Standing Joke

So, last post before I sit down in the Main Event later today. As you know, this came about from my mega-satellite survival on Wednesday. That tournament will stay with me for a long time.

Actually it is my biggest tournament win to date - of course most likely it will turn out to be worth $0 in the end, but inasmuch as I could have sold the seat, it was a $10k win. The satellite it self took nearly 10 hours to play - but THEN we had well over an hour of "paperwork" and this is an incredibly painful process.

It's only bearable at all insofar because you're only going through it as a result of winning something. Americans, in general, are not reknowned for their queuing skills or their tolerance of bad service, so actually it is relatively impressive how acquiscent they are to the appalling slowness of the whole thing. You stand in line and get taken from one "station" to the next where they take ID, copy it, out you in the computer, fill forms, etc etc. Worse, for me, they would not accept my UK photo driving license as ID for the payout even though it WAS acceptable ID to register and so on.

So, I had to come back the next day with my passport which I had left at The Venetian for safety’s sake (I did lose my passport in Spain once, years ago, and I don’t want to go through that again).

Well the good thing was that there weren’t 45 other people trying to cash out at the same time. But it STILL took over an HOUR to get my payout including at least 40minutes standing in line at the cashier’s counter with only 2 people in front of me ! What they were doing, I have little idea.

The guy in the front of the line has just finished 2nd in the $10k PLO so he was making a big cash – perhaps this was the reason for the delay.

He was being pretty patient – probably used to it by now. I assume they don’t make Phil Hellmuth stand in line like this. The staff are pretty friendly, on the upside, but they are jobsworths of the first degree (rules is rules, and some of the rules just make you want to cry) and some of them are absolutely clueless which is a worry. The one thing that is worse than a bad ruling is an unclear ruling.

And then to make it TRULY ridiculous – remember that to get your cash you have been through 4 or 5 rounds of intense form-filling and release-signing and what not – they hand over his cash (must have been a LOT for that 2nd place) and it seems like he wants some help handling it – so the cashier looks around and fishes out 2 or 3 of those re-usable internal mail envelopes you get in offices and gives those to the fella who just stuffs the bricks of cash in there plus a few in his front and back jeans’ pocket and walks off with his armsful of the stuff.

Anyway, 10hours to win the seat, about 3 hours all told to actually cash in and register for my ME seat. What a lesson in how not to organize things. I sure hope I have to go through it all again in a few days !