At the WWE Royal Rumble it's a really bad thing to be the first wrestler to come out. First, you have a longer road ahead of you than anyone else; second, there’s no real opportunity to prepare for the whole crazy ordeal; and third, odds are you just flat-out ain’t gonna make it to the end. Like I said in an earlier blog, I think a lot of people skipped the Mandalay Bay Poker Championship because it overlapped with the World Series. I covered the MBPC. Now I'm at the Rio, and when I look at the fresh-faced folks who skipped Mandalay, I feel a bit like the Royal Rumble's first wrestler.
Somebody hit me with a steel chair.
That being said, the 2007 WSOP officially started yesterday (just in case you hadn't notice) and there's already a lot to talk about. From rooftop parties to a $500,000 playing card scandal, here are the highlights/lowlights of my first 48 hours on the scene.
1. Chris "The Armenian Express" Grigorian unofficially kicked off the 2007 WSOP with a party at VooDoo Lounge on Thursday night. While the Rio itself is a little nutty (I'm chalking this up to short-term memory. I think the designer was like Guy Pearce from Memento. He'd build one part to look like Mardi Gras, completely forget he did that, then make the next part of the casino look like an Italian fishing village), the VooDoo Lounge is great. Not only is the place a rooftop bar, but you also take a Willy Wonka-style glass elevator to get to it.
The party started at ten, and the guest list included pros like The Grinder, Jeff Madsen, and Men "The Master" Nguyen. I was there on "assignment" with Joe Stapleton and Really Good Producer Jeremy and the video we shot does the event better justice than I could here (me describing "The Master" taking a Kamikaze shot not nearly as funny as actually watching "The Master" take a Kamikaze shot).
Quick note: The best part about these kinds of Vegas events...most guests not only don't know the reason for the party, they couldn't tell you who's even throwing the thing. I think "what happens in Vegas" might actually "stay in Vegas" because half the time nobody knows what's happening.
2. I hate to call it "CardGate," because there's nothing more clichéd than adding "gate" to a controversial subject, but...yeah, we've had "CardGate here at the 2007 WSOP. For anyone who doesn't already know, Harrah's unveiled a newly designed playing card during Event #1. Let's just say the debut went over about as well as a pulled pork sandwich at a vegan food party. If you haven't seen the cards (which were apparently designed specifically for optimal "hole card viewing"), they look like funhouse versions of the traditional style with thinned/stretched out face images and canted images on the corners. How anyone thought it would be a good idea to test run a new version of PLAYING CARDS at the World Series of Poker...
For the better part of the morning, before tournament officials switched back to the old decks, players struggled to differentiate sixes and nines, and, due to a typo on the cards, everyone also wondered exactly when Jeffury Pollack had replaced Jeffery Pollack as WSOP commissioner.
Below is the prototype for next year's cards. They're designed for "optimal suit recognition."
