"Welcome to the 2009 World Series of Poker!" I say as I greet each player that comes to take a seat at Table 4 of the $330 Buy-in Mega Satellite Tournament, the first official tournament of the 2009 World Series of Poker. The prize for winning this tournament is a seat in the "Main Event", the $10,000 Buy-in tournament that gets television coverage and begins July 3rd. There were about 60 entries, so total prize money would be about $18,000 meaning that first place would win entry to the "Main Event" and second place would get $8,000 cash. When we get closer to July 3rd, this kind of tournament will get much more popular. Some days we could have 500 entries. That would mean that places 1 through 15 would each win the $10,000 entry into the main event.
WSOP uses a soft opening. They save the brass bands and fireworks for the opening of the Main Event and use these preliminaries to test systems and functions and also to complete setting up all the tables, registration booths and cashier's cages.
There will be 57 tournaments this year where the winner gets a gold bracelet in addition to the prize money. The first "Bracelet Event" is the Casino Employees No Limit Hold 'em Tournament. It has the smallest buy-in of all the bracelet events, only $500 and is a very popular tournament among the poker dealers in town. Last year first prize was over $80,000 plus the bracelet. Usually about 10% of the field "makes the money" and the smallest payout is typically double the entry fee.
Things went pretty smoothly for me on day one. My back hurts from reaching across the table for chips all day. Thankfully this year Jack Effel, WSOP Tournament Director, negotiated a deal with a furniture supply company to provide dealer's chairs with adjustable height mechanisms. You can't believe how much better it is to deal when sitting at the proper height. Last year dealers carried around multiple cushions or stacked chairs trying to get to the right position. Many thanks from 1000 dealers to Jack for getting us good chairs this year!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment