Speaker 1: Hello, everyone, Welcome to a new episode of the Poker
Go Podcast. My name is Donnie Peters and looks left,
looks right. I'm flying solo once again, and you are
only getting an audio podcast once again. Don't worry. This
one will be I think, on the shorter side. But
then again, as I say that, I know that in
past years, every time I say that, it tends to
run long. But we'll see. I don't think we have
a whole ton of stuff to go through on this podcast,
but I did want to get one out there. Today
was officially Day one of the twenty twenty six World
Series of Poker, my first day actually on site between
Paris and Horseshoe. I do think now we need to
put Paris first before Horseshoe with the way that things
are laid out, and I'll talk about that today. I
wanted to just kind of give you know, some first
impressions of walking around the place, because there is a
new feel, a new look to things this year. And then,
of course, you know, we did have a couple of
tournaments that kicked off today. We had the Mini Mystery Millions.
We also had the five K eight handed Nolan at
Hold Them at time of recording, it is twelve o
six am on Wednesday, May twenty seventh. Those two tournaments
are still playing out right now, so I'm not gonna
stick around it and wait up on this day one.
So you know, forgive me for that one. Also, you're
gonna have to forgive me because no interviews on this show.
You know, it was going a little bit late. I
don't know, things, things felt like they were dragging on
a little bit there today. But you know, nonetheless, it
was good to be there. It was good to start
start feeling the vibe for everything. As always, please do
like subscribe, rate review to the podcast. Hopefully we'll be
coming to you daily, but the goal is at least
five times a week, if not more, that we'll be
coming to you guys from the twenty twenty six World
Series of Poker. First things first, let's just talk about
the start. You know, quiet, but I think that that's
relatively normal for the World Series. You know, it's it's
it's building, right, it builds towards that storm. It is calm,
but also not really calm, because you can feel the
excitement in the air. You know, you can feel the
excitement when you talk to a lot of people that
you may have not seen for weeks, months, you know,
basically a full year since the last wsop. You definitely
feel it all. You know, you feel the buzz is
starting to build, You feel that tension is starting to
come into play. You know, I think the day one
is always it's kind of laid back. I know people
are coming into the summer obviously taking things very serious. Yes,
but you know, you're you're seeing people that you haven't
seen for a while, So maybe your focus isn't you know,
one hundred percent locked in because in between hands, you're
you're shooting the shit, You're dapping people up at adjacent tables,
You're going around giving some hugs, you know, checking how
the fam is, how people have been doing, where they've
been lately, you know, all that sort of stuff. So
you know, I get it same sort of vibe on
my side of things, you know, on the industry side
of things, the media side of things, like like that's
just you're kind of out there, just you're gaining your footing.
You know, you're you're you're saying you're hellos to everyone,
and you're just kind of getting acquainted with the people.
The space and everything that's to come over the next
you know, six seven, eight weeks. So so that's kind
of the feel of it all now. One of the
things that everyone's got to get a little bit acquainted to.
And if you're coming out here for the w SIPE
this year, you're going to see it. But the new setup,
so basically Paris and Horseshoe have flipped the Horseshoe Event Center.
That's what used to house the feature table stage, you know,
the mothership, the Thunderdome, whatever you want to call it.
It was over there in the event center. Then you
had that other Horseshoe ballroom, I don't remember exactly the
name of what it was, called the Front one. And
then on the Paris side you had that giant Paris
Ballroom that was where you know, a lot of the
cash came action took place. They had the King's Lounge
in there. Previously they had that kind of high roller
section off to the one side of the King's Lounge.
It was just a huge, huge, huge room, just a
sea of poker tables as far as you can see. Well,
they flipped the Horseshoe Event Center and the Paris Room
so that the Paris Room now houses the new set.
And I mean, I'm just going to say it right
now off the top, but calling that thing a stage
or a set honestly does not do it justice. It
does not do that thing justice. As my dog Duke
can't attest to. I can't say much yet because the
big reveal of this new what I'm gonna call the arena,
is still to come. It's all going to get revealed.
The full reveal is on Friday, May twenty ninth. But
this thing is absolutely effing absurd. The scale is hard
to believe. I know that I've seen the renderings. I've
seen the plans. I've seen part of it builds at
the warehouse in Las Vegas where we have our office
the Poker Go Campus, you know, but you never really
get the full thoughts. You know, the juices aren't really
full in. It doesn't all kind of the dots don't
connect altogether until you actually see it in person. The
lights are going, it's in the room. You hear the
chips getting shoveled in the background, like all that sort
of stuff. Right, So all that's happening, it's behind this
big curtain. You can't see it yet. Got to give
a huge, huge, huge credit, massive credit shout out massive
the first one of the summer to the team at
Blueprint Blueprint fifty two. They are the guys that build
this whole giant thing, headed up by Justin Garone. His
team is absolutely freaking incredible. You guys can see some
of their work over at Blueprint fifty two dot Io
that is the Casino Furnishings, the studio Furnishing's arm within
the Poker Gaut Umbrella. They absolutely freaking crush this damn thing.
It is unreal, absolutely unreal. But that's that's all I'm
gonna say for now. The full reveal again is on Friday,
May twenty ninth. You know, I'm assuming, like w SIPP
always does when they do something like this, they do
a great job at getting a lot of media out there,
drawing a lot of tension, getting a lot of buzz
around this thing, do a big reveal. I would guess.
I have no idea, but I know what they've done
in the past. When they do sorts of things like this,
they get some sort of person or celebrity to come
down and kick it off. You know. I mean, we
had Lisa Vanda Pump with her dog on the table.
One year, we've had Guy Fieri doing the bracelet. You know,
all the you get all this sort of stuff that
just happens at the World Series of Appropriate. It honestly
is just a giant spectacle and this, this stage, this set,
this arena is a spectacle. So you guys will get
all the videos, you'll get all the social media, you'll
get all the photos from that coming out on Friday,
May twenty ninth. But it is absolutely something you do
not want to miss if you do come out to
Las Vegas this summer. You know, even if you're coming
out for a regular chip, maybe you're coming out for
the Stanley Cup now that the Golden Knights made it.
You know, maybe you're just popping out here to play
some of the other events that are going on around town.
You got to make your way over to Paris and
you got to check this damn thing out because it
is freaking unbelievable. Other than that, you know, I walked
around both venues. You gotta just get your sea legs
a little bit, because for the past couple of years
it's been everything has been at Horseshoe. Paris has been
kind of the secondary venue for the entire World Series
of Poker this year. It's flipped, so you know, we're
housed in Paris. That's where we're sitting up. I mean
it just the whole flow of it feels a lot better.
It feels more modern, newer, you know. Obviously the Paris
side is a little bit more up to date than
the Horseshoe side. The Horseshoe side though, does have like
a lot of history to it. It feels nostalgic when
you're walking around the Horseshoe side, you know, yeah, we
can all do without the smoke. I get it, but
you know, it just still feel it pulls on those
nostalgia strings a little bit. There's many, many, many more
tables I feel like, which I believe they put out
there at some point that there was a bunch of
new tables. A lot of the tables look brand new,
as if they were just built. The felt looks brand new,
you know, So I don't know, everything just feels like
it's it's like, wow, it's twenty twenty six, and everything
is also in twenty twenty six with us. You know.
It's just it really feels like this is officially the
new era of the dobsip, which in recent years you
could say, Okay, left the Rio, coming down to the
Las Vegas, trip to Horseshoe in Paris, Like, that's a
new era. I get it. Last year, the first year
or the first summer under the new ownership of gig Poker,
that's a new era. Yes, those are I will say
small e eras new eras, but this truly feels like
this is the new era. This is the modern era
right now for the world's racey poker. That's that's the
feel I get, the vibe that I get when I'm
walking around that place, So you know, it's just it's
really cool to be down there again. Just definitely come
check it out if you're in town. I would highly
encourage you to do so. And if you're gonna to
be around on Friday, May twenty ninth when they do
that big reveal of the new the new setup down there,
you know, just just try and be there. Seriously, be
in the room. It's it's going to be absolutely incredible.
On the events themselves that were playing today, two WSOP
events took place. You had the five hundred and fifty
dollars buying mini mystery millions tournament believe they are scheduled
to play twenty two levels on their day one This
is Day one A. It is the first starting flight
of six starting flights. They got six hundred, sixteen hundred,
excuse me, sixteen hundred and thirty five entries, which I
think is a tad down a tad from where I
thought it might be that said, you know this, this
thing is it's one of those ones, big multi flight tournament.
It's going to just build, build, build, build build. It's
a newer event to kick off the series. Last year
they kicked off with the one K Mystery Millions, So
same concept, same tournament in theory, but half the price point.
They had five starting flights last year. It had twelve
or thirteen hundred to start in Day one A, and
then of course it just build, built, built, and the
final starting flight, the fifth starting flight, had like eight thousand,
one hundred entries or something ridiculous on its way to
you know, well over nineteen thousand total entries in the field.
So this is one of those ones where it's definitely
gonna build, build build throughout the week and it's gonna
get there. But I just I can't help but think
it's it's slightly down from where I thought. And this
is gonna be this is gonna be a theme of
this part. And it's not just WSIP related. And you'll
you'll see what I'm getting to in a second. The
w SIP five K, the eight handed NOLA MIT hold
them five thousand dollars by an event. It looks like
right now they are a bit over four hundred entries,
which is good, right, of course, it's good. I mean
four hundred and eleven entries. Right now, it looks like
they are in the final level of the day level ten.
I have about forty five minutes left at time of recording.
Right now it's twelve seventeen AM. But last year Day
one had five hundred and fifty eight entries and then
it ultimately finished with six hundred and ninety three entries.
There is late registration into Day two, same thing that
happens this year. So it's looking like it's behind the
pace of last year. Now I just say that, and
I point that this all of this out because I'm
just listen. I know it's Day one, but I'm already
starting to think, like our numbers everywhere gonna be down.
Another example of this the win eleven hundred that took
place today. I got a message in a chat that
I'm in with some poker players. You know, one of
the guys was like value alert, you know, got to
head over to win. They're brought to overlay on this
eleven hundred dollars buying million dollar guarantee, and they ended
up they ended up overlaying. By the math that I have,
they got eight hundred and fifty five entries total. Of
the eleven hundred dollars, nine hundred and sixty five goes
into the prize spool, So that means a price spool
of just over eight hundred and twenty five thousand dollars.
You guys can do the mass math. That means that
they missed by one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars
the win so early on in their win Summer series
missing a guarantee like the one K price point. You know,
we've talked about it before on this podcast. I've said
it many times. I think that's just the most elite
price point in all of poker. And if we're starting
out a series had a big, big property, a notable property,
a very established summer series in the win Summer series, Like,
that's that's just, you know, something that that catches my attention.
You couple it with the fact that some of these
other events look like they might be behind pace for
what we might have thought, it's like, hmmm, is this
going to start to become a trend throughout the summer?
You know? I know that also looking around on I
believe it was on Calshi the prediction market. They had
a prediction market for the size of the Douvaspy main
event this year. You know, up until last week my
guys over in the Grid airon Gamble Discord channel, where
we're often talking sports, sports, betting, poker, all this sort
of stuff. I was bullish, very very bullish on over
ten thousand entries in the WASP main event, which I
still think I'm kind of bullish, but a little bit
more lukewarm than Blazing Hot. But on Calshi the market
was such that the under was the favorite. So I'm
just starting to wonder overall if this is something we
just need to kind of pay attention to, you know,
And it's there's just there's a lot of freaking poker,
and it's just I think at some point. You know,
we always talked about it, Tim and I always talked
about it a lot, where maybe the economy and what's
going on in the real world is eventually going to
catch up to people catch up to the industry, this
industry and specific the poker industry. So maybe that's kind
of what we're seeing here. So maybe we do see
a little bit of a pullback. That said, it's day one.
This stuff always builds, bills builds all summer. You're just
coming off a Memorial Day weekend when you know, maybe
people are just they're out doing their thing, they're finishing
up their vacations, they're not traveling out to Vegas yet,
like all that sort of stuff. Right, So I'm not
gonna like, I don't think anyone should be freaking out,
but I'm just you know, pointing out because I think
it's a notable talking point here. Yeah, it looks like,
you know, well over four hundred entries. Of course they'll
probably push I would say five fifty five eighty in
that five K, So that's going to be a huge
prize school there. You got this mini mystery millions that's
just gonna be freaking gangbusters. I'm curious at the end
of that all, when when all six starting flights are done,
you know, that's one of those tournaments where you know,
it's like what place on the ranking list for largest
turnouts ever in a poker tournament, Where's this only gonna fall?
You know, I would say it's likely going to be
within the top ten for sure, and then it's just
where does it go from there? And then you know,
I touched on the Wind tournament, and I guess I'll
touch on some some things you know around the industry.
We are you know, going to be focused on the
WSP Yes, of course that's the biggest and baddest UH
series in town, in the world. But you know, when
when things stick out like this that have to build
into a larger trend, you know, like this opening eleven
hundred over at the Wind, then then you know, well
we'll hit on it. Something else I saw today out
of the out of the content pool was from my
good friend, my old friend Lance Bradley. So so Lance
has a sub stack, it's called the Overlay. Lance is
also writing for ESPN this year, so I would highly
encourage you guys to check him out on social media,
give him a follow or read his stuff. You know,
I'm a big fan of Lance As. I'm obviously biased
because you know, he's a good friend of mine, been
a colleague as well for for a long time. But
this the substack article that he dropped today. It was
titled five threats to Sean Deebs Historic WSP Player of
the Year repeat Chances, and he listed five players, and
I mean, I don't agree with all these players. Michael
Monchek Texas, Mike James Ovs been you Chatty Sledge, Marco Johnson.
But I did want to weigh in on Marco Johnson.
I'm big on Marco Johnson. This summer. Touched on him
a tiny bit in the last pod. You heard David
Baker ODB talk about him, how Marco is out here,
He's playing a full schedule. He's even staying at Odb's house. So,
you know, Marco being on this list, like that's someone
who when it you know, when we get to you know,
July rolls around and it's it's kind of halfway through
the was Man event and we're checking in on the
WSP Player of the Year standings, and you might see
Marco Johnson's name challenging for the league he's in the
top three, he's in the top five, he's within striking distance.
I mean, don't be surprised. Marco plays all the games.
He plays all the games. Well. The only knock that
I think you could have on Marco Johnson in this
sort of setup is like he might not play the
super big PLO and Nolan and hold him high rollers,
you know, like I don't even know if he'll go
as high as twenty five k, but you know, the fifties,
the one hundred, the two fifty, like he probably won't
be in there, at least to my knowledge. That said,
you know, he's certainly good enough to get a bunch
of points elsewhere. Now, of course, it's going to be
very very hard to chase down Sean Deep, who got
a great start at dubis apub in this year. Europe counts,
Vegas counts, and the Bahamas count so you know a
little bit of an advantage to start the summer for
Sean Deep. But you know, I wouldn't be surprised at
all if Marco Johnson is certainly in the mix. There
another nice little nugget that came out of this this
sub stack from Lance Bradley is that Sean deeb is
the only player to have finished in the top one
hundred of the Player of the Year race every year
for the last ten years. That that's wild, I mean.
But that's also why I'm so big on Deep when
it comes to fantasy poker. And I'd say that, you know,
one hundred and thirty three dollars for him as the
most expensive player, and this year's twenty five K Fantasy draft,
it's too cheap. It is just too cheap for Sean Deep.
And then I wanted to throw another player into the
mix here. If Lance was to allow me to add
a six person, I would add John Rasner. I think
John Raisner, I'm big on him this year. I think
he's going to be challenging for WSB Player of the Year.
I think he has, you know, a really good shot
at making multiple final tables, winning multiple bracelet's. Like John
Rasner is that type of player. Coupled with the fact
that this year full schedule rented a house all summer
with my fam, he is ready to go. So John
Rasner is absolutely ready to go. Somebody that I would
have paid a lot more than I think he went
for eighty six bucks. Maybe tiny bit, but I would
have pushed into the nineties, maybe even flirted with six
figures for John Reister, and listen, maybe I'll be wrong there,
but I would back John Rasner this year. And that's
really all I have for you guys today. You know,
the big thing coming out of this is that you know,
the WASIP is here. It's a quiet start, but of
course it's building. Everything feels like it's much more modern
at the whip. It feels like this is truly the
start of a new era for the World Series of Poker.
And if that new set is any sort of sign
for like what's to come in the future, I mean,
I think poker as a whole isn't a really really
good place. Because at the end of the day, if
the World Series of Poker does well and grows and
draws in a lot of eyeballs and gets new players
in the game, and you know, reinvigorates old players to
come back into the game, and all that sort of
stuff happens, it's ultimately good for every single person in poker,
every media outlet, every operator, every player. It's good for
every venue out there, small poker rooms, big poker rooms,
giant casinos. It doesn't matter. It's all good for poker, right,
so you know, hopefully that all that all pans out.
Of course, moving on to Wednesday, May twenty seventh, that
is when you guys are likely listening to this. We're
going to have day one B of the five fifty
Mini Mystery Millions, also going to kick off the five
hundred dollars Employees event, and then another event that's very
very big every single year, Mixed Games event, the fifteen
hundred dollars buying Omaha High Low. First day of that one,
that one always draws a very very very large field.
So everything's starting to pick up a little bit of
the calm before the storm type of feel today. But
you know, day two, I think we're going to increase
ten X Thursday even more so Friday Boom Weekend is
going to be here. It's going to be absolutely you know,
just just freaking balls to the wall. Let's go. So
that's all I got for you guys today, nice and short,
when I actually did keep it short today, so you know,
I stuck to my word. Appreciate you guys for listening.
As always. My name is Donny Peters and I will
catch you next time. Night Express,