circuitous way. When, exactly were we going to find out about this "unwritten rule" had Chingster23 not brought it to everyone's attention? Before or after we picked up our credentials three weeks from now?

Playing in a WSOP event is the highlight of the summer for many members of the poker media. It's a needed reprieve from the grind of reporting and a rare opportunity to live in the world we spend our days writing about from the sidelines. Sure, Harrah's will gladly take the media's money when they charge us $8 for a stale pizza at 1 AM, but should they want to plunk down a grand to take a shot at the dream they are really selling-- a bracelet-- that money is no longer welcome. Or, as Pauly said to me a few minutes ago, "Poker is a game of skill. They don't want you to play that. But they have no problem with you donking off your paycheck at craps or pai gow. Or in my case, they'll gladly take your sports bets."

A lot of us in the media rely on poker to supplement our income. We make barely enough to get by as it is. Even those lucky to have jobs or a few paying freelance clients have seen our paychecks shrink up significantly over the last year. Now, with online poker no longer an option for those of us living in the U.S. (as well as the foreign media working at the WSOP-- they can't play from Vegas either) we're left to make that money up in live games. I know I was planning on grinding a lot more this summer to cover my expenses. Now I'll just have to take my business across the street to the Venetian.

Oh, wait! But satellites and cash games are OK! Hold on... I can play a satellite for a WSOP event, but I can't play the event itself? What the fuck am I supposed to do with my lammers then, since selling them is technically illegal? There's another "unwritten rule" for you, or at least that's what I was told both times I was busted by security last year for doing just that-- a practice as old as WSOP satellites themselves. Why, then would I choose to give Harrah's my rake in the cash games when there are plenty of other options?

The WSOP knocked over a hornet's nest with this one. They broke the cardinal rule- don't upset people with pens or a platform. Just as I was getting excited about my annual sojurn to Vegas, that "pilgrimage" Ty Stewart so elegantly described on this morning's media conference call, I'm finding nothing but a bad taste in my mouth.

**Update**

2:42pm: Well that took only ninety minutes. See what happens when the poker media actually works together? I got a voicemail from WSOP pooh-bah Seth Palansky just a bit ago reassuring me that I'd be able to play bracelet events this summer. He followed it up with this two-part tweet from the @wsop account:

"Is it too late to say April Fools Poker Media? (j/k) I screwed up. I hear you. We'll come up with an alternative that lets u do both. Give me a day to vet, but I think there's a way to do this that is more fair. Will provide details as soon as we can, but please rest easy."

Thank you, WSOP for listening. And thank you, poker media for a quick, decisive response.

Everything All of the Time (Reprise)

Last July, only a few days before the start of the 2010 WSOP Main Event, I wrote these words for a piece on the Tao of Poker called Everything All of the Time:

"The World Series of Poker is in the midst of an identity crisis. The WSOP needs to decide what it is. Is it the most prestigious festival of poker in the world? Or is it a poker fantasy camp marketed to the masses?"

I was certainly not alone with this viewpoint. I can't tell you how many players I spoke with last summer who were frustrated with the polarized schedule of event buy-ins. If you're a NLHE tournament player you essentially have two choices-- play in one of more than a dozen $1,000 and $1,500 buy-in events with field sizes ranging from 2,500-3,000 players, or play in a $5,000 buy-in event against 800 of the world's top online wizards. Should you choose the $1,500 event and chip up a bit, only to lose one medium-sized pot in the early going, you'll be under 30 big blinds by the start of Level 3. Should you choose the $5k, you'll start with a comfortable 200 big blinds, but once you look around your starting table, you'll shit yourself and suddenly feel far less at ease.

By the end of last year's Series, I concluded that there were three major issues that needed to be addressed when it came to writing the WSOP schedule for 2011. With its release on Monday, it appears that TPTB made a concerted effort to fix one of those three, but completely left the other two alone.

1. Reduce the number of $1,000 and $1,500 NLHE events in favor of more tournaments at the $2,000, $2,500 and $3,000 buy-in level. This didn't happen at all. If you want to play a $2,000-$3,000 buy-in full ring NLHE event at this year's WSOP, you have exactly one opportunity to do so, in Event #36, $2,500 NLHE. There are zero NLHE events at the $2,000 and $3,000 levels, seven with a $1,500 buy-in and five open events with a $1,000 buy-in. The only increases when it came to mid-buy in WSOP events in 2011 will be in limit and mixed game tournaments.

2. Reduce the overall number of events. This didn't happen either, although I didn't expect it to. Try telling any corporation to make less money. 58 bracelets will be awarded in Las Vegas this year, up from 57 in 2010. Commence the "value of a bracelet" discussions in 3-2-1...

3. Figure out a way to give players more manageable tournament hours. This should have happened four years ago, but I'll give credit where credit is due. The plan to play no more than ten levels a day in any given event is going to turn a lot of frowns upside-down in the hallways of the Rio. No more coming back on Day 3 with 37 players and having to play down to a winner, even if the sun sets and rises again during the process. Of course, not knowing how many days each event will actually last means that whatever media outlet ends up getting the "official" tournament reporting contract is going to have a super-fun time scheduling their reporters. Glad I don't have to do that anymore.

It makes total financial sense that the WSOP would want to funnel as many players as possible into the weekend donkaments. Poker tourists are the ones who spend the most additional dollars on Harrahs' properties in the form of rooms, food, and pit gaming. Their sheer numbers also juice up the prize pool, which in turn gives the pros a good reason to show up at the Rio at noon to gamble it up in those fish-infested waters in the hopes of either gathering a big stack early or busting before registration for the 5 pm event closes. That's what those $1k and $1.5 events are. Far more of a gamble than anything else the WSOP offers. Double up quickly or you're toast. Not a whole lot of play for your $1,500 IMO.

If you're a limit or mixed games player, you'll be in hog heaven this summer. There are plenty of events at a variety of buyins to choose from, not to mention the new $2.5K 10-game tournament which will include Badugi for the first time at the WSOP. If you're looking for a deep-stacked NLHE structure at anything less than a $5,000 buy-in, you're kind of SOL at this year's series. If you have $1,500 to spend and are willing to take a big gamble in order to have a shot at a bracelet, then you have at least a dozen opportunities to do so. And if you're a sponsored pro, nosebleed cash gamer, or trustafarian, there are 18 events with buy-ins ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 that are calling your name.

If I play a WSOP event this summer, it will most likely be the Ladies' Event via a satellite. Nothing else on this schedule shows enough value for me and my budding bankroll unless I get my limit hold'em or O8 game in serious shape by June. Again, I don't think I'm alone here. Playing tournaments is all about picking your spots, and my spot is not in a shallow-stacked $1k with a 3,000-deep field. Were there more $2k or $3k events on the schedule, I might be planning a satellite budget. Instead, should I find myself wanting to sling cards for 12 hours, I'll probably be across the street at the Venetian, where I can play three $545 events with a 240 big blind starting stack for the price of one donkament. There won't be a bracelet at the end of that rainbow, but there might be another thirty grand. Which, as I can now tell you from experience, is pretty nice.