2025 WSOP!!

If you love pancakes...Blueberry Hill is the place to eat!

All the workers from those places are sleeping long before I want something to eat. I think we were talking about late night. Giordanos is usually closed by midnight iirc. I didn't much like their pizza anyway.

Closed before midnight.

I like that place if I'm staying at Paris. If I'm staying at Horseshoe, my back is usually wrecked by the end of the day, and walking that far and back is too much torture. If I'm lucky the gift shop will have a packaged danish or something like that. I really should look into picking up a few MRE's.

It would take me at least 2 hours to walk that round trip.

Paris rooms are a little nicer and a little pricier. Hard to determine which location is more convenient since the large field tourneys are spread over both locales. But if you’re playing and staying at HS, then it’s possible to get to your room and back in 20 minutes. Not quite so easy if you’re playing/staying in opposite venues.

That pizza place was called JJ’s and it went down hill significantly after Covid, IMO. It, and the crepe place, are gone now and have been replaced by a similar cafe/dessert type place. They have no pizza, and are wildly overpriced (will likely be even more-so during the WSOP), but they have a few more options than JJs had.

As for Giordano’s, I am not a fan, but I know others like it. To me it’s like getting a loaf of bread with a few toppings on it for almost $20. There’s a place called Pisa Pizza in the Grand Bazzar which is ok. Nothing great though.

The best place to get pizza IMO, which is anywhere near the WSOP is in PH at Pin-up pizza. It is located right through the Sportsbook, but also has an outdoor entrance right next to Chik Fil A.

Honestly, there aren’t any tremendous options for pizza in the vicinity, though I have never tried any of the delivery services which leave fliers in your room.

There are lots of food options in the close vicinity of the WSOP, but my recommendation for folks would be that they try and get away from that area if they have the time and inclination. The prices get jacked up so much and the quality is iffy in many places.

The Miracle Mile mall has a new food court that looks promising (though it’s not open as of a week ago, I expect it will be by summer). It will have a Dave’s Hot Chicken, a burger place, a taco place and I think some pizza. Worth checking out. There’s also a Chipotle, an Earl’s sandwich and the afformentioned Pin up Pizza and Chik Fil A near there. There is also a Bufallo Wild Wing on Harmon on the far side of the Miracle Mile shops.

If you’re willing to walk a little further (maybe like 10 minutes from Paris, the Block 16 Urban Food Hall at the Cosmo is very good. They have a variety of vendors which serve street food which you might find in different countries.

My notion of MRE's? Protein bars along with those small chocolate milk cartons that don't require refrigeration.

Eating during dinner breaks is always a minor challenge in particular during the larger events. I prefer to eat relatively light anyway so I often just grab a salad from the WSOP Cafe or fruit platters that I've prebought and kept in my room frig.

Anyone know if the Subway downstairs in HS takes gift cards?

Only asking b/c I know sometimes places ‘in casinos’ like Starbucks, will advise they can’t take gift cards.

Nah, they have stews and stuff like Swedish meatballs. Add water and put the package in a water-powered heater.

Doesn’t Starbucks sell Giftcards? If so it would be odd if they didn’t accept them.

Of course, at Starbucks in Caesar’s locales you’ll need a $25 gift card for a medium drink and a croissant.

I’ve been told before (in casinos and hospitals) SB won’t accept gift cards. No idea why

Via Sam’s Club or Costco I can get Subway gift cards, something like $100 for $75. But I don’t want to waste the money if I can’t use them in Vegas

I’m not going to use them/go to Subway locally

Yeah, fairly common, there was a SmashBurger at the Choctaw casino in Durant, OK, they also wouldn't accept their own gift cards. Have seen that at various locations.

I believe some franchise locations can opt out of promos and other offers. I reckon they have to pay the parent company a fair amount to do so but in certain locations where competition isn’t really a factor (airports and casinos), it’s worth it. Hence the fine print of “at participating locations.”

I’m sure this applies to gift card use, as well.

If you have the starbucks app, load the gift card onto your app and pay with your app I don't see how a starbucks wouldn't/couldn't except it. I pay with the app all the time at Aria/Cosmo and have used gift cards, promos and coupons that were loaded into the app. Locations could be different I guess but I think the app is universally accepted at all SB.

Granted this has nothing to do with subway, but at least a tip on how to use SB gift card if a store is telling you they don't take them

Thanks. Good advice. I doubt I’ll seek out a Subway app and do this. But good to know either way.

this is smart, thanks

Every Year WSOP comes up with some new event with either low buy-ins or huge guarantee to bring maximum players at the start of WSOP and/or throughout the schedule.

This year they came up adding extra flights to many of popular crowd favorite tournaments.

Mystery Millions 5 flights ( 2024 had 4)
Colossus 4 flights (2024 had 3)
Monster Stack 4 flights (2024 had 3)
Milli Maker 4 flights (2024 had 3)

Also pairing Colossus with the end of Mystery Million at the beginning of WSOP will create huge problem with huge crowd.

Last year Mystery Million got 18409 entries.
And Colossus got 19303 entries. I expect both tournaments will get 15-20% more.

Though it is good for WSOP & Ceasars Casinos.

But players are already feeling being squeezed in hotel prices

MRE is something to eat at the poker table between breakfast and the dinner break. The 15 or 20 min breaks every so often isn't enough time to really get anything unless there is a hotdog stand in the hallway.

Event 15
it comes up as event 38 100,000 event Not the 1,500 PLO thing

I hate this trend too. I haven’t looked at the structures, but I wonder if they have been modified to accommodate more people on day 2. Even if not, the extra flights make for a longer event and many more mines to survive on day 2 to make serious money. Whoever does make it super deep will be happy with the juiced prizepool. But I think this hurts the vast majority of players.

I was very against the switch from 2 to 3 flights last year. In theory, it balloons the already huge player pool to even huger proportions.

In practice, the field didn't grow much. The extra flight resulted in a 523 entry bump from 10,416 in 2023 to 10,939 in 2024.

https://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/event.p...
https://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/event.p...

Some may be tempted to frame this small increase in the context of declining WSOP participation, as if the only reason we didn't see a huge bump is because overall enthusiasm for the WSOP was low, but generally entries were UP last year in most events. I think there is a simple explanation for why adding an entire extra flight to a 2-flight event barely moved the needle.

Pros grind the WSOP, but it's also the #1 hobbyist series on the calendar each year. Many participants are only willing and/or able to fire one bullet at a tournament like this. So whether it has 1 flight or 100 flights, most players are probably one-bullet-and-done. That's why adding a flight didn't proportionately multiply the field. In fact, it had the latent benefit of shrinking each individual flight, making each more manageable for the venue. Instead of having maybe 4000-6000 players in a single day, it was more like 3000-4000. Instead of being clumped into two days, the one-bullet crowd had more choices for when to fire. The field was more spread out.

I suspect you'll see something similar this year. 4 flights won't equate to double the entries of the 2 flight version in 2023. My guess is that the field will be somewhere around 10,000-12,000 this summer. The field should grow marginally, but individual flights should shrink again.

All that being said, I still dislike the change. Extra flights makes an already top-heavy tournament even more top-heavy. The biggest beneficiaries of multiple flights are the tough regs who are bankrolled to fire max bullets. In a freezeout, you may only have to beat one version of Jeremy Becker or Shannon Shorr. In 4 flights with one re-entry apiece, you may need to fade 8 bullets from the toughest regs. That's not good for the tourist rec player.

I did not intend to play the Milly Maker last year, but circumstances changed and it became sensible for me to fire a bullet. I happened to run good and cash top 5%. I will be in town for all 4 flights this summer, but I don't expect to play it. If I play a $1500 NLHE, it will likely be event 52 (a freezeout with one starting flight). A smaller field with one flight may cut out some of the soft rec money, but the flipside is that the field will be smaller (higher chance to win) and you won't need to beat the regs 8 times.

In general, multi-entry favors the regs over the casuals, and I don't know if that's the wisest direction for the WSOP in the lower price ranges.

For the 2023 WPT Prime Championship $1100 which got 10k entries, there was a discussion over the terrible payout structure. I think they improved it a little this year, but really not so much. Basically, if you didn’t finish in the top 2-3%, it was likely an unprofitable tournament, with a max of 8 buy-ins.

I really feel like they ought to dramatically change the payouts in these large field, multi-re-entry fields at the mid-level buy ins ($1-2K). The question of what % of the field to pay is always debatable. 12.5% seems to be the sweetspot, but honestly, I’m fine with 15% if it makes getting to the money sooner a reality. But they really need to bump up the min-cashes and take money off the top. I would be interested if they bumped the min cash to 4-5x.

The venues are taking a larger and larger piece of the pie each year. By continuing to award a disproportionately large piece of the pie to a small number of lucky players, they will assuredly shrink the size of the pie over time. That won’t be good for anyone.

Interesting development

https://www.poker.org/latest-news/ggpoker-pro-promises-wsop-bans-after-players-caught-cheating-online-aols86b5YDmp/

poker

GGPoker pro promises WSOP bans after players caught cheating online

Your post and the one you quoted from dogface are spot on. I always played live cash and live tournaments are more of a new thing for me. But the reality is, for your average "rec" 1k to 2k a buy in is a pretty decent sized chunk given the variance in these tournaments.

If I wade through 8k players in a 1500 I'm still good getting 800k instead of a million. I wouldn't complain, but it's beneficial to give more to those cashing which brings others back. I understand why others might disagree however.