by Rebekah Mercer

You think you pack a lot when you go on a trip don’t you? I know I do. It’s always a challenge to fit in my toothbrush at the last minute after I have stuffed the bag so tight it’s about to burst at the seams. And that’s for just a long weekend. How much would you pack for a month at the WSOP? Would one big suitcase do it, or maybe two? Some brave souls might try it with only a duffel bag (and live to regret it in my opinion).

When you think about all the things you might need in a month it can get pretty scary. And then, of course, you’re going to be playing the WSOP so you want to be really in the zone and as comfortable as you can be. You don’t want to be running down to the hotel gift shop every other day to buy band aids or coffee or whatever. That will mess up your focus really fast. So you start to throw it all in. Once you pass the line that marks “traveling light” into the territory of “comfortable” you can easily move into the territory of “feels just like home.” You just give up on the idea of keeping it simple and start packing everything you can imagine you might ever need–“just in case.” And the WSOP is one huge “just in case.”

Nancy Todd Tyner falls into the latter category in a big way. Or let’s just say she invented the latter category. You’ve seen the old movies where the woman comes into the hotel carting 10 suitcases and her beleaguered husband is following along sweating bullets. Well, amp that up about ten notches and you will have what Nancy’s move in is like when she goes to the Rio to play in the WSOP. We are talking truckloads (that was an intentional plural) of clothes, equipment, appliances, food, everything it takes for her to stay focused and in the zone.Nothing is safe when she starts to pack things up to go. Nancy says that when she did this last year her two young twins told her she could take any snacks from the house she wanted, but to “please, this time, just leave the fruit roll ups.” So no fruit rolls ups, those stay, but everything else is fair game.

Coffee maker? Yes. Microwave? Yes. Evening gowns? Yes. Fruit roll ups? No.
So that should give you some idea of what we will be doing for the next couple of days.

Getting packed up and ready to go to the hotel is an ordeal of epic proportions. So big in fact, that this year she has arranged for a film crew to tape it. So stay tuned and in a few days I will give you more details about how it all went. And there will be pictures!