17
Bugaboos and Snafus
Is it just me or does it seem like this World Series is being running by a pack of chimpanzees on the loose after having broken out of the local zoo? Yes, Harrah’s did address the most glaring problems from last year: access to decent affordable food and drink and a place to deposit the ensuing results. While the Perma Potties out by the Milwaukee’s Best Light Garage are a step up from the Porta Potties found at most large gatherings, they’re really a concession to the gripes of the spectators and casual players. But what about the REAL players, the top pros?
The consensus is they’re not all that happy (unless, of course, they recently bagged a bracelet, in which case they’re so happy it’s annoying). The first glaring instance of managerial ineptitude occurred in the Short-Handed No-Limit Hold’em event that started on June 30. At one point a player couldn’t find his chips so the floorman decided to introduce an entirely new stack into the tournament, while the player’s actual stack was sitting on the table where Gavin Smith and Daniel Negreanu were playing. “That’s brain dead,” said Daniel. “That should never happen in a tournament, especially the World Series of Poker.”
How about the marked-cards controversy in the $50,000 HORSE event? Fifty grand from 143 players and Harrah’s neglects to start the tournament off with fresh decks of cards. You would think this tournament would have gotten the most attention from the organizers, but right up to the start of the Series the HORSE tournament was still the penultimate event on the schedule, set to begin right before the main event. Can you imagine what a disaster THAT would have been? The top professionals dragging themselves into the world championship, all ragged out from three days of grueling play, would have been an unmitigated disaster, and why were the players so tired? Because the organizers crammed what should have been a four- or five-day tournament AT LEAST into a three-day event. I’m no math genius, but a $50,000 chip stack and long rounds of limit poker adds up to a long drawn-out battle the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Federal army besieged Vicksburg. No wonder the over/under on the time the second day would finish was 6:00 am, and, as crazy as that sounded to some, if you took the under you were off by over three hours.
It gets better (or worse, depending upon your perspective). Today’s $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha tournament was suddenly changed into a re-buy event yesterday afternoon. Some players—such as Pauly of the Tao of Poker blog fame—who didn’t have the bankroll to afford the re-buys had to opt out of the tournament. And then this morning Harrah’s suddenly changed the event back into its original format, eliminating the re-buys. Annoying? To say the least. Inexcusable is the better word for it. But that’s what happens when monkeys are steering the ship.
