My options for making it to the World Series of Poker this year were narrowing. Stuff at work. Family stuff. Was it really worth it with the increased cost of flights and everything else? But kind of at the last minute, I decided to take a flyer on a weekend trip.
Because of the aforementioned stuff, I was looking at the middle of June, and noticed that the $10K Big O Championship had a Friday evening satellite. Figured I’d give it a shot. So I made that my tentpole for the trip, scavenged the schedule for all my backups if I didn’t make it, and booked the flight.
Got to the airport on time, only had to wait in the TSA line for 10 or so minutes, had all my metal off and pockets emptied, but the scanner warned about something in my groin area, so I got a very thorough pat-down—I was worried that without my belt on that I was going to be pantsed in front of a couple hundred people—then my bag got shuffled into the examination line, and it turned out that what set off the x-ray was the metal card protectors I’ve been using and taking through airport security for 14 years.
Got through security thinking I had plenty of time to get to the gate, then found out I really had a lot of time, because a text had apparently come though just after I’d left the house that the plane was an hour behind schedule getting in from San Diego, so my carefully-crafted plan of getting into Vegas with enough time to get to Paris/Horseshoe, get WSOP-verified, and try to figure out where the satellites were taking place was all in the crapper.
I was traveling light, so I got to the rideshare, then the Paris. The Verification table just had one guy when I got there, but there was nobody in front of me, and it went pretty smoothly except for the part where I had to actually register for something with my card before I could get it verified. Fortunately, there was nobody behind me except for Micah (also registering for the satellite), and another staff member showed up just in time to take care of him.
Got to the Bronze section of the Horseshoe Events Center (I still don’t know exactly where) as they were reading out instructions and got the first hand. Unfortunately, one big hand where I flopped a boat Tx Tx on a Tx Ax Ax flop went south when the 2x hit the turn, and I never managed to recover (though I wasn’t the first or the second person to bust from our table. Went broke on a double-aces hand where I flopped a set and was all-in, but a backdoor low draw and a spade flush draw got there. Not even rebuying into that. It ended up with 353 entries, 34 $10K/seat prizes. At the time I busted only 70 minutes in, I could see Micah, Adam, and Mopar all still there.
Off to the Orleans in the morning for the $100K Guaranteed NLHE Seniors event. 10am start!