Shane Schleger

The first event I played was the inaugural $1K “Stimulus” event, which began this past Saturday and Sunday and concluded yesterday (a day or two behind schedule) with Steve Sung, an excellent gambler and extremely nice guy, winning the bracelet and more than $750K.

For my part, I started off a bit unsteadily in the event, slightly distracted by the hoopla of the first huge-field event and underwhelmed by the prospect of having to look at poker players for the next five weeks, but I got into the groove in the middle of level 1 and worked the 3K starting stack into 15K by level 5 and then busted by level 6, just before dinner, after losing three medium sized pots on hands that I thought I played well.

The next day, Sunday, I spent playing my normal regimine of online poker tournaments and had a typical online Sunday with a few deep runs but no success. During the WSOP, online tournaments are usually totally off my radar, but Sunday is the one exception. I actually think the contrast between the live action and the online rhythm works well, and I believe I play relatively well when I play on Sundays during the WSOP, moreso than when I’m at home and the Sunday grind is just another aspect of the quotidian.

On Monday, I latched onto a group of friends who had a plan to spend the day on Lake Mead. We rented a speed boat and got onto the lake around 11:30AM. In my summer camp days, I used to be a fairly decent, although not competitive-level, waterskier, and I still love the sport immensely, even though I’ve only probably held a towrope in my hands twice since my teenage years, the last time being during the Aruba poker tournament I played in 2005 or 2006. It was exhausting then and even more this time. Turns out I was in better physical shape when I was 15 than I am now.

The boat, unfortunately, did not have much power, and it was impossible for me to get up on one ski, which is basically still like riding a bike. I had to revert to the “dropping” method, in which one gets up on two skis, then wiggles free from the second one in order to slalom (and after the run looks for the jettisoned ski on the lake). In five years out here, this was the first time I did any water sports on Lake Mead, and it was one of the most best things I have ever done on a WSOP day off. I plan on bringing out my Kidder waterski that has been collecting dust in my garage at home and to hopefully get out on the lake at least one or two more times before this series concludes.

It was fun as shit but physically taxing and the next day I was extremely sore. My friend Chris Bush, one of my boatmates who succesfully got up on two skis during his first-ever attempt, texted me during the next day’s $1,500 NL tournament to say, “I got muscles I never knew existed.” I replied, “I know, it even hurts when I muck.”

By the next day, the feeling in my limbs went from a sort of “good sore,” the type of minor muscle strain that serves as a reminder that you did positive activity the day before, to strict pain that was almost overbearing. Despite physical and mental exhaustion, I was unable to fall asleep due to the stiffness in my left leg that prevented me from fully extending it to stretch. I finally faded off by 3AM but woke up prematurely at 7:30AM and could not get back to sleep.

As a result, I was essentially hopeless to play well during the following day’s $1,500 six-handed event, which I had been really looking forward to playing. I got my money in with the nut flush draw on the turn, missed against two-pair, and made my way back to the apartment.

Today is a $2K NL event, my fourth event of the series and the biggest buyin so far. I feel ready to play and to avoid the potential psychological downfall that comes with playing a new tournament each day and busting out. It can be a real mindfuck, but if you maintain perspective and equanimity you can also find yourself with an edge over people who don’t deal with the stressers and defeatism well.

The weather has been unseasonably mild so far and a calming cloud cover has engulfed Vegas for the past two days. In contrast to my feeling on level 1 of the $1K event, I am content to be here, looking forward to playing as many tournaments as I can with a fresh mindset and doing healthy stuff like playing tennis, going to the movies, and waterskiing on my days off.

The first critical decision that every poker player needs to make before coming to the WSOP is where to stay during the five week poker marathon, and this bit of planning is actually somewhat tricky to sort out. It’s also perennially interesting to see what options people choose.

One classic formation is the “WSOP house,” in which a posse of poker playing friends piles into a furnished five-plus bedroom house in, say, Henderson that comes equipped with a swimming pool and a ping pong table.

When I participated in this type of venture for the 2006 World Series, there were five people in our house paying rent but, at any given time, there was also an average of five or more girlfriends, relatives and visiting acquaintances hanging around. Often, these McMansions will house eight or more young poker players and the number of guests multiplies accordingly.

As someone who values solitude and privacy to a large degree, living in this kind of setup turned out to be a mistake of some magnitude for me. I was good friends with my four other housemates (and most of their girlfriends and relatives too, for that matter), and we are all actually still good friends, but I do not have too many fond memories of that house or that summer. The idea of hosting a beer-pong tournament in the place I am staying and trying to relax during poker tournament downtime is loathsome in retrospect.

As a result, I am always amazed when someone informs me that they are voluntarily subjecting themselves to this type of arrangement. Even if I was a highly social, alcohol-consuming type of guy, I can’t think of many actual advantages to living with this many people during a period of time when concentration, relaxation and settling into some kind of daily balance is of paramount importance. Similarly, I don’t really like dining with large groups of people. I think that as the size of a group gets larger, the lowest common denominator gets lower: One becomes forced to settle on little lifestyle choices in order to accommodate everyone in the party.

Another popular housing option is to stay at a casino hotel/resort, and I know of a few young “online” players who have actually decided to stay at the Rio, where the WSOP is being held for the fifth year, for the duration of this poker odyssey. The Rio is offering a very affordable room rate this year, and although I haven’t heard anyone express regrets about this choice yet, I am eager to see how that sentiment evolves as we get deeper into the Series.

I consider the Rio in particular to be an awful casino in terms of the way it’s laid out and designed, and the sensation I get whenever I walk through the casino part (something I try to avoid–the actual tournaments are held in the convention center, a safe distance away), I am reminded far less of Ipanema and Copacabana than I am of a cruise ship in hell.

A friend of mine stayed at the Bellagio during the ‘07 and ‘08 Series, and even though it’s a hotel where I enjoy staying, I think a five-week stretch there would be unhealthy for me in a variety of ways, even if I could afford it (his bill ventured well into five-figure territory both years). There are so many ways to become jaded, distracted, disheartened, and debauched during this Series, and staying at the Bellagio or a similarly nice luxury casino hotel/resort majorly increases the chances of my falling into one of those psychological pits, not to mention the actual casino pit, which destroys more lives and poker bankrolls than any other single “leak” I can think of.

Last year, I stayed with my friend Owen Crowe at an apartment in the Panorama Towers, a very short distance from the Rio itself and a popular high-rise residence for poker players in general. The lady we rented from was mostly weird and uptight, harboring a strange affinity for cheap drugstore air freshener and an unrealistic phobia of cigarette smoke and her ex-husband. The coffee machine in the apartment was some fancy bullshit contraption that was designed to grind the beans and brew the coffee at the press of a button, but which never worked correctly and instead left a mess of caked-on grinds and muddy water every time I attempted to use it. Most days, I got in the car (never a desirable option before consuming caffeine) and went to Starbucks before the tournament.

Our landlady also apparently didn’t believe in curtains that properly covered the windows, and the rooms high up in the sky were constantly affected by sunlight early in the morning, preventing even one good night of sleep. Crowe, a much deeper sleeper than I am, made the final table of a prelim event and made the final two tables of the main event for a very profitable summer, while I managed to score tiny cashes in two small events, a terrible WSOP result.  Also, despite having relatively few suicidal thoughts in general, I hated the isolated way the balcony in our Panorama condo was constructed, and whenever I was out there smoking, I had to resist nearly constant thoughts of jumping onto the bus depot that our apartment overlooked.

As a result of the Panorama’s proximity to the Bellagio and the Strip, there was also this artificial, nagging desire to do something and a feeling of emptiness whenever it turned out there wasn’t really anything worth doing.

Here now, in my fifth year in Vegas, I am finally content with the apartment I secured, again with Crowe, who is one of the few people I can get along with for extended periods of living and traveling together. We are in one of Las Vegas’ generic gated communities, 15 minutes northwest of the Rio. Critically, the place is properly equipped as a “vacation rental” with plenty of utensils, paper products, a simple Mr. Coffee machine (there are even two mason jars filled with coffee filters), a reliable wireless internet connection and a good cable-TV hookup.

The twenty minute drive to the Rio each day presents a good opportunity to clear my head, listen to music in my car, and there is a bagel place on the way that compares favorably to some of the New York spots I remember fondly. The management company we rented from is efficient and responsive, and the overall vibe here is far more stress-free (so far) than any of my previous housing  experiences at the WSOP.

I have a singular goal for this year’s WSOP–to make money–and I think this setup gives me the best shot of obtaining that goal.

All that said, there is a long way to go. Something weird happens to time at the World Series of Poker–it becomes unnaturally compressed–and after five days in town and only having played two events, it already feels like I’ve been here for several weeks. Still, there is a uniquely energized feeling that I am overcome by each year here, and it has totally erased the apathetic, wan feelings towards the WSOP that I was dealing with during May.

Tomorrow is the $1,500 six-handed NL event, my third opportunity to accomplish my goal for this summer, and even if I bust out on day one like I did during the first two events, I will enjoy the bagel with cream cheese that I munch on during the ride down to the Rio.