How to learn how to watch ice hockey, the PokerStars way
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Let’s talk perks. Big perks. The kind of perks available to PokerStars players at PokerStars events.
Like trips to the Sphere. That’s one. Or the perk offered at NAPT Las Vegas. Tickets to a Golden Knights game, Las Vegas’s Stanley Cup winning NHL heroes, at the T-Mobile arena.
Throw in a party bus and you get a perfect demonstration of why PokerStars events offer something you can’t get anywhere else.
What follows here is something like an informal account of watching ice hockey – the PokerStars way.
It doesn’t require an understanding of the rules. Just a pink limo. But we’ll explain that later.
Let’s start at the beginning.
Assemble a team
Getting a group of poker players together in a certain place at a certain time sounds easy. It should be easy. 6pm in the lobby.
Dean Morrow (team: Pittsburgh Penguins) knew this too, even as he ran full speed to catch up with the bus as it drove off without him.
“When I woke up I had 35 missed calls on my phone,” he says, out of breath.
He’d set alarms, and even asked him mother to call him to avoid missing it. Instead, he proved how falling asleep in Las Vegas can be lethal. Especially when you have a courtesy bus to the Golden Knights game to catch.
He woke up at 6.02pm. But he made it.
As did another player, Mike Miller.
Mike (team: Philadelphia Flyers) is a young poker pro from Philadelphia. His cool hockey story? His friend’s sister was married to a pro player. That impressed everyone.
Even better was Yannick (team: LA Kings) from the events staff. He’d met fellow Slovenian Anze Kopitar once. Kopitar just happens to be captain of the visiting LA Kings.
But topping it all was Maddy (team: Philadelphia Flyers), also from the events team.
Maddy used to be a Flyers Ice Girl, a professional cheer leader, for her hometown team. The Christmas Spectacular a few years ago still counts as one of the best days of her life, performing to a packed stadium alongside Flier’s mascot Gritty, “the best mascot in the world”.
Everyone oooohed at this.
The Pre-Game
Crowds squeezed into the stadium, emptying pockets, and then refilling them on either side of a security barrier.
Tickets to see the Las Vegas Golden Knights were available for PokerStars players, VIPs, and others. Part of the activities laid on for players at all PokerStars events
One of our group explained how stadiums tend not to allow bags much bigger than a credit card. Unless it’s an essential medical item, like the epi-pen he kept with him. Hearing this a man in the crowd pushed his way through to double check he’d heard this correctly.
“Do you mean you can get a bag through, unsearched, if it’s for medical reasons?” he said. It wasn’t clear his intentions were purely altruistic but he disappeared as quickly as he arrived.
Match preparation
Being poker players, everyone did what came naturally. They loaded up on 50-50 tickets.
If you’re not familiar with a 50-50 it’s common at sporting events around the world. You buy raffle tickets and the money is totalled to make a prize split evenly between good causes and a lucky winner.
The winning numbers are announced close enough to the end to keep people in their seats longer.
The pre-game warm up inside the T-mobile arena
Dean went in first, emerging with a long strip of paper about six feet long, as if he’d just done his yearly accounts on an old adding machine.
“I got 450 tickets’” he said, knowing that statistically at least this was the right call.
Learn the basics
The practical aim of hockey is simple but philosophically it’s about entertainment. And the Golden Knights take this seriously.
Cue an elaborate performance complete with a golden knight, noise on demand, and an air raid siren. The jumbotron didn’t ask for participation, it demanded, and the crowd obliged.
Suddenly we were engulfed in an irresistible cacophony of sound.
The game itself
It’s a different sporting atmosphere to what you might experience in Europe. The level of abuse towards referees and opposition players borders on civility compared to the average soccer crowd.
But then the game moves so quickly there’s no time to offend the ref, or his family. It’s also pointless trying to spot the puck. You watch the players instead, and where they drift. Often backwards.
Watching all of this, and deciphering it, was Derek Kesseler on hand. Just to meet him (team: Edmonton Oilers) makes anyone want to eat more healthily, call your mother more, and moisturize.
He has the looks of an actor, and the personality of the most popular kid in school. It was no wonder he nearly won the Canadian version of Big Brother (season 6). Very sensible and down to earth. He’d bought a more reasonable $50 worth of 50-50 tickets.
Establish team loyalty
The first period passed without incident and the interval meant a chance to explore the concession stand and the limits of a credit card.
In the merch store Dean browsed gifts for the kids back home. There were the usual Golden Knights jerseys, caps, hats, those super large finger things, stickers. And pucks, which are heavier than they look.
“That’s a weapon in our house,” said Dean, and gave it a pass.
Dean, 37, has been playing since the old days of PokerStars. Before Black Friday. A day that temporarily ended his poker career.
Dean Morrow (right) complete in PokerStars football jersey
“I got a real job, got married, and had two kids,” he said. “[Then] when PokerStars went live in Pennsylvania in 2019, I was clicking the refresh button to download.”
He admitted he wasn’t much good back then. But his results now suggest a complete transformation.
“I started with $500 and was fortunate enough to play and run well early. In the last four years I’ve won countless tournaments online, including a SCOOP trophy event, WSOP bracelet and four WSOP circuit rings. Getting to play in my first WSOP main event in 2022 and making day four was a bucket list event. Playing in the NAPT return is another wonderful add to the list.”
His ambition this week was the only viable one. “I want to win the main event. Anything less will be a disappointment.”Â
Maddy with Mike Miller. Both Flyers fans, but only one is a former Flyers Ice Girl
Learn to adapt mid-game
The game itself was over in the second period. The Golden Knights went 2-0 down, soon the be 3-0 leaving all but the Kings fans unconvinced.
Not everyone seemed to care. The jumbotron asked for more noise, and the fans made it. It was only after the 50-50 numbers were revealed that 17,499 losing fans began to leave. When a fourth Kings goal slid into an open net from range everybody left. The Golden Knights played out the last 11 seconds alone.
Derek Kesseler (right). A Canadian. A Hockey fan. A Big Brother contestant.
POST GAME ANALYSIS
No sporting event is complete without the post-game.
A party bus had brought the group to the Arena but was unavailable for the trip back to Resorts World. A compromise was found in the form of a 35-foot stretched limo in hologram pink.
All class. The pink limo.
“Lipstick on a pig,” said a man walking by.
But it was our pig. And it had Bluetooth and disco lighting. And as cramped as it was, we grew fond of it very quickly.
Nobody talks about the leg room when they talk about limousines
Arriving back at the end of the evening our group strolled towards the hotel lobby, passing and immaculate limo in the more traditional black and chrome.
“Look at that peasant limo”, said Dean, at a more sombre looking black limo parked outside the hotel. The PokerStars ice hockey experience was complete.
Dean left with reminders to wake up on time. Which he did. Both he and Mike made the money the next day.
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