Bigger Deal

The Moll can relax. George Clooney didn’t show up for the World Series of Poker’s ‘Ante Up for Africa’ event, hosted by Annie Duke and Don Cheadle. Those who did included Matt Damon, Ben Affleck (who just happens to be Cindy’s cousin) and Martin Sheen – whom I bumped into walking through the lobby of the Rio in darkest Hollywood shades, acknowledging the applause of the crowds with a practised Queen Mother wave as if he actually were the President of the United States.

The $5,000 buy-in event, in which cashers were encouraged to give half their winnings to the victims of Darfur, ended when the last two men standing out of 167 starters agreed to give all their winnings - $386,738 between them – to the relevant charities, the Enough Project and the International Rescue Committee. Big-hearted Daniel Shak and Brandon Moran were thus formally declared joint winners. At the star-studded post-event party, a glowing Annie Duke predicted the event would wind up raising a sum close to a million bucks.

By noon the next day, Friday, all this had become one of the finer moments in World Series history when Day 1-A of the $10,000 "main event" saw 1,287 players settle down to the ten-day task of pursuing this year’s multi-million dollar first prize as 2007 world champion of poker. By the day’s end, 16 hours later at 4 a.m., such illustrious poker names as former world champs Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan and Amarillo ‘Slim’ Preston had all been eliminated, as had top Europeans Andy Black, Dave ‘Devilfish’ Ulliott, Dave Colclough, Roy ‘the Boy’ Brindley and the Hendon Mob’s Ram Vaswani (who had snagged his first WSOP bracelet 48 hours earlier, as the $217,438 winner of the 720-entrant, $1,500 buy-in Limit Hold’em Shoot-Out. While we’re updating the back story, the next day had seen the genial Erik Seidel win his eighth WSOP bracelet with the $538,835 first prize in Event 54, $5,000 No Limit 2-7 draw lowball with rebuys).

The early departure of Brunson and Chan from the "main event" ensured that happy new Hall-of-Famer Phil Hellmuth’s record haul of 11 bracelets will now remain intact until at least next year.

The dubious honour of being the first person out of the 2007 world title event went to one Matt Jansen – who began his bad-beat story, like so many others, with those familiar words ‘Well, I had pocket rockets…’ Jansen held Ah-Ad to George Dolorfan’s Kh-Qh. All the money went in after a flop of Jh-10h-5h. When no fourth heart came on the turn or the river, Jansen became the first player to be "sent to the rail".

It’s still early days, of course – and WSOP history shows that no Day One chip leader has ever gone on to win the world title – but, for the record, the field at the end of Day 1 was led by a Frenchman called Tinten Olivier with 270,500 chips. Also among the 450 weary survivors were Britain’s Julian Gardner in 7th place with 243,000, ‘Gentleman’ Joe Beevers with just under 100,000, and… yes, poker writer Des Wilson with, er, just 12,500 of the 20,000 he started with. Given that the brutally revised structure scoops some 40,000 in blinds and antes over those 16 hours, however, this was no mean feat from Des. The cheers could be heard all the way from Cornwall as the New Zealander-turned-west country boy achieved his prime objective of surviving Day One. In the process he won his $100 last-longer bet with snooker champ Steve Davis – a very canny player, who got into the money last year – and, yes, also outplayed Dave Ulliott, prime subject of the poker book Des published last year, Swimming With the Devilfish.

Des will also have gathered enough good material to write himself into poker history in the final chapter (which he is penning here in Vegas) of his imminent history of poker, Ghosts at the Table. Half-way through the day, he found himself short-stacked enough to go all-in with A-10 of hearts. "To my horror," Des reports, "the guy on my right said ‘call’ and tabled A-K. As if that was not bad enough, he got two more Kings on the flop. So it was all over? Well, actually, no, because two of the cards on the flop were hearts - and guess who got a lucky break on the river!" Clearly, Des’s name is on the trophy this year.

I will certainly be pleased if I manage to do as well on Monday, Day 1-D, when Mike (Suicide King) Craig and I will be among the weirdos and mavericks who signed on for that day for no other reason than pure eccentricity. This was before Harrah’s suspended entries for Saturday and Sunday, ensuring that all the last-gasp satellite winners and last-minute celebrity alternates will also be arriving in droves to make the last Day 1 pretty chaotic.

We won’t know the final tally of starters this year until half-way through Monday, so that figure will have to wait until I report on my own progress (or, more likely, lack of it) early next week. In the meantime, Day 1-B is well under way as I write, characterized by a clutch of top pros playing because it’s the best day for phasing your progress through Days 2 and 3, and countless superstitious morons who believe that 7/7/07 is "the luckiest day of the century" (what, I ask, about 7/7/77, when I will be signing on at the tender age of 130?). The Strip is teeming with bridal couples today, all of them figuring that this is the luckiest day of the century to tie the knot. Vegas being Vegas, the wedding chapels have all doubled their rates.

So I will now go score a free meal off someone – Des Wilson, I hope, in my new role as the eternally freeloading Anthony Holden he has portrayed in a vivid, warts-and-all profile in the current issue of Poker Pro Europe – while waiting to bring you the highlights of Day 1-B. Among those playing today is my dinner companion of last night, EPT London winner and long-standing chum Victoria Coren, who has already cashed once this year and is currently playing as well as any Brit, nay European. (Oh, and for the record, Des, dinner was generously paid for by PokerStars’ Tori Hardy, who was also entertaining Telegraph poker blogger David Flusfeder and other very-happy-to-be-here UK poker writers).

Could this be the year of the poker writer? How dumb of Des Wilson not to insist on a last-longer bet with his pals Anthony Holden and Michael Craig (who has already reached two WSOP final tables this year) over the several meals I got him to pay for in return for copious advice on how to survive Day 1. I would, of course, have taken it then. Not now I won’t…