The Beat
Saturday, 1 June 2013
Neil Channing looks forward to the 2013 WSOP.
Early Bird
I finally booked the flights. Last year I joined the party midway through. 2012 wasn’t a bad WSOP. I played around nine events and I cashed in just two, but one of them was for a little over $400,000 so it went roughly OK. Somehow I didn’t win a bracelet, just got myself another second place to add to the tally, and I was sort of on tilt from arriving late from the day I got there. This year I’ve decided to get there early. I shall be settling in a few days before. I haven't played too much poker recently and hopefully I’ll be refreshed, well-rested and hungry for success.
Palm’s Place was home for the duration last year and I very much like to have a studio flat with a kitchen, a microwave, oven and a dishwasher. It seemed a no-brainer to go back. It's good to eat “normal” food, to fill the fridge and to have a little haven in which to hide away from the slot machines. Walking back and forth to The Rio also probably helped me to lose weight.
I booked it through Main Event Travel and they seemed to get a good price so I’d recommend them.
Take the plunge
Lots of UK players are probably sitting at home right now thinking, “That jammy so and so gets to go there every year and hang out in Vegas. How great is that? I wish I could go to the WSOP.”
I cannot stress enough that anyone without ties and with time to do it should come if they have any sort of bankroll at all. The WSOP is so diverse now. There are cash games from $1/$2 running 24-7 at around 20 locations; there are tournaments daily from $30 and $50 events at the smaller casinos, as well as the three deepstacks a day at The Rio, priced at $135, $185 and $235.
These ones have fast structures and massive fields of recreational players. I think they are perfect and I wouldn’t put anyone with a poker bankroll of £2,000 off coming over on a cheapish flight and plonking themselves down in those for a week or two.
The one-table satellites are also amazing and so free of pros. The buy-ins go from $65 to $1,000 with the $100 and $200 ones being easily the softest. I spent three hours running through all the options of where to stay and what to play with one guy last year. He kept telling me he didn’t have enough to go. I’m pretty sure he spent the two months in the Vic playing £1/£1 while taking in the odd £50, £60 and £100 tournament around London.
How much better would it be if the daily grind was $1/$2 at The Mirage followed by cocktails by the pool before a nice shot at a $25,000 prize against a load of tourists at The Rio?
You only live once. Go for it.
People who are testing out the WSOP for the first time often ask me what I’m playing. They seem to expect me to say I'll be playing the $50,000 Championship Event, the $25,000 six-max and as many $5,000 NLHs as I can eat. I don't think that is where the value is, though.
I’m going to let you into a little secret now...
The $1,500 and $1,000 NLH events at the WSOP are the best tournaments of the year, worldwide, by far. I am personally totally amazed and almost disgusted that lots of young pros are on Facebook and Twitter trying to sell pieces of themselves for EPT events in Monte Carlo, Prague and Berlin and then when it comes to the WSOP they are still selling pieces.
I have some advice for those fellas: put your passports away.
Say you have about $30,000 to invest in tournaments over a four to six month period. Instead of clocking up expenses with flights and hotels all over Europe and then selling pieces of your action at 1.3 in various events, only to go to Vegas and totally undo all the good work by GIVING AWAY MONEY and selling yourself for nowhere near enough, why not take my advice?
Go to Vegas and forget about the $5,000 and above events. The main event is the obvious exception to this rule as it plays like a $50 freezeout. If you’re smart enough to take the advice of someone who knows about this stuff, your plan should be to go to Vegas and play for yourself in the softest events of the year and not give away the profits. If you’re worried about variance then swap 30% of yourself with a bunch of mates, 5% at a time. It’s rude to charge backers 1.3 in some of the European events and it’s murdering money not selling at least 1.4 in the smaller bracelet events.
I hope you won’t see me surrounded by the world’s top internet pros playing $5,000+ buy-in events in Vegas. I will try very hard to remember my own advice. I certainly plan to play all of the smaller NLH events.
Obviously I’m not worried about making the events harder by giving out my great advice so liberally. I already know that poker players are stubborn and stupid, so while I’m enjoying all the soft fields and I’m busy chatting to truckers from Wisconsin and potato farmers from Idaho, I'll be looking at the bigger events across the room and watching the kids sitting miserably, not speaking and staring at the Open Face Chinese App on their iPads, while cold 4-betting each other into extinction.