#247 - London Journal #13 - Inside the Huddle

7:03 PM – Outside an entrance to the Shadow Bar, I see 5 men sitting in intense conversation. I recognize three of them: Jeffrey Pollack, Ty Stewart, and Craig Abrahams (who I just met on Friday; he’s Harrah’s Director of Broadcasting and New Media).

I wonder what they’re talking about? With 13 players left in the Main Event of the first WSOP-Europe, especially because the field has narrowed so quickly in the last 5 hours and they are doing so much for the first time and so much on the fly, it can’t be anything routine.

Casinos can’t operate here beyond 6 AM. There was a concern Friday afternoon and again Friday night that they would bump up against that limitation on Saturday and, because a late ending on Saturday would dictate a late final table start, again on Sunday. Now, it would be the opposite situation. The compressed schedule affected everything, from the time, place, and duration to the press conference on Sunday to the televised interviews to the food and drink service.

Now that there’s possibly more time, does that create a bunch of opportunities? This tournament has NOT been the death march that often marks WSOP events, including the Main Event. Pollack & Stewart have been thrilled to keep play from leaking into the next day, to provide a nice – by London gastronomic standards anyway – buffet from the players, and include numerous touches demonstrating personal attention and flexibility toward the players. “We already run the biggest event,” Stewart told me over lunch on Friday. “We wanted to do something different for WSOP-Europe. A more prestigious event, a more intimate event, the kind of treatment of players that’s just not possible at the World Series in Vegas.”

So perhaps they are discussing touches they had to abandon and may now, on short notice, be able to re-introduce.

Or maybe it’s something else entirely. At a staff meeting on Friday afternoon, Stewart talked about the final table broadcast ending in a champagne-victory shower. One executive balked, though good-naturedly. “If this goes until 6 AM, I’m leaving right for the airport. I don’t want to be soaked in champagne and I can’t imagine anybody else does.”

Ty explained that this wasn’t a frivolous whim. “I’m trying to line up a champagne partner for next year and getting that shot could help.”

There are layers of thinking – what makes money, what costs money, what takes time, what saves time, what’s better for the players, what’s legal, what’s fair, what’s best for TV ….

And every decision – and they have to make them all day every day – has to be evaluated on that matrix. I wanted to know what those decisions were and what they were considering when they made them. The men in that huddle control the future of the World Series of Poker and have a gigantic impact on all live tournament poker. At a minimum, nearly everything that matters during the seven most important weeks of the poker year is within their control. I have analyzed, criticized, and praised their work. I have speculated on their motives and policies, both in criticizing and praising them.

Now I want to get in the huddle.

On Sunday, starting in 75 minutes, I’m going to try to follow Ty Stewart all day and all night. I’ll find out what challenges, risks, and opportunities arise at the final table of the first World Series of Poker-Europe. It will take some time before I can share what I find – if all goes well, this won’t end until dawn on Monday; Tuesday and Wednesday will be spent reporting live from the Million Dollar Cash Game; and I will be returning to the U.S. on Thursday – but when I write the results, I’ll get you into the huddle with me.

Seventy five minutes? I better get going. Gus Hansen went out in tenth place at midnight, which had to change the dynamics of the television production at least (which Stewart is either formally or informally co-producing). Now the big concern has to be whether Annette Obrestad is really eighteen ….