Bigger Deal

The date being the Fourth of July, players were issued with America (and other) flags as they entered the Amazon Room for Day 1b of the Main Event, which began with a country-n-western version of the US national anthem before reigning champ Jerry Yang intoned the ritual cry of ‘Shuffle up and deal’. Britain’s Victoria […]

Ambling down the long Rio corridor towards the Amazon Room, scene of the WSOP tournaments, I found myself ambling alongside Australian cricketer-turned-poker player Shane Warne. (In the flesh, since you ask, he’s bigger and burlier than expected). That puts a new spin on the state of play hereabouts. Tennis champ Boris Becker has also turned […]

Way down below the picture-window of my 52nd-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 110-degree heat, however, and it soon returns to scale : the imposing if […]

I’m off to Vegas this weekend, and will start reporting here next week on this year’s World Series of Poker - including my own progress (or, just possibly, lack of it) in the Main Event. I’ll be playing as a ‘Friend of PokerStars’, a new category of player sponsored by the world’s biggest poker website – […]

Since taking over the World Series of Poker, and moving it to the Rio in 2005, Harrah’s hasn’t had the greatest press. Critics and players have complained about how corporate the event has become, with beer commercials on every table layout and ESPN dictating the scheduling of final tables. Some of the carping has been deserved, […]

The World Series as we know it was born in 1971. Since then, player numbers have swelled, events have been added and the tournament relocated, but the format has remained largely unchanged. The pattern so far has been familiar: poker-mania in Vegas builds during the preceding events until a champion is crowned in the early […]

For better or worse, I wasn’t at the WSOP Europe inaugural event. If the situation for the press and media was anything like Grub Smith described, I think it’s better that I was safely ensconced here in the north. But honestly, I would have liked to have been there just to the see the smile on […]

 I grew up in a crossword solving house. Home from work, my dad like to settle down in his armchair with the Telegraph or the Times, chewing the end of his pencil as he decoded the cryptic intentions of the setter. It was a contest every evening, a battle between two formidable brains. He enjoyed […]

So it’s true. Psychological savvy helps. For the superstitious (like me), it was also his commitment to giving 10% of his winnings to charity that saw 40-year-old psychologist Jerry Yang from Laos, now resident in California, arrive at the final table with by far the punchiest karma. When play began at noon yesterday, Yang held the […]

"You don’t want to be photographed with me?" asked the Queen indignantly. "No way," I replied brusquely, sweeping past Her Maj and her baffled Beefeater bodyguard without even saying hello, let alone genuflecting. This was – as veteran royal-watchers would (if asked) confirm – my first royal red carpet in, well, yes, a few years. On […]