What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been

These are not the cards you're looking for

Six years ago I played in the Main Event of the WSOP for the first time - I was in my early 30's, single, and fresh off a hot run of poker wins, including a $15,000 cash in a Memorial Day Weekend tournament at the Horseshoe. I had just met Tiffany about two weeks before I left for my first tournament - she's the girl referenced in my first blog as the girl I was texting at the poker table instead of paying attention to the World Series of Poker.

Fast forward to this Memorial Day Weekend when our daughter was born - I've now got a wife, a house, a daughter, and I think the last time I played poker was at the WSOP last year. In all honesty, I probably played in Brad's basement once or twice and at the Circuit Tour in Hammond a couple times... I'm not sure I won a thing. Rusty and off my game would be putting it mildly.

Yet here I am... in Vegas... blowing $10,000 on a poker tournament I'm quite ill prepared for while my wife gets the brunt of our screaming 6 week old. I have a friend that says wives/mothers really "earn their stripes" in the first couple months after a baby is born - I think mine's on her way to General from Cadet in record breaking time. 

I guess my part is making some money... or at least getting through Day One. I registered today and am ready to go - Amazon Orange 383. Yes! I love Amazon Orange. And Seat 4, which I feel good about (I didn't want 1 or 9 next to the dealer). Some interesting rule changes this year:

• They pay the top 1,000 or top 15%, whichever is greater. I know they did top 1,000 last year, but I can't remember if they did 15% or not - it would have been approximately the same number either way. I've finished in the top 1,000 three of the last five years, so I'm probably due for a pretty big letdown. 

• We're starting with 50,000 in chips, not 30,000 in chips. WHOA... craziness. I mean, that's 66% more chips!!! I've been trying to figure out if this is good or bad and I really haven't come to a conclusion. On the one hand, it has to be bad - it looks great for me and it was done by the casino. It simply can't benefit the player, it has to benefit the casino somehow. This is the basic tenet of the entire city of Las Vegas and gambling industry at large. But I haven't figured out how yet. On Day One last year, my starting stack had an M Ratio of 200 and if I finished the final round with that amount, I would have had an M Ratio of 28. With the new blind structure and starting chips, I will start with an M Ratio over 220 and in the final round would have an M Ratio over 35... so it definitely doesn't work against me early on. I think it lets aggressive players be more aggressive... and that doesn't necessarily benefit me because I'm not an aggressive player... but I do like to take advantage of aggressive players, so I guess we'll see - at the end of the day, it's still poker no matter how many chips you start with. 

• But 50,000 is pretty cool!

• As a reminder, I can't win the tournament this week, the best I can do is outlast 7,000 other players and make the final nine - then come back in the fall to play for the championship. It's always been like this and typically those nine people are referred to as the November Nine. Another change this year, however, is that they moved it back and the final table starts October 30 and is played through Halloween until November 1st (So as to not interfere/compete with the presidential election). 

Sidebar: Why can't ghosts have babies? They have hollow-weenies... 

Yes - jokes about babies and pictures of my daughter on my poker blog, I'm that guy now.

• The last big change is an 11am start time. I hate the 11am start time. How am I supposed to get a proper lunch and get there in time for an 11am start time? There was that one year I overslept and almost missed a noon start time - how am I going to handle 11am?! What a mess...

Speaking of being a mess - so I'm on my way out here, get dropped off at the airport, my wife and screaming daughter are 40 minutes away, and I realize I forgot my hat and iPod. The iPod with my WSOP playlist that plays the same 2 songs over and over and over again for (hopefully) 60 hours straight. Not that I'm a superstitious man - although my lucky underwear and t-shirt could probably play on their own by now.  And my hat! I have these poker sunglasses that make me look like a loser when I wear them, but they actually make the room brighter, not darker... they're specifically created for poker. The downside is that if you don't wear a hat and block the light from above, they have this terrible glare and you can't see anything - high quality engineering at its finest, I'm aware. So anyway, I'm down a hat and down an iPod heading to Vegas for the WSOP. 

Not good. 

I'm faced with few options - I'm at the Indy airport, so I can get a Colts hat, an IU hat, a Boilermakers hat, or a hat that says IN real big with the words Indianapolis under it. My wife suggests I could buy a WSOP hat here... but I can't be THAT guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgFcl3BrJpU

Anyway, my wife, who is already awesome for letting play... and watching our daughter... who is probably screaming at the top of her lungs right now... FedEx'ed me my iPod and hat. Overnight. On a weekend. We're going to pay that bill and go ahead and never speak of it again... but I've now got all my gear. 

Of course, I guess I could have just bought some gear here - no matter how many times I play, the commercialization always fascinates me. Today there were booths for:

• Massages
• Poker Attire
• Poker Strategy Books
• Blue Shark Optics (My poker sunglasses)
• Training Materials
• Trinkets - different chip covers, lighters, etc.
• Some sort of bracelets that either reduce or enhance the ions in our bodies - I believe possibly both because there was a chart about how negative ions affected our bodies and how positive ions affected our bodies
• The Poker Tax Specialist - he's been a staple for years
• Headphones and Chargers
• An advertisement for the Summer Series 2016 of the Global Poker League - join now and you can watch every game... featuring such teams as: New York Rounders, LA Sunset, Montreal Nationals, and the San Francisco Rush... or potentially your favorite is a team from the Eurasian conference like the Moscow Wolverines, Paris Aviators, or London Royals. 

Speaking of London, there was speculation in one article I read about whether or not the Brexit would hinder a lot of UK players since they, you know, basically cratered their currency... evidently WSOP usually gets a lot of UK players. 

At any rate, Day One on Sunday at 11am PT... surely with 50,000 chips I can make it through Day One, right?