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#428 – WSOP Journal #1 – It’s a Small World (Series of Poker)
Five minutes into my first event at the World Series, I overheard this exchange:
Woman in Seat 1: Do you know Chad?
Guy in Seat 6: Chad? Chad’s practically my best friend.
Woman in Seat 1: Really? I’m Chad’s fiance.
I’m off to a bit of a slow start reporting at this Series (though today, at least until 5 PM, is catch-up day). I came out to Las Vegas on Friday with Jo Anne, for what I’ve told people was our fourth honeymoon. Her birthday is next week and I probably won’t be home that day. Plus, with the kids now out of school and her breast cancer treatment almost completed, it offered something we haven’t had in a year: two uninterrupted days alone together.
In my mind’s eye, I’ve seen myself giving Jo Anne a piece of jewelry for her birthday, something very nice and very personal, a reminder of her struggles and triumphs over the past year. It was a bracelet, and I imagined I’d have to design it myself.
They say you can find anything in Las Vegas (if it’s not at a bookstore) and I found what I was looking for at a store called Xemex at the Fashion Show Mall on the Strip. The bracelet has elements of gold, stainless steel, diamonds, enamel, mother of pearl, even wood. Each element, a separate piece of the bracelet, represents a piece of the story that’s largely been told in this blog about Jo Anne’s year, from the early fears and uncertainties about the diagnosis to the four surgeries to the harrowing brachytherapy and ending with her health and strength and hope for the future.
We designed it ourselves and it took about an hour and a half. One of the sales advisors, a lovely woman named Diana, hearing our discussions of what the different elements would represent and how they would be arranged on the bracelet, came over and said, “This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. I feel like I want to cry hearing you design this.”
After we had finished, Diana asked how long we would be in town. I explained that Jo Anne was leaving the next day, Sunday, but I’d be in town for seven weeks.
“Ah, here for the World Series, right?”
She knew all about the World Series of Poker because her husband is high-stakes pro David Levi. I know David a little, though not as well as I know his best friend, Eli Elezra, who at that moment had the chip lead in the Pot Limit Hold ‘Em Championship.
“They’re hilarious together,” Diana explained. “They’re so close that other players call David ‘Eli’s other wife.’”
We shared stories about Doyle and Chip and Jennifer and Phil and Andy Beal. Maybe, Diana mentioned, we’d all get together for dinner sometime during the Series.
As Jo Anne and I left the store, I told her that I’d spoken to her husband only a few times, but I was sure to see him sometime during the World Series. “Now I know I’ll have something to talk about with him.”
With that, we went to the Rio, where I needed to sign up for the $1,500 NLHE on Sunday, get media credentials, sign up for the Aces Club (more about that later), and get a feel for the place.
Of course, you know how this ends, right? Out of 2,000 poker players rattling around the Amazon Room, the first poker player we saw was David Levi. And on Sunday, as Jo Anne dropped me off at the Rio before flying back to Scottsdale, he’s the first player we saw again.
