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#635 – Engulfed by Biloxi #5 – All’s Fair
Saturday, 2:03 PM
The tournament started an hour ago and there are still 14 people ahead of me in line.
Well, I didn’t spare Harrah’s any criticism when they had long lines, so despite the respect I have for Ken Lampert and MGM Mirage, they are fair game for having their weaknesses exposed.
So here goes:
*Starting times aren’t clearly posted. (In fact, I didn’t see them posted anyplace other than on schedules you get at the registration desk.)
*Buying in is a crazy two-part process I’d associate with Harrah’s Circa 2006: you have to buy in with chips, and the place you buy chips is different from the place in which you register. And, surprise! There are lines at both places around tournament time.
*You need an MGM Mirage Players Club card, but the person I needed to get one from wasn’t at their desk, so I had to go downstairs to the far end of the casino and wait in a long line.
*There are just two tellers in the cage and just two clerks in the registration line. No one seemed in any particular hurry (except the players in line). In fact, when I finally got to the head of the registration line, the clerk entered something into her computer and said, “This will take a minute.” Then someone came by to explain how removing, “jiggling”, and replacing a printer cartridge might speed things along.
*Once I registered, a floorperson had to take me to my seat. There was someone available as soon as I finished registering but that meant a bottleneck at the end even if everything else was running well. I don’t know if there were additional reasons for this but the floorperson told me right off the bat that the table and seat information on my registration receipt (which I acquired just moments before) was incorrect.
At 2:14 PM, I was seated. Levels were 50 minutes in length, and we had 30 minutes left in level 2. Blinds were 50-100 and we were given 8,000 in starting chips. Not a bad structure. I immediately saw a familiar face in J.J. Liu, who was two seats to my right.
Ultimately, I was glad to get in. I love playing live tournament poker. I wasn’t particularly successful; I chipped up to over 28,000 but had one hand go disastrously wrong and busted right after the dinner break.
There were 484 entries and I finished about 170th. I got to see a lot of friends and familiar faces: Eskimo, Ken Lambert, Nolan Dalla, new uncle Robert Williamson III, Clonie Gowen, Erick Lindgren. There was a media event that I missed, and I was momentarily distracted when I heard the charming words, “Single table satellite players.” I’ll have to check that out later. But only if I get really desperate. Which is pretty certain to be the case.
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