No Room at the Inn
Monday, July 6, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
The big story today isn’t that there are over 2,700 people playing in the Main Event–it’s the 500 (or more) who WANTED to play in the Main Event today and weren’t able to because Day 1D sold out. There were rumblings last night that the tournament would fill up but it seems like no one anticipated that there would be such an influx of entrants at the last second. And those who aren’t able to play (and in many cases traveled a long way to Vegas) were not happy about it. An hour after play began there were still hundreds of angry people in the hallways, many of whom were talking to Mike Sexton. According to a report by Bluff Magazine Sexton acted as a spokesperson for the shut-out players and was talking to tournament director Jack Effel about their grievances.
I talked to a couple of players in the hall who were livid about not getting to play. One who flew in from New York last night said, “They advertise 3,000 seats per day on their website, and they you get here and they cap it at 2,700.” Although there was talk here last night that Day 1D sold out, the shut-out players didn’t know that was a possibility. “They need to have on the website in big blinking lights ‘YOU MAY GET LOCKED OUT’,” the New Yorker said.
There are rumors, and at the moment that’s all they are, that Harrah’s is trying to find a way to accommodate these players. There’s talk of starting a “Day 1E” tonight at 5pm using tables that free up during play today and then having those players play four levels They would then play tomorrow on Day 2A with the much-smaller fields that played the first two days of the Main Event. Like I said, these are just things we’re hearing second-hand from usually-reputable sources, but nothing’s written in stone. (I’m also hearing now they may start a Day 1E to run concurrently with Day 2A tomorrow).
It’s a condundrum for Harrah’s, which makes FOUR days available for players to start their Main Event and then is faced with a mob crashing the gates on one specific day. There’s only so much physical space and dealers and staff available at a single point in time. But if 500 players come away from the Rio with $10,000 in their pockets and a bad-beat story it’s going to be a major black eye for Harrah’s. The WSOP staff has run things extremely well the past two years–this is perhaps the biggest on-the-fly challenge they’ve faced. It should be an interesting afternoon.
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Tags: 2009 world series of poker, 2009 wsop, world series of poker, WSOP
July 6th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Good update , Pnews hinted that there was chaos in the registration office , if they pull off the extra slot for the players that would be an amazing scoup for customer relations and Poker being the winner, would they have to vet the other players or will they cap it to 3000?
July 6th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
I’m defo heading next year.