WSOP H.O.R.S.E. Camp Set to Bust Some Broncos

[The best laid plans of men and mice sometimes go awry. I had a computer program set to drop in posts over a span of days when I needed to be away, and the darn thing... didn't work. Let's pick up this blogging thing on the fly, shall we?]

The World Series of Poker has certainly acknowledged the drawing power of its high-end H.O.R.S.E. event to the poker world. This year brought the addition of a low buy-in H.O.R.S.E. event, with surprisingly good attendance, and the WSOP recently announced the creation of a H.O.R.S.E. camp for mixed-game wannabes as well.

The new camp, to be held November 2-4 at the Bad Beat Ranch (occasionally called by its other name, Caesar's Palace), will charge fledgling cowpokes $2,199 a head for the chance to punch li'l razz dogies with the likes of Howard Lederer, Annie Duke, Greg Raymer, Mark Seif, Alex Outhred, Andy Bloch and former FBI agent Joe Navarro, who's a fixture at these poker camps nowadays.

The three-day camp will teach H.O.R.S.E. acolytes the inner workings of all five parts of the H.O.R.S.E. rodeo --- limit hold'em, Omaha Hi/Lo, Razz, Stud, and Stud Hi/Lo, with additional instruction in no-limit , which ought to be a good thing in case ESPM decides once again to fuck with the H.O.R.S.E. tourney's final table format (as they did in 2006), usurping the normal play with yet another no-limit pushfest waste of strategy. In case you're wondering, that's the true mystery of that 2006 final, in that Bloch and Chip Reese managed to play no-limit heads-up for more than seven hours before the title was decided, after not having played any no-limit at all in that event before the final table began.

As for the new H.O.R.S.E. camp, though, the grand prize for the camp's lucky event champion is a seat in next year's WSOP Main Event, with other prizes being four seats into next year's smaller ($2,500) H.O.R.S.E. event.