Why Mixed Games in Poker are More Exciting and Fun to Cover
The draft for this blog entry was done one week prior to the start of the 54th World Series of Poker kicks off in Las Vegas, however it was only finished when my work duties finished on the penultimate day of the seven-week long festival at the Horseshoe and Paris Hotel.
Since then, card sharks from all over the world embarked on their annual journey to Sin City, all trying to earn some cash and perhaps even a gold bracelet for their efforts. It’s that one time of the year when the spotlight also showcases various mixed game formats that are usually buried in the corner of the poker room, while almost everyone dabbles in No-Limit Hold’em and perhaps Pot-Limit Omaha.
The location was the same as last year, right on the Las Vegas Strip. After an early exit, you can just walk across the street and aimlessly stare at the Bellagio water show while murmuring bad beat stories to everyone who passes by. The girls in fancy dresses will try to convince you to take pictures for a quick buck and a bottle of ice cold water is available for one dollar.
This time, the WSOP went back to its roots because the rebranding process of the Bally’s Hotel is all but completed, now greeting as the Horseshoe Casino. In the vast convention center, hundreds of poker tables can be found and it’s also the location of the “Thunderdome” feature table setup for the live-streamed conclusion of many notable events during the summer camp.
Mixed games will usually kick off in the adjacent Paris Hotel and the same also applies for many of the high-stakes contests. It will be my “work office” for the next couple of weeks as I once again get to cover prestigious WSOP bracelet events, monitoring some of the biggest names in poker from close distance.
Hold’em will likely be featured very few times for me until the start of the 2023 WSOP Main Event unless it is part of a rotation in mixed games such as the Dealer’s Choice right at the start. Twenty different variants can be selected by the player on the dealer button each orbit during my first two events, as the name of the event may suggest.
Specialists for various different variants can showcase their talents to a wider audience instead of earning their living in cash games sessions behind closed doors. For us live reporters, the very same principle applies as well. Most live poker events during the year require updates for NLHE only and perhaps some PLO sprinkled in but all other variants are just a blip on the tournament schedule. As a result, it’s always a challenge to rediscover how quickly can back into the routine nearly a full year after last reporting on mixed games.
However, one never really forgets how to ride a bike and just needs a little practice before jumping back into the horse saddle, so to speak. Throughout the year, I often catch myself getting bored to witness showdowns with just two cards for each player because there isn’t a ton of information to be collected. Sometimes it can be fun to include table chat in order to spice up the post but that’s all she wrote most of the time unless something extraordinary happens.
This very same feeling simply doesn’t apply for me in mixed games during the WSOP in Las Vegas. It never really gets boring to cover these tournaments because they pose a significant challenge, making mistakes is far easier and just one split second of not paying attention away. This was certainly the case more often than I was hoping for in these past weeks, even though it was no longer a steep learning curve thanks to the experience of the past few years.
One aspect in particular stood out to me from the get-go: Mixed game players are having by far more fun and show it openly whereas most NLHE contests turn into super serious staring contests behind hoodies, headphones and shades. The tanking during hands happens by far less frequently and if so, it appears to be a difficult spot most of the time and doesn’t involve any solver-approved GTO trees.
The banter and stories of old times was flowing back and forth very frequently, even some of the big names back in the days of High Stakes Poker such as Sammy Farha and Freddy Deeb made several appearances again. I even saw Huck Seed wandering around in the Horseshoe Event Center during the late stages of the record-breaking 2023 WSOP Main Event but from what I can tell, he didn’t play in any bracelet events this year.
Participation numbers for all mixed game tournaments were up by a decent margin and several new record attendances were set, which I consider as a hopeful sign for the next couple of years. I was fortunate enough to mostly focus on these events and got to witness some of the biggest names in the world of poker from up close as per usual.
Brian Rast drew even with Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi to win the $50,000 Poker Players Championship for the third time and was inducted into the WSOP Hall of Fame soon after. Chris Brewer and Josh Arieh won two gold bracelets while Phil Hellmuth won number 18, albeit in No-Limit Hold’em.
Jason Mercier returned to winning ways after mere impromptu appearances for several years whereas big names such as Shaun Deeb, David “ODB” Baker, Brian Yoon, Chad Eveslage, Ben Lamb, Jesse Lonis, Mike Gorodinsky, and Nick Schulman all posed for winner shots again. It was certainly a summer for the big names of the live poker circuit to shine and I was particularly pleased for Jerry Wong, Ka Kwan Lau and Thai Ha to get the monkey off the back after following their journey for several years.
As member of the poker media and live reporting in general, I am supposed to be impartial and that will always be the case within the live updates … but certain bonds develop over time, it’s just normal and human.
Now that the series has all but wrapped up and I return to South East Asia to recover and recharge, I am already thinking what else I can personally do to continue helping with the growth of poker and mixed games in particular. Whether or not a clever idea arises remains to be seen … until then, the pursuit of pushing the own physical limits takes over with a couple of long distance running competitions on the horizon.