Jim Reid is a longtime lover of poker, a member of the PokerOrg Player Advisory Board, and host of the popular RecPoker podcast.
Hey, gang! It was a crazy summer for yours truly, but I am stoked to be back on the felt – and back on the pages of PokerOrg! I have some extremely exciting plans for the next few months, and I’m looking forward to sharing them with you here in my new column, week by week, as they unfold.
The first big news is that this scrappy recreational underdog is planning to play in the World Poker Tour $10K Championship event at the Wynn this December!
I would ordinarily never dream about something like that, but the groundswell of support I received for my WSOP Main Event run this summer made me consider it, and then Matt Affleck offered to coach me up in some weekly sessions between now and then to help me prepare… so what is a boy to do?
Of course I said yes. Actually, I think it was more like, “Oh HELL yes, my man!”
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The other (even MORE ridiculous) idea I’ve had is to try to qualify for the next season of the awesome PokerStars show The Big Game On Tour, which is filming next week in Las Vegas as part of the North American Poker Tour at Resorts World.
I’ve been a huge fan of the show since the beginning. There are three qualifying freeroll tournaments you can play in, all part of the NAPT, and the lucky few who make it through those tournaments advance to the ‘audition round.’ I know it’s a long shot, but I also know I have to try my damnedest to make this happen, or I will never forgive myself.
Here’s where it gets weird.
The third of those three tournaments is on November 4. For the surviving players, auditions continue through the 5th, and they shoot the next season over the rest of the week, from the 6th through the 8th.
My perfect wife’s birthday party is today, the 2nd, so we will be in Toronto staying overnight to party it up with some friends. ‘Perfect!’ I think to myself, ‘I can have a great time celebrating her birthday on Saturday, stay over, fly down on Sunday the 3rd, and play in the qualifying tournament on the 4th! Then fly back whenever it makes sense, whether I make the show or not.’
Mrs. BLUFFSTORINI has always been extremely supportive and wanted me to try for the show, so she was super stoked that the dates worked out so well. My hands trembling with excitement, I booked the flight for Sunday. It’s really happening!
James Hartigan and Joe Stapleton on the Big Game on Tour set
Too easy...
Then I learned that registration for ALL THREE tournaments opened on the morning of the FIRST tournament, on October 30! I figured that registration for the last tournament would almost certainly be filled by the time I got down there – on my non-refundable Sunday flight – on the 3rd.
I frantically emailed James Hartigan, one of the hosts of the show and a recent guest on our podcast, and told him I needed some clarification and that it was time for him to start earning that PokerStars ambassador money. He quickly replied that yes, registration will open for all tournaments at the same time on Oct 30, AND that you can only register in person. Ugh.
Gang, I panicked. By which I mean, I took the only course of action I reasonably could:
- A train to Toronto on October 29, followed by a 5.5-hour flight to Las Vegas.
- Wake up in a $19 hotel room on the Strip and head over to Resorts World to register for next Monday’s tournament.
- Find a quiet nook in a casino lobby or coffee shop for my Matt Affleck coaching session.
- Head back to the airport that night to catch a flight.
- Land in Montreal at 7am the next morning for a 3-hour layover.
- Fly back to Toronto, take a shuttle and two trains to get back to where I parked my car.
- Drive home, only to do it all again a few days later!
They tell me that The Big Game judges for this season will consider ‘passion for poker’ to be one of the characteristics they will factor in their deliberations.
So tell me, gang: Who loves it more?!?!?!?
Check back next week for more from the hardest working ‘Rec’ in poker, Jim Reid.
