My family and I had a lot of fun at the WSOP this summer. We rented a home for the entire month of June which made it nice because I had my whole family there for the month. My mother in law, my daughter Lennon and my wife Nicole stayed there the whole month and I was super grateful that everyone was so supportive. My grandma visited as did my sister and law along with her two kids and mother. Each time we had guests we had a great time.
The house had a sick pool and view of the strip. The pool had this cave thingy and a powerful waterfall that was pretty cool. My 9 month old daughter loved getting in the pool and it was a great chance for the two of us to play in the pool and bond together more. My wife is with her all day and I am probably with her 2-3 hours a day only, but I can tell she really loves me. Every time I see her now she gets super excited and gives me a big smile. Believe me, those smiles are huge because she has been a very difficult baby so far and it has been tough, no question. It is all starting to seem worth it now though. Those big smiles alone make it worth it, in fact.
I was a little disappointed that the WSOP tournaments didn’t go better. I only played 11, so I guess it is a small sample size, but those things are tough! First of all, either there are not a lot of recreational players that play or I just got really tough table draws because there was not a lot of soft players from what I could tell. The other thing that sucks is that there is no good way to make tournaments a great measure of skill. If you make the stack sizes huge and the blinds go up slowly, it would take a month to play a tournament. So stacks have to be shallow and blinds must go up quickly. But the problem with that is skill becomes such a small part of the outcome of an event. Sure, we all try to play our best, but luck is by far the most critical aspect of how well you do. What sucks is that even when you get a good table with lots of terrible players, if you aren’t able to get a lot of chips from them early, the blinds get so big that you only have one move: all in. And really, how much edge do I have on even a terrible player when we are playing 1 move poker? Even a mule knows a decent hand range to shove with and even if they don’t, they can easily spike a card on you. Anyway, tournaments are what they are. I guess as a cash game pro, it is tough to see the great importance placed on these things by the poker community when anyone with any decent poker mind understands that they really are just a big lottery. But as I say that, the TV cash games seem to be really popular right now, so I guess us cash game guys are getting our due anyway.
I was talking to my buddy the other day and we were saying it is a shame poker can’t have some mechanism to truly determine who the best of the best are. Golf has a world ranking and 4 major championships a year where the courses are laid out with the intent of identifying the best golfer in the world. Poker has a ranking, but it is only for donkaments. But what if they had a true world championship that was something like a $50,000 buy in event where you started with 100,000 chips and the blinds at 25/50. The blinds double once per 8 hour day and we play the event for like 6 days a week for an entire month? Now that is something I would play in for sure. I’d rather do that then play all of these piss ant $1,500 buy in WSOP events that have no skill in them. And the last man standing at month end is the true world champion. I think that would be sick. It would be grueling and luck would definitely not play the biggest role in determining the outcome. Maybe they only do it every 2-3 years or something like the World Cup. Anyway, I would love something like that.