Swimming With 'Jesus' And Sharks

DC Lawyer Ken Adams Heads To Vegas For World Series Of Poker

(CBS) 
The event that draws the greatest attention is the $10,000 championship no limit Hold'em championship. The winner of that tournament will hold the bragging rights for the next year as the world champion of poker. He or she will enjoy huge television and print fame, and the opportunity to make way more money from endorsements than most of us earn in our jobs. (Indeed, one Internet poker site is said to be paying last year's winner, Greg Raymer, more to market their Web site than he was paid last year for his work as an in-house lawyer at a Fortune 100 pharmaceutical company.)

Every day there are single table and multi-table "satellite" tournaments where you can try to win enough to buy into the upcoming events. And there dozens of "side games" – cash games unrelated to the tournament, that break out all over the place among players at all levels. The action is nonstop.

At every one of hundreds of poker tables, at every minute of every day, the law of the jungle is at work. It is "eat or be eaten," because every tournament player starts out with the same number of chips and when your chips are gone you are gone. No videotape replays. No appeals to fairness or higher authority. No buying more chips. No excuses. No second chances. The weak and unlucky are defeated; the strong and the fortunate survive to play on. Darwin would love it (if he had the cards).

As I prepare for my annual plunge into the shark infested Vegas desert, I ponder the strategic consequences of the huge increase in players.

On the one hand, the odds of winning a WSOP bracelet in a no-limit Hold'em event have gone way down – for me and for the top tournament professionals. On the other hand, the odds of finishing in the money in the WSOP no limit Hold'em event have gone way up for the experienced players, as a result of the infusion of money from new, inexperienced players. (You don't have to finish first to score a good payday in a tournament. In most WSOP events the top 10 percent of the field will win more than their entry fee – more players, more payouts. That could mean the top 750 finishers in the championship event.)

To prepare for the sharks I have played in as many local tournaments as possible. I have reviewed the underlined sections in my tattered poker textbooks, written by the great tournament players of the past and present. I will re-read my detailed notes of prior tournaments, hoping to avoid the mistakes this year that have cost me in the past.