Big Time

Posted by icemonkey9 on Apr 20, 2010 in wpt | 1 comment

I'm not getting a big head, it's just that I heard that song at Bellagio and it's stuck in my head like songs will do.  It's not totally inappropriate, I have to admit working the floor at the WPT $25k Championship for Poker News Daily is a big step up from working the LAPC for Gaming Illustrated!

Yesterday I filmed a quick Daily Deal and then worked the floor to get as many interviews as we could.  I think we got in six which is a number higher than my goal (five) for the day.  The people I got to interview include some guy named Tom "durrrr" Dwan, Eric Seidel, David "Devilfish" Ulliott and a couple of guys you may not know (for now).  One of those guys is named LeRon Washington who won a ClubWPT freeroll to enter into the WPT Celebrity Invitational, which he won and included a ticket to this event.  So in essence he went from playing on a freeroll site to playing in the biggest WPT tournament of the season.  It also helped that he was a real nice guy to boot, so I imagine once his tournament win aires there'll be big interest in this interview where they may not be much right now.

It's funny though when some people see me and my assistant and we come over politely to ask for an interview they literally turn around and walk the other way.  Okay, well, that happened with one pro - Jennifer Harmon - but we got the message and kind of snickered at that.  Other pros have been super cool.  Andy Bloch was very accommodating and is every bit the nice guy he appears to be on TV.   We would have had an interview with Daniel Negreanu outside at the Bellagio, but before he taped a quick promo for someone else the water show kicked in with the "Steak - It's Whats for Dinner" theme song which just blew any chance we had with him ... and of course he busted during the next level of play and took off.

At the end of the day we were rather pooped but it was great to be there even though this isn't a "big" event in the sense of a field or even a media following it seems.  Less than 200 players entered which isn't too surprising given the huge buy-in, but it's 33% less than last year.  I think if there's one thing that the WPT needs to do is partner with real money poker sites (Hello new owner PartyPoker!) and get people interested in being on TV and part of these mega-tournaments through small buy-in satellites.

So being at Day 2 was a success in terms of learning what works and what doesn't work on the floor as well as the right way to shoot a video and how to work in such terrible lighting conditions.  I am headed back there today all day to get as much stock footage an interviews as possible and I'll probably just be back for an hour the remaining days leading up to the final table for quick recap clips.  I'll be at the Final Table on Saturday for coverage which should be fun, usually the WPT does an amazing job putting together Final Tables.

Until then, you know where to check me out, so I'll see you there.