Harrah's should be ashamed

Coming into their third year of running the WSOP, Harrah's and the Rio has been assuring players its plenty capable of handling the big crowd expected at this year's events. To the disappointment of myself and everyone else trying to play, this has not been the case.

I arrived in Vegas around 10, got set up at the Flamingo and headed over to the Rio to register for Event #3, the 1,500 Dollar buy-in No Limit event being held at 12PM the next day. I got in what seemed to be a reasonable line around 11:30PM. The line was about 25-30 yards long outside of the convention room, I went inside to check out the cashiers cage and saw they had 6 cages open to handle the players. I felt pretty good that I'd only have to stand in line a couple hours to get registered, as 6 cages should be able to handle the 250 or so people in front of me fairly quickly.

I've never been more wrong about anything else in my life.

My girlfriend and I had stood in line a good 2 hours and moved maybe 20 feet. There was no guidance from any employee's there, and to top off the chaos, people were jumping ahead with their buddies all over the place. We stood in line hour after hour, barely moving towards the poker room. Finally, around 3:15AM, I got registered. I took me two minutes.

The next morning Brian, Marlon and I arrived at the Rio around 11 to grab some food and to make sure we are not pressed for any times. I dismissed the SNAFU of the night before as just apart of the event and hoped for a smoother day. That didn't happen.

The players were not allowed into the room until 11:50AM, five minutes before the event. Then, all the folks that pre-registered had to stand in their own lines to get their seat assignments. This line had several hundred people in it and there were 2 people handling this. So, all these forward-thinking people signed up weeks before and paid their money only to come and to stand in line again to get a seat assignment. It took over an hour before they finally started the tournament at 1PM, and all those pre-registered folks still hadn't gotten seated.

I found myself as the 8th alternate, and they decided to seat us is the Casino Poker Room, a good 1/4th of a mile away from the tournament. About 80 of us were seated over there and didn't get started playing until 20 minutes left in the first level.

The cards we played with were horrible. Dealers were good enough to read the board to us, as it was very difficult to discern the 6's and the 9's and I had problems telling the suites apart as well. I saw one guy make a T500 river bet (out of T3000 starting chips) only to have the dealer read his hand as a pair of sixes (he thought he had a strait with the 9) and lose a big pot to another player. My play was rather uneventful for the first few levels, I had managed to get to around T4200 chips by the time we were all broken up and sent back to the poker room again just after the start of the 4th level.

I took a half-hour or so to get the players moved down to the tournament poker room, and by the time we played our next hand there was only 20 minutes left in the 4th level. Play continued and with the blinds at 100-200 with a 25 ante, I was slowly eroding away back down to my original chip stack of 3000. I got moved to my next (and final) table and was up against some big stacks, with the chip leader at my table close to the top with 25,000 chips. I simply couldn't get anything going, I moved in with AK a few times and didn't get called, and just as it seemed I could get some momentum I lost an important pot when my KQ paired a Q on the flop but was out kicked by AQ. The 6th level brought the blinds at 200-400 with a 50 ante, I was on life support with a stack around 2800.

A maniac player in seat 10 rose from the cutoff to 1,200, and I pushed all in with the rest of my 2800 stack with As 9s. This guy had been raising virtually every pot and I figured him entering an un-raised pot here to be a steal or some kind of K at best. He flipped over KJ-offsuit and I felt great about my read and doubling through to get back into the swing of things. The flop was great for me - 9c 10s 6s, giving me middle pair and a the nut flush draw and leaving him with a gut shot and two overs - a 4-1 dog. Of course, the dagger came with the Qc on the turn and a worthless 2h on the river gave him my stack and sent me to the rail.

Brian had about as many chips as I did at that point but doubled through a few times with some big pairs and got up to around 7,000 in chips. An hour or so later and he was out when he re-raised all-in with AQ and was called by AJ and the flop came J J x.

I ended up playing just slightly more than I spent standing in line, and the combination of poor planning and execution by the Rio and Harrah's along with a completely card-dead tournament left me feeling like I wasted my time. I give their whole operation a D- in how they're doing so far and feel like they are poor hosts for such a prestigious event.

The cash games over the weekend were much kinder to us, so the weekend wasn't much of a bust after all. Oh well, at least I outlasted Jamie Gold! See you at the tables!

-Chris