After nearly a year of trying, Josh has won entry to a major poker tournament, and not just any tournament, but the WSOP Main Event. For the uninitiated, the WSOP (World Series of Poker) is a two-month "open" tournament series held in Las Vegas each year. There are lots of different tournaments, some for different kinds of poker (like stud and omaha) and some for special groups (like women or the hotel employees). The big draw, though, is the Main Event. It's a no-limit hold 'em tournament with a $10,000 buy-in. This year they're expecting 8000 entrants. The winner should take home a prize in the neighborhood of $10 million. (The purse is not pre-determined. They take all the entry money--$80 million for 8000 players--and, after the casino takes its 6% cut, divvy it among the top players.) Josh won his seat playing a freeroll "ladder" at Interpoker. Basically ladders are like brackets: you win, you move on to the next level. The thing with ladders, though, is that you can usually enter on any "rung," as long as you're willing to pony up the cash. So if the ladder is $10-$100-$500-$1000, you can pay $10 to enter on the bottom rung, or $500 and jump right to the third rung. The ladder Josh won was a "freeroll," which means that the bottom rung is $0. Plus, it was an "invitational"--only players specifically invited by the site were allowed to play. After Interpoker pays the $10,000 entry fee, the $3000 for our 15-night stay at the Rio, and a $2000 travel stipend, the package is worth $15,000. Not bad for 3-4 hours' work. Josh is understandably thrilled. Me, I'm trying to be a realist without being a wet blanket. The chance that Josh places "in the money" is small. They'll give prizes to the top 100 or so, which means Josh would have to beat 7900 or so other players. I just don't see it happening. Especially since Josh doesn't normally like to play no-limit (in fact, the blind structure makes this perhaps his worst kind of game) and he hasn't sat at a live table for about a year. Josh keeps telling me that we'll look at it as just a vacation. He's said he'll be happy to make it through day one, but I know he's hoping for more. And why not? There's no harm in hoping, is there? In his book, Learned Optimism, Martin E. Seligman says that optimists live longer, are sick less, and have more successful careers. Too bad for me that I'm a confirmed pessimist (which is the reason I own a book titled Learned Optimism). It's even worse for my husband, because my pessimism makes it impossible for me to celebrate his success with unmitigated happiness.