WSOP success

This post would be great if I told you I went to Vegas to play in the WSOP and won one of the events at the RIO....

I went out to Vegas in June to meet with some English friends who had flown over there to play in the $1000 NL tournament. They are part of a group called the LPPL which organize pub poker all across the UK. The best players get to go to regional and national finals and win prizes including a trip to Vegas and entry into this tourney.

I just went to watch. I left my house in southern Califonia at noon and arrived at 5pm, checked in at the hotel and made my way over to the Rio to rail them. Unfortunately most of them had already been knocked out so I said hello to the rest and then entered the 6pm Daily deep-stack tournament just to get some poker under my belt to start the week.

I was already tired when I started (from the 5 hour drive) but I ended up playing for 12 hours and finally 5 of us did a chip count chop for a very healthy payday.  I had a stunning headache for the last 2 hours of the tournament and was extremely tired so pleased with how I played.

Its interesting that the Rio will not facilitate the chop in any way. They insist on paying 1st place money to 1 player, 2nd place to another etc. and then have the players informally do the chop by handing money to each other. This creates a strange atmosphere and somewhat a lack of trust and also breaks some IRS rules on accurately recording who actually is supposed to get taxed on the winnings. If you have a final table with a couple of Europeans who are not taxed in the USA this is all very simple but if your final table is all American citizens (like ours was), a chop becomes quite the logistical nightmare are someone has to take the tax hit for first place (say $39k) even though they only get the chop amount (say $20k). This affects the payout structure as that person then wants to be compensated extra for the taxes they will pay.

As much as the Venetian sucks for opposing online poker in the USA, at least they pay out properly, will facilitate and pay out chopped amounts and will give you the correct IRS forms.