LAS VEGAS–I\’m Michele Lewis, reporting for PokerNews.com: OK, not really, but I play one on TV.
Check it out, the Fresh Princess talking to Thor Hansen about Omaha Hi Lo and $5k 7-stud and, briefly, the WPT\’s single-dimensional approach to poker. But the best part is the second half, where they rehash the terror of the \”Poker SuperStructure\” (Jeff Pollack\’s words, not mine) … which succumbed to a fierce Vegas windstorm.
It really was funny/scary. Early in the $1,500 Omaha Hi Lo, Jim Meehan (seated at Michele\’s table) was setting an over-under on when the hardwall tent would fall. It was kinda sorta a joke at first, but as the windspeeds picked up and things began shaking almost violently, a few folks were starting to wonder if the WSOP didn\’t have a Great White situation developing, not to mention a chip-counting nightmare. Shortly before dinner break, things began snapping, and power on the flat-panel tournament info boards went out. That\’s when the highest level suits were called in. And to their credit, they relocated the overflow tables inside the brick-and-mortar poker room (the players and dealers, not the tables themselves).
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Just in time … A gaggle of us were at the Masquerade bar at the other end of the Rio celebrating Tom\’s bracelet when word came in via text message: One of the walls gave way. Wow. Serious disaster averted. Though Thor suggests maybe not so much.
By the way, these winds, which reached 65 mph in Las Vegas, happen to be fanning wildfires, including one just on the other side of the Red Rock Mountains, the range that marks the Western edge of the Las Vegas metropolitan area.