Cappelletti in Las Vegas – "Stopping by" the World Series in Poker

Although I normally frequent East Coast contract bridge tournaments that are within an hour or two of flight time from, I was quite happy to accept an offer to play in the Las Vegas Regional Bridge Championships – which just happened to occur during the first week of the World Series of Poker.

On Monday, June 21, in between the afternoon and evening sessions of bridge (at the Riviera Hotel), I taxied over to the Rio Hotel, the site of the WSOP, and walked through about a half-mile of lobbies and corridors to the convention area. As I first entered the gigantic convention ballroom, I beheld thousands of poker players. Most of them were congregated into about five large clusters. Perhaps the largest cluster was the main tournament of the day. Next to that, many people were standing around where the final table of the previous day's event was being televised. Then, there were several large clusters of players in live games and two levels of satellites and supersatellites.

As I walked around, just being there among several thousand poker players, many of whom I recognized, gave me the feeling that this was "where it was at." And I definitely wanted to play some poker. I inquired, but unfortunately all of the daily main WSOP events started at noon, while I was obligated to play bridge. However, each night there was a WSOP "second chance" tournament starting at 11 o'clock that usually drew more than 300 entrants.I wandered by what appeared to be a very lively pot-limit high Omaha table, and took a seat. There, I picked up just about the best all-around "deep bench hand" that I have ever seen (and I have seen many). Holding two black kings and the A J, I made a small "keep-them-in" raise before the flop (I don't try to grab the antes with a great hand). The flop came with the K10 and a black queen. Thus, I had flopped the nut straight, and also had the royal flush draw and a set of kings. It would be very hard for me to lose this pot.

In what had started as four-way action, the lead bettor made it $200, which folded the other two players. I made only the minimum raise because I did not want to lose him, but he came back at me, raising about $800 and going all in. He groaned when I made a flush on the last card. I don't think he realized that he was actually a very big underdog, and actually figured to lose the whole pot about 60 percent of the time. It then occurred to me that I had just won more money in that one hand than I would make in three days of playing bridge.

Since the evening sessions of the bridge tournaments usually ran from 7:30 p.m. to about 11:15 p.m., to play at all in the WSOP, I had to buy in to the 11 p.m. second chance no-limit hold'em tournaments ($225) during the supper break. Then, when the evening bridge session concluded, I had to taxi over to the Rio Hotel but arrive late, missing the first round or two of the poker tournament.The first night that I did this, I just missed finishing in the money. But the next night, I made it to the final table. At the final table, I held no cards and quickly dwindled down to about $20,000 in chips. Finally, I picked up the A Q in my $1,000 small blind. It was folded around to me. The big blind/chip leader on my left was a very aggressive player who did a lot of betting and raising. What would you do here?

I decided to trap and slowly tossed in another $1,000 chip, "dredging up a call." As I expected, he confidently raised, making it $6,000 to go. I moved all in, hoping that he didn't have a pocket pair. He hesitated for a few moments, then called. I was quite happy to catch him with a K-6 offsuit. My operation had succeeded, but unfortunately he paired up and I didn't. Had I been able to win that confrontation (I was about a 2-to-1 favorite), I probably would have finished a lot higher than ninth (which paid only about $1,000).

All in all, it became very clear to me that just "stopping by" the WSOP when I happened to be in town on other business was not what I really wanted to do. I made a resolution to myself that next year I would take off several weeks and really go for it. See ya there.