The journey begins
The adventure to the 2025 World Series of Poker began in Dublin airport.
I left home over five hours before my flight was due to take off after hearing horror stories of one Irish player being turned back at US immigration control in the airport, and another being detained for questioning for so long that he missed his flight despite getting there three hours early. Immediately I was presented with a possible hiccup when the lady walking the United Airlines check in line insisted I was too early and wouldn’t be able to hand over my checked in bag for two whole hours. After a brief standoff she shrugged:
Argue with them at the desk.”
Thankfully there was no argument: the desk had no objections to my ridiculous degree of early.
The normal security line was much longer than normal, but as fast moving as ever: kudos to Dublin airport from one multi-award winner to another.
Immigration
I headed straight to immigration control and things looked really promising as there was almost no queue. However, things then took a turn for the worse. I stood too close to the camera for the face check, I tried to scan my boarding pass (on my phone) in the wrong scanner, I misheard almost every question the border control lady asked me. She was not the type to suffer fools like me gladly or at all. When she asked how much currency I was carrying and I again fumbled the answer, she saw her chance.
We are going to have to count that!”
She then perp walked me to the side room I’m only too familiar with. Several years ago, I left it too late to get my dollars from my bank, which meant my long suffering wife had to drive around different banks to rustle up the required amount (just under 10k, the limit you have to be under not to be required to declare). The fact that the banks could only give her most of it in 20s didn’t help matters when the time came to count: three different immigration officers took a shot at it and came up with three different totals. The counts and recounts seemed endless, and I ended up having to run for my plane. With that memory uppermost on my mind, I was suddenly glad I had five hours.
The lady I had clearly p*ssed off ushered me to another lady who gave me a form to fill out. Things got off to a wretched start when I forgot to fill in the date, but her tone was much kinder. Good sign, I thought. We then had a very pleasant conversation where she explained she knew nothing about poker (but seemed genuinely interested and she avoided the usual “but how much do you lose?” questions). She seemed particularly impressed I’d written books, and I was already feeling she was good people. Then the conversation got down to sharp tacks
“Do you know what a FinCen is?”
“Yes. I had to fill one out coming back last year.”
“How much are you carrying?”
“9000. Unless I counted it wrong.”
She laughed. Another good sign I thought.
“And any other currency?”
“Small amount of euro. Less than a hundred.”
“How much do you make a year from poker?”
Answer redacted but let me assure you she was clearly impressed.
“Why are you going for five weeks? Does it really last that long?”
“Longer. It started a few weeks ago.”
“Do you always go for this long?”
“I used to go for longer. The whole thing.”
“So what changed?”
“I got older.”
“Aw….good answer.”
It was at this point, I was 99% certain things were going to be ok. She sent me on my way without even counting the cash, and suddenly I had four hours to kill. Luckily, there are some decent food options in Dublin airport, and great internet.
The flight to Newark
Pretty uneventful. I managed to get some sleep (very welcome as I’d only got an hour before leaving for the airport) and did some writing. The highlight of the flight was when the air steward inadvertently dropped a beef dinner on the lovely granny beside me. The beef dinner was intended for her grandson (and he ate it: the spill was minor) and his granny got 100 bucks for her troubles. Which immediately got me wondering if I should nudge his arm when he gave me my chicken dinner. I mean, most of my shirts already look like something awful got spilled on them, right?
a nice stress free transfer by virtue of the fact I had three hours between flights
Newark was a nice stress free transfer by virtue of the fact I had three hours between flights. The only real tension was whether I could stay awake at the gate: feeling myself starting to do so I had to desert the lovely fancy chair I was lounging in and walk around the airport a bit.
Veni vidi Vegas
The flight from Newark to Vegas was practically empty so lots of leg room and no spillages.
I was toying with the idea of max late regging the last flight of the Monster Stack 90 minutes after landing but on only a couple of hours sleep in 48 hours thought better of it. So a good night’s sleep before my first event, Salute to Warriors, is the plan now. The next two weeks is basically a Seniors series in all the major Vegas card rooms, so the plan is to play some of those whenever I don’t fancy whatever is on that day in the series.
