#815 – 2009 WSOP #73 – Vegas on $2,000 a Day #14 – Ransom Note From the Amazon Room

I played Day 1-A of the Main Event yesterday. I survived the day with 42,975 in chips. We started the day with 30,000 and I think the average is probably about 41,000 or so. If that’s the case, we lost only about a quarter of the 1,100+ players who started 1-A.

In trying to give players value for their buy-in – an admirable goal – I think they may have gone too far. We played just four levels and were done by 10:30 PM. The 90 minute dinner break after level 2 started at 4:30 PM. Dinner at 4:30? Done by 10:30? Did they substitute the Players Advisory Committee with the members of the local Senior Center?

The bracelet events starting at noon usually played 10 levels (60 minutes per level) and ended Day 1 at approximately 12:50 AM. We played two hours less and left 2:20 earlier than that. Why?

I don’t remember anyone complaining that the Main Event didn’t give players enough chips or enough action for their money. I remember a complaint from a couple years ago about having to play from noon until nearly 4 AM, but they fixed that. This was too much – too short a day, yet one that seemed to drag for lack of movement. 

With just 4 levels of play scheduled for Day 2-A and 2-B, most of the field will STILL be left on Day 3. Somebody’s going to have to pay the piper on this one. I think it may take until Day 4 to make it into the money, and future days could have more people than they planned or they may have to play more levels.

The Main Event is a great event and I’m glad I’m in it. And I admire that they’re trying to not tax us too heavily with the schedule and give us value for our buy-in. But between the stack sizes and levels, and the shortened daily schedule, they moved pretty dramatically in what I think is a wrong direction.

I’ll still be doing updates over the next several days but with so few players being eliminated, I’m going to spend most of my time catching up on all the blogs I have in progress so I can get those posted. I may suspend the Daily Tilt for a few days as well. There’s just … not that much happening.

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