Bigger Deal

Way down below the picture-window of my 52^nd-floor suite atop the Palms Hotel-Resort, framed by the stunningly beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains on the horizon, the Rio hotel-casino looks the size of a matchbox. Head downstairs and struggle across the road in the 120-degree heat, however, and it soon returns to scale : the imposing if deliciously vulgar, starfish-shaped edifice nudging the Vegas Strip, now the world headquarters of poker for these six weeks each year in June-July, as it hosts the 39^th annual World Series of Poker.

I got here on Tuesday, direct from a weekend in Venice – quite a culture shock, I can tell you; it’s just as well I’m not staying at the Venetian, with its phoney San Marco and Grand Canal. And it soon became clear that the 2008 World Series has so far turned out to be the Year of the (usually American) Pro. There has been not one British winner, and not many at the final tables, of any of the 53 gold bracelets on offer before the Main Event, which starts today.

This year’s coveted bracelets have so far gone to such big-name professionals as Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein, Mike Matusow, Erick Lindgren, Layne Flack, David Benyamine, Rob Hollink, Vanessa Selbst, Kenny Tran, John Phan, J.C. Tran and Max Pescatori. This week Scotty Nguyen followed Freddy Deeb and the late Chip Reese in winning the ‘real’ world poker title in the $50,000 entry, 148-starter, $1.99 million first-prize H.O.R.S.E. event.

Pros or semi-pros have so far won three times as many bracelets this year as amateurs, finally reversing the strength-of-numbers trend of recent years. This seems to have happened partly because the full-time players have adjusted their games to the ‘wild’ online techniques that started invading the WSOP with the advent of online qualification. And it is partly because their influence has moved the authorities to follow the Venetian’s welcome example in making most events deeper-stacked, and more sensibly structured, so that there’s more room for well-calculated ‘play’, i.e. better value for the entry fee ­– shifting the advantage in these huge fields back in the direction of the seasoned professionals. Which is where, I gloomily suppose, it belongs.

The 53 events of this year’s WSOP have so far generated $116 million in prize money. How much will the main event add to that? We won’t know the answer till Sunday, the last of the four Day Ones, but current predictions suggest that the field will be slightly up on last year’s – i.e. some 7,000-8,000, despite the inroads made by that wretched American anti-gaming legislation.

My flight over was all but a Ladbroke’s charter, starring snooker champ Steve Davis as unofficial team leader; and the Palms has been all but taken over by this site’s online partners, PokerStars. Even the key to my suite carries the ‘Stars’ logo, as do the lapels of hotel staff. Monday night will see the site’s annual bash in the Palms’ exclusive ‘Rain’ night-club. It’s such a hot ticket that I’m giving serious thought as to who gets my guest pass – and why…

The Palms is a stylish joint by Vegas standards, with a snazzy pool – where, yes, I am doing my daily lengths, then undoing all the good work at the bar in its centre. The hotel boasts a multi-screen cinema, and countless restaurants from the ritzy to the takeaway. The high-grade food and wine on offer in several upscale Palms eateries, such as the Nove Italiano and the N9ne steak-house, are among the numerous snappy restaurants around town justifying Vegas’s recent, umpteenth reinvention of itself as the world’s latest gourmet destination. At the Palms’ rooftop Alizé last night, as we admired its commanding 360-degree view across town to the peaks, writer Des Wilson and I managed to spend $400 on dinner. And it was, I have to say, worth it.

A few hours ago, over at the Rio, I stood in line almost an hour for the privilege of plonking down my $10,000 entry fee for the main event. I’ll be playing on Day 1-c, Saturday, and aiming to be one of those happy few still standing on Monday 14 July, when the last nine players will all become dollar millionaires as the final table is frozen – for TV’s sake – till mid-November.

In the meantime, I’ll be bringing you news of Days 1-a and 1-b. While getting (and thinking) myself into top shape for 1-c.

So stay tuned !