Light WSOP

I’ve always thought I’d spend a big chunk of time at the World Series of Poker every year I play for a living. It’s been a staple of my life for 13 years now. Most years I’ve played more live tournaments there than the rest of the year combined. I look forward to it every year, but I’m making a choice to stay home for most of it this year.

Setting priorities is always important. At the start of the WSOP this year, I have a four-year-old, a three-year-old, and a six-month-old. My wife works mostly full time and very early hours so there’s not really a good way for us to get child care while I’m gone and obviously she can’t come with. I can’t bring the kids with either, so it’s a tough spot for us. Either she has to take time off of work, go in late, or find someone willing to come to our house to take care of our kids at 5:30 a.m. It’s almost impossible at their ages to make that work so I’m going to skip the vast majority of the series.

It’s definitely a hard choice to make. I have a love/hate relationship with tournaments. Obviously, I’ve had great success with tournaments over the years, but they are so time intensive and hard to work into a schedule that includes caring for three children. They are emotionally and physically draining, and disappointing almost every time.

It sounds like I hate them, but there is just something about tournaments, especially the WSOP, that calls to me. The community, the joy in people’s faces, the magic, the cheese. It’s all a part of the draw. Then, of course, there’s the money. It’s hard to find a place and time where you can put in more hours and action than you can over the summer in Vegas. If you don’t like the tournaments that are going on at the WSOP, that’s okay, go down the street. Several venues are putting together some really great schedules if you have a distaste for the Rio or already busted out of the bracelet event.

If I didn’t have kids, I would definitely spend more time in Vegas over the summer. When my kids get older, if I’m still playing poker full time, I will probably spend more time in Vegas. But kids are only young once and if I was there in Vegas for long stretches of time, my mind would be in two places at once, and that wouldn’t be fair to myself, my family, or my backer.

So, here I am, a weekend warrior at the WSOP. I’ll be heading into town on the night this goes to print. Driving in late, getting seven or eight hours of sleep (almost certainly more consecutive hours than I will have gotten in the four weeks between when I write this and when it gets published), and heading to the Rio to mix it up for a weekend of pot-limit Omaha and no-limit hold’em tournaments at the Rio and wherever else I can fit them in.

I’ll definitely come back for the main event, but I’m going to be busy casino hopping to get in as much action as I can in four or five days. I’ll have to remember to take the advice I give to all of my students who have come out to Vegas for quick trips. I’ll make sure I get enough sleep. How could I not, I won’t have a six-month-old in the room with me (I almost said I’ll sleep like a baby, but I have too much experience with how babies sleep to think of that as a good thing). I’ll stay active on breaks, walking all the way to the Rio entrance and back in the time allotted. I’ll eat small amounts of food all throughout the day instead of eating a big meal at dinner. So many people make big mistakes in the time between dinner break and the last hand of the night because they ate too much food, their energy levels dipped, and they lost focus for just a little bit of time. Lastly, and most importantly, I’ll make sure to have fun since that’s what the game is all about.

It’s likely that I’ll be the weekend warrior with the most career winnings at this year’s WSOP, but perhaps that laser focus on one weekend, the knowledge that I don’t have to pace myself, that I can be a sprinter, not a marathoner can really sharpen my focus and make me into the best weekend warrior I can be. If I can manage all of that, hopefully I’ll be able to add a large percentage to those career earnings in the time I have there. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG