Meetings, meetings

A strategic workshop yesterday and a strategic conference tomorrow. If this carries on much longer I'll end up as middle management. Do we move further forward as a result of this massive use of valuable man-hours? I don't really think so. But a lot of people go away THINKING that they have achieved something, which is what matters in business.
After a not-too-hot end to February, March started with a bang as I clocked up £70 on Betfair within an hour in a ridiculously loose game. In fact a lot of the profit could be summed up as follows: "Got Aces, three loosies and one decent player also in. Aces held up without improving. Amazing."
It's all very well saying that Aces win an average 75% of the time, but in pots like this you are likely to be in trouble if another Ace doesn't appear at some point. Your best hope without an Ace (and this indeed was what occurred) is a rainbow board along the lines of 2257K (which sounds like the size of an average music download, although I am sure the more technically minded will inform me that in fact an average pop song is 4.6mb at 192bps, or whatever it is). Anyway, with that kind of board you beat the ropey two pairs.

This weather is getting very proficient at depressing the world. Near-snow at 6.15am in a biting north-easterly wind is no fun. Vegas in 14 days. Not that I'm counting.

Vegas in July to feed the 5,000? No thanks

Am I alone in looking at the offer of tournaments to win entry into this year's WSOP as the kind of poisoned chalice that should be locked away and not taken out again until September? Let's look at these offers in more detail. You get the chance to go to Las Vegas in July (no fun if you have to leave the Rio, where the event is being held) to mix with about 5,000 other entrants to the tournament, their families, and a media circus. If this doesn't fill you with horrific misgivings, you also have HAVE TO WEAR A UNIFORM. Now, in my day, the best way to tell the employees from the holidaymakers in Vegas was to see if they were wearing any kind of uniform. But these days that rules doesn't apply. WSOP 2005 will be like the Liffe open outcry pit writ large, as Gutshot, Pokerstars, Paradise, Party Poker (and so on ad sickitum) shirts and baseball caps jostle for media attention. If I ever enter the WSOP, which I certainly won't, it will not be wearing a uniform, I know that. I would negotiate my own sponsorship deal with the best offer on the table if I got anywhere near the televised event (which I wouldn't).

And there should be a law against anyone over the age of 25 wearing a baseball cap. Why don't these poker sites offer brown derbies? Or homburgs?

I first went to the WSOP in 2001, when I think (correct me if I am wrong) there were about 430 entrants for the Big One. Even that seemed a lot at the time. But in the couple of weeks beforehand you could have walked into Binion's and not even have known that the WSOP was on. It was tucked away upstairs in the bingo hall.

By 2003 (the Moneymaker year) I was there again, and the number of runners was up to over 800. The whiteboard outside the bingo hall (sorry, "poker auditorium") was getting dangerously close to filling up. That year was the first of the madness years, I think. I decided that I wouldn't go again.

This year will be corporate turkey-processing. Can you imagine Roy processing 5,000 entrants? "Gawd, 'aven't you got any larger notes?" "Er, Roy, $100 is as big as they go". "Oh, okay, Name?"
"Brunson".)

God help us.

If I had a fit of madness and decided to enter a big comp, it would definitely be the Five Diamonds in December, which was an absolute joy to watch last year. No crowds, a lot of well-known faces, and a generally nice atmosphere.

My first trip this year (Mar 16 to 31) will coincide with the back-end of the WSOP "circuit", also at the Rio. I shall pop in to see if Mary is still dealing there (she was slaughtering the $20-$40 tables on Paradise the last I heard, and only kept the day job for her daughter's health insurance), and to get a feel of the poker room's capability of running a big tourney. Harrah's are not fools and they will probably run the poker tourney with clinical efficiency. But I doubt that it will be much fun.