For most of the players in this year’s Main Event physically getting there was NOT half the fun. Getting to the Rio itself is no big deal, but then the blistering sun punishes you while walking across the parking lot, and then you have to deal with the anxious crowds in the halls. But for most the real journey doesn’t begin until security throws open the Amazon Room doors and let’s everyone inside.
Of course Phil Hellmuth doesn’t run with the pack. Once again this year he made a grand entrance into the Main Event, and this year he (and everyone else responsible for pulling this off) went far beyond anything we’ve seen before. Phil was borne to the front of the Rio in a sedan chair, and then escorted by 11 Gladiators and 100 Muses to his seat at the feature table. Well, rather than describe it why not just show what it looked like:
As we all waited in the broiling sun for Phil to appear I found myself looking at the ladies dressed as “gladiators” and found myself wondering “How the heck did they do that?” And by that I mean the extensive body-paint that each gladiator was wearing. The straps on the shoulders and the UB logos on their backs–they’re painted on. Speaking as someone with zero artistic ability my mind tried (and failed) to figure out how they did it. Each model looked identical, and I knew they had to paint them all that morning. How’d they pull it off?
Well, wonder no more, as there’s a behind-the-scenes video of the models being prepared before Phil’s grand entrance (and video of his arrival as well). Kinda neat to see it all from begining to end…still can’t believe that a lot of the decorations were painted freehand. I couldn’t have managed that in a million years. Anyway, enjoy:
Entering the Amazon Room dressed as Caesar, with 111 young women in tow. How, exactly, do you top that for 2010? Do you even try? Or do you go for something totally different. Some of my fellow wags on media row discussed what Phil might try next year for his entrance, here’s a few of the ideas that were bandied about:
A jet-pack. This was actually the most frequently-raised option, that Phil might streak down the Strip in a Space-Age jet pack before banking left and soaring over I-15 to the Rio. Or, maybe, even swooping through the open doors and streaking down the hallway, hovering over the Feature Table before gently alighting upon his seat. Now THAT would be an entrance, though with a jet-pack there would be the very real possibily of a hilarious tragic accident. Phil bonking into a palm tree or knocking over a gaggle of fans like so many duckpins would not be an auspicious start to the Main Event.
Sky-dive into the Main Event. Phil jumps out of an airplane with, say, 11 (or more, depending how the 2010 Series goes) precision jumpers. Black-and-gold smoke billowing from his boots, Phil would gently touch down at the Rio and, still at a trot, detach himself from his chute and race to his seat still dressed in his custom-made jump gear. The problem with this idea is that landing at a precise location ain’t that easy, and what with all the power lines criss-crossing Vegas a near-miss could be a real problem. Also the searing Vegas sun baking the asphalt probably creates some wicked thermals, and I can just see Phil floating above the Rio, borne aloft by powerful updrafts, carried by the breeze until he’s finally able to touch down in coyote/tumbleweed country. Which could lead to hilarious uncomfortable circumstances.
Phil the Ninja. Instead of a Hollywood production leading to his Main Event arrival, Phil infiltrates the tournament by stealth. Dressed head-to-toe in black Neoprene and suspended from the Amazon Room rafters hours before play begins, Phil suddenly appears out of nowhere, throwing a handful of flash-powder on the table and descending Mission Impossible style via a filament-thin zipline. Once in his seat he pulls out a razor-sharp katana and cuts the deck in two with a glittering blade. THIS idea I like, it reinvents the whole big entrance idea and inspires a different sort of awe. It would add an aura of mystery, as everyone knows Phil ALWAYS makes a big entrance and, yet, no one seems have a clue what it might be. And no one manages to figure it out before…they’re dead. Figuratively speaking, of course.
So these are just a few ideas, please feel free to contribute your own in the comments. Now’s the time to brainstorm, because there’s only about 49 weeks until the 2010 Main Event kicks off.
This year marks the 40th World Series of Poker…and it also marks the 40th anniversary of my birth. Yeah yeah, I turned 40 a few months ago, can we please change the subject? I actually didn’t make that connection until a few days ago, that I’ve been alive roughly the same amount of time as the World Series. Not an especially interesting or relevant detail, except for me, and as I’m the one writing this post I hope you’ll forgive me for dwelling on it a bit.
Back in 1970 Benny Binion invited six of the best poker players to the Horseshoe to compete for the title of World Champion. It wasn’t a freeze-out tournament–the six voted on who they thought was the best player. They voted Johnny Moss the champion, a good choice as he also won the following year. The next year Amarillo Slim Preston won the title, followed by Puggy Pearson, and over the next decade or so the WSOP title was captured by such legendary figures as Doyle Brunson, Stu Ungar, and Jack Straus.
If you’ve attended the World Series the last two years you can trace it’s history through the huge posters hanging from the Amazon Room rafters. A portrait of every World Champion looms over the vast throngs who flock to the Rio to pit their skills (and luck) against the best in the world. I’m fascinated by those posters, because they show not only how the game has changed, but how much the world has changed over these 40 years.
The pictures from the 70s are almost all black-and-white, and feature rough-hewn men with sharp eyes and lined faces. A few are smoking–the idea of someone lighting up at the table is now so alien that I think people would be less shocked if someone chose to play in the nude. As time goes on the photos transform from B&W to color, but they still have that fantastic old-school feel. The clothing is dated, naturally, but the lighting isn’t optimized for television, there’s no dramatic backdrops. They could be regular guys playing in any casino in the world.
The posters of the recent champions aren’t quite as interesting. We’ve seen these guys before, on TV, in countless photos published online and in magazines. Go to the World Series of Poker and you’ll see scores of photographers flitting among the tables, and of course the fans who cluster ’round the rail either have digital cameras or cell phones with one built-in. It’s a digital world, a wired word–thousands of players qualify for Main Event by playing online, something that wasn’t even science-fiction when Benny Binion invented the WSOP. Dozens of poker sites provide live updates of the action, ESPN streams final table action over the internet, terabytes of photos and video are produced before the final bracelet is awarded. There’s so much information to digest that it’s almost too much to keep up with.
I thought about that last year as I looked at those posters and realized one name was missing. Bill Smith won the World Championship in 1985, but his name and portrait are nowhere to be found. Smith was a colorful figure even for poker’s golden years–from an interview Dana Smith did with T.J. Cloutier, who finished runner-up to Smith:
He was one of the greatest players of all time, Bill Smith was. He was the tightest player you’d ever played in your life when he was sober. And when he was halfway drunk, he was the best player I’d ever played with. But when he got past that halfway mark, he was the worst player I’d ever played. And you could always tell when he was past the halfway point because he started calling the flop. Say a flop came 7-4-10 — he’d say, “21!” When he got up to take a walk, he would have a little hop in his step, a “git-up in his gittalong” we used to call it. And then you knew he was gone. You never worried about Bill when he was sober because you knew that he played A-B-C — tight — and you knew where he was all the time. The only time you worried about him was when he was about halfway drunk, and then he’d play all the way to “H.” But he had such great timing on his hands when he was younger and wasn’t drunk … he’d make some fabulous plays, plays you couldn’t believe. Bill was a truly great player.
I asked around a bit to find out why there wasn’t a poster of Smith, who passed away in 1997. No one was 100% sure, but a few people said that there weren’t many photos of Smith, and those that did exist were the property of his family. They chose not to make them available and so there was no entry for Bill Smith in the Ring of Champions. Today it’s hard to imagine that there wouldn’t be a photographic record of, well, anybody. But again, times have changed.
When I cover the WSOP this year I’ll have my trusty camera along and I’m going to try to re-create the feel of some of those old-time photos. It won’t be easy, I don’t think I’ll find many players wearing leisure suits with yard-wide lapels, but I’ll try to mix things up a bit, try to shoot more black-and-white stuff, play with the pixels a bit. Who knows–when Phil Hellmuth makes his grand entrance at the Main Event this year maybe he’ll go with a disco theme?
