Waiting on WSOP Event 2

A couple of things/observations as Event 2 is about to begin:

-- USA Today last year had a WSOP Preview Special Section the Friday the '08 WSOP opened. This year no WSOP special section yet, either for the first event Wednesday (Casino Employees) or the first big event today. Hmm. Bad economy and not wanting to rub the event in the faces of folks hurting for money? Advertising costs? Waiting for Friday's USA, better space and value than a mid-week paper? Does this mean the WSOP entries will be way down across the board? Hmmmmm...

-- It was frustrating last summer that I had to go through the Full Tilt game software and cashier to get to the contest. That cost me when I went to Vegas: No changes makeable, no prizes claimable. This year wonder of wonders I put a bookmark to the My Fantasy page in my new Mozilla Firefox browser and it's worked everytime! Hurrah!!! Today I tried cut-and-pasting-and favoritizing that address over in my AOL/MIE. It didn't work; it took me instead to Full Tilt's contest explanation page, not the contest itself. Some sort of re-router in MIE? Yuck. Another huge vote for and thank you to Firefox; hope it keeps working so well!

What else is new? What are you thinking? I wish I was in Vegas... :(

WSOP Tweets via Bluff

Bluff Magazine online (which along with Poker News is contracted as the primary hand-for-hand coverer of the WSOP) has a section called Poker Tweets!!! All right! And free!!! They subscribe to all the names who Tweet, so on one (huge) page you get the latest Tweets by so many stars. Like Madsen taking $5K from Hellmuth, Shorr buying in to the $40K with casino chips and Ng, Schoenberg and Michelle off to do a bikini shoot. Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!! I'm not going to need to subscribe to Tweeter (sorry vill) for a while; eventually... So much better just having the basics (poker) in one place!

It's WSOP Time!!!

I'm back. Have to be. The World Series of Poker starts in two days. Blogs and Tweets and Tableside Reports, oh my! Fantasy Leagues and Mirror Games. If I can't get to Las Vegas this summer, I intend to virtually be there from my computer's ringside seat. And this, the WSOP, despite Harrah's merchandising, commercialization and sometimes over-control, is the main event of poker and what the sport is all about. (Besides making money.)

From Daniel Negreanu's blog today:

"I predict this will be the toughest ever hold'em event to win and it will require my absolute best game to have a chance. Anything less won't be good enough."

Yes, he's talking about the $40K NLHE WSOP Event 2. Four times the traditional entry fee of the Main Event. It will draw the big players, the best pros and onliners, and I'd guess maybe only 300 entrants ($50K HORSE drew only 148 two years ago, its initial year; still digging up my stats from my scattered filing systems...).

A huge huge event that'll give the top finisher(s) enormous advantages in the WSOP Player of the Year race as well as the Full Tilt Fantasy League. (That's one of three WSOP Fantasy Leagues I'm playing, along with Negreanu's Full Contact Poker Forum's 63-proposition one and the Poker News ChipMeUp's Amateur Division.) Since I've been playing so poorly online today, it's time to shift into a different gear and discover my famtasy teams...

G'luck all. More later.