How to win a $600 Deepstack bracelet. Or not.

Firstly, it's verified, you have to install the WSOP+ app on your phone, and use it. Even if you want to pay cash to register for a WSOP event. Well, you don't HAVE to, but you'll wish you did, because they make your life a living hell if you don't.

So, I walk up to a cashier booth to reg for the $600 Deepstack, and the guy asks if I put the app from hell on my phone. I literally think he's kidding. Then after I realize he's serious, and explain I don't have/can't use a smart phone, he sends me to customer service in the next room. There's ONE guy over there, and I use up all my WSOP rungood on nobody else needing him for anything.

Because although this guy obviously knows what he's doing, he runs into a bunch of roadblocks, it takes him a full 15 minutes to do all the workarounds and finally gets me set up. Little do I know, the nightmare has only just begun. I go back over to the registration room, and the dimwits over there begin with asking me to show a code on my phone. I tell them for the 20th time, I don't have a smartphone. The manager (I guess) in tha cage huddles with my cashier, and my slip of paper with my fake username and fake password to my make-believe WSOP account, to try and get me registered. Several times I see them think they're done, and have to go back to smartphone to get some friggin code. Finally, after 20 minutes, and over a level of play, they hand me a ticket. I ask where I go, and believe it or not, they tell me to decode it with my phone. It's going to be like this for everything. This will be my last WSOP. I resist an urge to go beserk, but my back is acting up and I don't want to do a perp walk today.

I finally get to the table, where they want me to pull up somthing on my phone. Arggh. Level 3 and I get chips, and actually get lucky early on and get dealt two 2's. Flop a set on a board with a lot of hearts. I check a scary turn, but the river pairs the board. Then I make a big mistake, one that I make a lot. It's a leak I know about but seem to not be able to fix - I bet too big on an obvious boat card. 6k on a 12k pot when the bets up till then were 40% or less of the pot. But villain made a flush on the river and can't fold. He hears about it from the players sitting around him, apparently he's the only that didn't know I boated up.

My starting hands are either pretty good or stink, and I win maybe 4 more pots until level 10. I have close to the average stack. I'm in the big blind when a guy shoves his $5900 stack. There's a call, then another, then one more. I have AQ. Normally I fold this in a nanosecond seeing all the action in front. But since I've already put in the big blind, it's not a lot to call and see the flop. So I do. The flop is AQ something else. I shove about 28k more and get a caller that has me covered. Man, that's a lot of chips in the middle. And they all go to the AK guy when a king hits the turn.

On the bright side (you probably thought there wasn't one) I won't have to lose lots of money trying to make Diamond for next year. As I said, I've had it with the WSOP.