1
#151 – WSOP #1 – They’re Back, Part A
[Notwithstanding I owe you several entries about adventures from before the Series and some WSOP "previews," I'm here, dammit! And the sensations are overwhelming, so let me launch into The Coverage and I'll try to catch up with that other stuff ASAP.]
Friday, June 1, 9 AM – I’ve been here 10 minutes and I already feel disoriented and jerked around. First, it appears a significant portion of the parking behind the convention center has been fenced off for valet parking. If that’s the case, Harrah’s has managed to screw up one of the things they undeniably got right last year.
Inside, within a couple hundred feet, there is a line running the length of the long, long hallway to the Amazon Room. Hundreds and hundreds of poker players waiting in line at 9 AM? Poker players doing anything but sleeping at 9 AM?
Is this the line for player registration? To buy into events? to sign up for satellites? No one knows. Not Roz, the Bally Security Guard in the blue uniform who insisted we all stand single file. (We did as she said, until she walked one foot past us.) Not Chuck, the guy in a suit who walked through the line explaining how he IMAGINED things would operate.
It appears we’re in line because the Amazon Room hasn’t opened yet. No one knows where player registration is or what it consists of, and it’s clear that includes the Suits and the Uniforms.
There’s a workshop near where I am standing in line. Brasilia Room – Kessler’s Academy of Creative Real Estate. Creative real estate? I’m tempted to check it out because I assumed all real estate seminars were some kind of scam. To come right out and call yourself “Kessler’s Academy of Creative Real Estate,” you must have something so powerful that you don’t care what people think of your methods.
At 9:17 AM, according to clocks provided by Corum, the official timepiece of the World Series of Poker – since when do poker players wear watches or care what time it is? This is probably the only place in the only casino in the world that not only has clocks but an official timepiece provider – the line starts moving. We assume that’s good news but who knows?
I see the first familiar face of the World Series, Mickey Appleman, wearing the same outfit he’s worn as long as I’ve seen him at the Series and probably since the 70s.
Positive: a woman walks through the line who actually understands what’s happening. She’s telling people they need Total Rewards cards to stand in this line or do just about anything in the World Series. She also tells me, to my relief, that you don’t need a new card or additional card if you already have one. That dispenses with a portion of the registration that I thought I’d have to endure.
I see Jeff Shulman walk by.
It’s 9:25 AM. We moved a few minutes ago, but seem to have stalled.
I’m tempted to ask the next Harrah’s employee I see if this is the line for Penn & Teller tickets, but then I see someone whose real-life grasp of the situation is like that. The guy in front of me, who wants to play a satellite for the dealer event, seems to know everyone else in the place. One person he knows reveals himself to be the most clueless man in the building. The guy is hanging around for the poker (in some capacity) but says, “Is this for the WPT?”
After he walks away – where? for what? – my line-mate says, “Those are the guys you have to worry about the most. The ones who don’t even know where they are.”
