Spring Fever

For all of us who have the poker bug, spring is the time to be in Las Vegas. Bellagio kicked off its two weeks of big buy-in no-limit hold'em events on Tuesday, April 5. At the conclusion of the two weeks, the $25,000 buy-in WPT World Championship will crown a new WPT champion for season three. Once Bellagio's tournament concludes, the Plaza will try to keep poker Downtown during the end of April and early May, now that the World Series of Poker has changed its dates and venue. The Plaza tournament will conclude with a $50,000 buy-in no-limit hold'em event. Where is all of this money coming from? May will be The Mirage's month. Of course, it will host a $10,000 buy-in championship event, but it also will hold a $15,000 buy-in heads-up no-limit hold'em event. By the end of May, everyone should be ready to get out of Las Vegas for a few days. If so, Harrah's in New Orleans is the final stop for the WSOP Tournament Circuit before the grueling month and a half of poker starts at the World Series of Poker at the Rio on June 2 and continues until the World Series of Poker championship event, which begins on July 7. The WSOP championship event is expected to draw more than 5,000 players and will be split into three starting days. It will last a full week this year.

As an aside, I have received e-mails from many businessmen that the championship is too long for them to play in it. My theory is, if you have made it to the fifth day and are within striking distance of winning an estimated $10 million in first-place prize money, you should be willing to take the extra few days off. If you are in such a fortunate position that $10 million for a week's work will not change your livelihood, skip the World Series and continue running Microsoft.

At CardPlayer.com, there will be extensive tournament coverage during the next few months. You will be able to read daily reports in the morning with photos from the day before, see live updates with chip counts of the larger buy-in events as they are being played, and hopefully by the WSOP, there will be a 15-minute wrap-up video every morning with interviews from the previous day. If you like to know what is going on in tournament poker, you won't have to go anywhere else.

On a different note, a few months ago I was talking to Michael Kaplin, a great writer from New York, and he asked me to read a chapter from the book that he co-authored with Brad Reagan titled Aces and Kings. The chapter was on Stu Ungar, who was considered by many to be the greatest no-limit hold'em tournament player ever. The chapter was so good that we decided to use it as an unedited excerpt in the magazine in this issue and the next issue. Kaplin said that if we wanted to do it properly, I needed to contact Ulvis Alberts, who has the very best photographs of Stuey. Alberts' photos are all in black and white and are by far the best vintage photographs of poker from the earlier years of the World Series. Thanks for the incredible photos, Mr. Alberts.