(This week I’m reminiscing back to 2006, where I played my solitary WSOP main event)
On Friday I explained how I qualified for the 2006 WSOP Main Event, or how I thought I had qualified for the 2006 WSOP Main Event. It turned out I’d qualified my mate Mike because he was the named account holder. (I suppose this is technically a breach of the terms of use which some sites take quite seriously these days: only the named account holder is supposed to play the account. But in mitigation, this was 2006 and online poker was a bit more like the Wild West then. Plus up until then Mike had literally never played the account and I was the only person who ever had. As you will recall, we set up the account as a present to Mike for me to play).
Oh well, rules are rules I suppose. But if it had to be Mike who played the tournament it meant one thing for sure: he would bleedin well be learning how to play the game!
You couldn’t get a more ridiculous scenario really. Mike’s first ever poker tournament was due to be the $10,000 Main Event in Las Vegas against some of the world’s best players! So he set about practising on small buy in tournaments online (under the ahem, expert guidance of yours truly – can you see where this going?) It must have looked odd to anyone who had witnessed this: one minute playing $25/50 NL cash and the next playing £2 multi tournaments!
Anyway, Mike adopted a very tight patient style and this was a good thing because in the WSOP with the two hour blind levels you really can sit about waiting for KK or AA. There’s no point going bust in the first hour with KQ suited is there?
Of course all this meant that I absolutely had to get myself qualified as well. I couldn’t go to the WSOP and just watch Mike play could I? So I set about trying to win another seat in the satellites online. Well to cut a long story short I tried and I tried and I came close a few times, made a few final tables and that, but I never actually did win my seat.
But I still had the £9000 from my share of our little 30 day poker project. So I figured – “well – this is once in a lifetime thing. Worst comes to the worst I can always buy in direct”. This wasn’t my first choice plan of course. I had a 3-pronged strategy. First – satellite my way in through the Sit n Gos that they run at the Rio, where the tournament is held. If that failed, option 2 was to win $10k in the cash games that play all day (and all night) at the Rio. And then option 3 – if all else fails, buy in direct.
It’s a measure of my huge and perhaps mis-placed confidence at the time that I really did believe that I would not have to pay the $10k in. I absolutely could not envisage a situation where I couldn’t buy in due to lack of funds. Going skint was not even a possibility in my tiny overconfident mind.
So cometh the big day I was ready in my shorts and T shirts and I packed all the possessions I would be taking to Las Vegas: cash, passport and a toothbrush. Nothing else whatsoever! (This is what I’ve done on both my short trips to Las Vegas– I like to travel really light)
I split the cash between me and Mike as you are not allowed to bring more than $10k in cash into the country and off we went on our 17 day adventure, an expenses paid stay at the Rio All Suite courtesy of the poker site.
(to be continued tomorrow and all this week)
