Coupon Day

There is this scene in Jurassic Park where they are discussing how profitable the park is going to be and Hammond says he doesn't want the park to be only for the super-rich and the lawyer says, sure, we'll have a coupon day, and laughs. Today was Coupon Day at the WSOP, aka the 1k NLHE. It seemed every home game superstar, every bar-league champion, every low-limit local cardroom hero and every country bumpkin who's ever watched Chris Ferguson on ESPN made the trip to Vegas for today's discounted tournament. The powers that be packed the tables eleven-thick and wasted no time filling the seats of the departed with fresh meat.

There were something like 2800 players out there and most of them played worse than the kids I used to play with in the basement of 32 Wheeler in Saint Paul. Of course it didn't matter because we were playing eleven handed so someone had pocket queens or better every hand and we had no starting chips so it was impossible to take flops. I got off to a great start bullying and bulldozing and picking up big hands and then the blinds got big and I ran out of cards and played a short stack game until my AQ ran into Greg Mueller's AA.

I could rant and bitch about the WSOP for 1000 words or I could just put up this link to Shane Schleger's blog about it. This is the finest piece of writing I've ever read on the subject, and I agree wholeheartedly with pretty much everything he says. I'd write about these issues myself but I don't think I could put down my thoughts as eloquently.