All week I have been recapping my trip out to Las Vegas for the 2010 World Series of Poker. I wrote it partly for my family and friends that read this but I also wrote it down for myself. Though the days were long and tedious at times, the experience flew by. I wanted to be get it all out on “paper” so I can share and remember.

2010 WSOP Trip

• 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part I
• 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part II
• 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part III
• 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part IV
• 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part V

Continue reading The 2010 WSOP Experience →

This is part IV in a multi-part series covering my trip out to Las Vegas to cover the 2010 World Series of Poker. Please see part I, part II, part III and part IV.

Even though I had been up for about 23 hours the day before, sleep was hard to come by on my last night in Vegas. I was partly excited for the play down from 27 to 9 and partly afraid to be woken up by housekeeping sometime after checkout. I had set the alarm on my iPhone so I wouldn’t sleep past 9:30 but as it turns out I would be walking down the halls of the Rio at that time. For those of you wondering, my iPhone alarm sounds something like this.

I was the first one into the media room since it was so damn early, well second as Seth Palansky (WSOP Communications Director) beat me in….and he was in for a looooong day. When I got settled in I was able to parse through the table draws and chip counts and get some notes written down about the day to come. This is what the Day 8 table draws were: Continue reading 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part V →

This is part IV in a multi-part series covering my trip out to Las Vegas to cover the 2010 World Series of Poker. Please see part I, part II, and part III.

My second full day in Vegas started out a lot like the first. Wake up, shower, valet, Rio….ground hog day? [ Though I should mention that Ground Hog Day is used at the WSOP by the media to refer to the 4 Day 1’s. Each of the Day 1’s start with roughly the same number of players, same starting chips and same blind levels for four days in a row. ] So this wasn’t as bad! But the Hard Rock has great rooms, great showers and a Starbucks in the lobby so I can’t complain.

Today is Day 7 and we will play down from 78 to just 27 players. It’s also the day that I became more proactive. The first day and a half I was just going with the flow as more of a spectator, but on day 7 I was shooting pictures, going inside the ropes, tweeting and talking to the players a lot more than before. Continue reading 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part IV →

This is part III in a multi-part series covering my trip out to Las Vegas to cover the 2010 World Series of Poker. Please see part I and part II.

My first full day in Vegas was Day 6 of the 2010 WSOP. We got the car out of valet and headed over to the Rio to prep for the day. Paul gave me the daylight tour of the entry to the convention area (see random video here) and when we walked around the Pavilion room I got a feel for how massive it all was for the Day 1’s.

After the tour, we would head to the media room and have a look at the table draws to map out a plan of attack for reporting and photography. Harrah’s releases the table draws in PDF format and, through the magic of technology, into Google Docs it goes via @Kevmath and @ProfShadow. This makes it easily sortable and searchable and, frankly, makes our jobs easier (thanks guys!!). Continue reading 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part III →

This is part II in a multi-part series covering my trip out to Las Vegas to cover the 2010 World Series of Poker. Please see part I here.

For me, the 2010 WSOP Main Event started early. My trip wasn’t until July 14th (Day 5) but Paul would be out there for the start of the 4 Day 1’s beginning on July 5th. We had been planning a redesign for the Twitter Poker Tour website and ramped up our efforts to be sure it launched prior to the start of the Main. We had seen significant traffic increases when Paul was out on his two previous trips to the WSOP this summer so why not have the redesign complete in preparation for the biggest poker event of the year? Continue reading 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part II →

I wanted to take a moment and write about my experience at this years World Series of Poker. This will be more of a trip report so for reports on what happened and photos from the event check out the updates Paul Ellis and I have over at the Twitter Poker Tour website. This will be a multi-part blog post covering my WSOP Vegas experience.

A few months back I received an email from Paul (@coolwhipflea) saying that he applied for WSOP Media Credentials using the Twitter Poker Tour as the media outlet and me as a reference. He said he received an automated message that it would take about 10 days for the credential process and they would get back to him. I was very excited to hear what would come out of it because I have the utmost respect for Paul and his ability to convey poker action to people and this would be a great experience for him as both a blogger and a fan of poker. Continue reading 2010 World Series of Poker Trip Report – Part I →