There are a lot of people that are heading out to Vegas with a few thousand dollars and looking to take their shot at a poker title. The question is what tournament should they choose? It is not so easy to pick, but if you don’t pick right, you could be wasting your money. There are a lot of things to consider before you put your name down on that registration form.
If you are looking for a huge field in a lower buy in, you are going to want to get out there early and play in the first open event or you will want to wait until the end and play in the buy ins that are close to the main event. The first event typically has one of the largest fields of the event. The later events also get big fields as everyone is scrambling for the last shot at a bracelet.
Something else to consider is how long and how many days do you or can you play for. If you are going after one of the events that are mentioned above, you can expect to be in the chair for about 12-14 hours during the first day and another marathon session on the second day. A lot of these early events go for 3 days and that is a huge time commitment that you have to be ready for if you are really going to compete.
If you are looking for a legitimate opportunity to take down a tournament, you may want to consider more of the ones that start about half way through the WSOP. More specifically, you want to look at tournaments that are the day before or day after some of the larger buy ins that you know the professionals are going to be in. For instance, the HORSE Event is something that they all look forward to. However, the price of the event dictates that only the best of the best and the richest of the richest are going to be in it. This means the tournaments that are bookends to that will be lacking professional players and therefore you can have an easier time of it, hopefully.
Another reason you may want to look at coming into some of the tournaments that are scheduled during the middle is because a lot of the players that are there for the whole stretch begin to get a little wary and if they aren’t cashing, they also get very frustrated and start to make sloppy plays. Coming in fresh will give you an added edge over them.
We all know that everything has to be lined up perfectly in order to cash in one of these tournaments, let alone make the final table. You need to make sure you can get everything possible to fit your style of play and put you in the best scenario. Study the formats and schedules thoroughly to decide which tournament will actually give you the best chance for win. That little edge may just get you some new jewelry.
The season did not end up the way you would think as three amateurs split the final pot of the season and let one man walk away with the title with nothing more than a handshake. Jean Gaspard will be going to the WSOP, but you have to think the other two players will be kicking themselves for years to come for not sticking it out and seeing who really would have won.
The final World Series Circuit Tour Event of the season had a mere 167 players to get through and Billy Kopp had made short work of them all for the last two days of the tournament. He had gradually built up his stack to a point that he was assured of being a force and to think that he would just hand the championship away is almost criminal.
The way the whole tournament went down screams of rule changes. If this is truly a vehicle of the WSOP, splits should not be allowed. Add to the fact that one player was allowed to walk with the championship without actually having to win it and you just have to shake your head. Even if they agree to split, there had to be some kind of rule that they should have to keep a certain portion of the money set to the side and play until there is one winner.
What was going through the other two players minds that had them walk away from the table with $50,000 less and just flat out giving up a chance to play in the WSOP for free? You can almost understand why Christopher went for the chop as he was only sitting with under 500,000 while the other two were over 1,000,000 in chips. However, Kopp should be absolutely ashamed at walking away from this split when he had about 2/3 the amount of the chips as the leader. When you break down the cash, the split is hardly reasonable considering the difference from second to third.
Players wait their whole lives for this opportunity and to hand a tournament of this caliber to someone is absolutely ridiculous. This rule needs to be changed or the series will be regarded as a complete joke. You cannot even split a tournament on Poker Stars without playing to the end and putting a certain amount aside for the winner. How you can you justify allowing this to happen in a WSOP Circuit Tour Event?
Imagine that you had played poker for 4 or 5 straight days and then at the end of a marathon 14 hour day, you finally win your first bracelet. You have been waiting for this your whole poker playing and as you snap the bracelet into place, you hear the thundering applause of all 10 people that stayed up to watch the tournament until 3am.
The WSOP is finally addressing something that has had many people scratching their heads since the poker boom. Tournaments have lasted longer and longer into the night and bracelets were being won and there was barely a picture to capture the moment.
When the WSOP gets rolling later this month, the bracelet ceremony will now be conducted under all of the pomp and circumstance of the Olympic Medal Ceremony. At 2:20pm on the afternoon after the bracelet has been won, there will be a brief ceremony to include the playing of the National Anthem of the winning player.
The players will now be brought to the forefront and presented with an opportunity to get some pictures taken and take any questions that the press may like to ask. In essence, their 15 minutes of fame is going to get extended by a few more minutes. It is a nice touch and allows the players to get a little more exposure with the media to acknowledge their achievements.
Some will say that they may be taking things a little too far, but those individuals have probably never sat in a chair for 14 hours a day, 5 days in a row trying to play cards. No, this is not the Olympics, but it is a special accomplishment and should be treated as such at the venue. It will make winning the bracelet all that more exciting!
At one of the final events of the WSOP Circuit, Mike “The Grinder” Mizrachi walked into the casino as the chip leader. Having been absent from a major leader board in quite some time, you could feel the crowd rooting for the charismatic player. While he failed to take down the tournament, his second place finish proved to everyone that he is back on top of his game.
Mizrachi started the day on a mission and that mission was to take out as many players as he could and continue to eliminate players and keep his stack growing. The first player to meet his demise at Mizrachi’s hand was Matt LaGarde. He stared the hand way ahead with a AQ in the hole, but fell quickly behind with a flop of KJ2. Both the turn and river failed to improve his hand and Mizrachi’s K10 took down the all in.
Play was heating up all over the tables after that and slowly but surely, one player after another got their chips in with the worst of it and quickly met the rail. As each player got knocked out, Mizrachi was one step close to taking down the championship.
The final table had an impressive lineup, especially considering that amount of talent that was across the pond at the EPT Monte Carlo event. Again, Mizrachi proved to be too much on more than one occasion and continued to eliminate players. His most notable victim was Men “The Master” Nguyen, who went out in third place.
While the final table seemed to fly by, the heads up action was anything but faced paced. Apparently seeing all of that money on the table tightened up both players a bit and it took well over 3 hours for the tournament to be decided. It was actually some of the most remarkable play that we have seen in quite some time in heads up action.
The final hand had both players looking down at paint, unfortunately for Mizrachi, his was not quite as formidable as Justin Bonomo’s. Mizrachi moved in with J9 and had the unfortunate luck to be looking across the table at KQ. The flop immediately lessened his hopes as it came out K-10-9. He got a little help on the turn with an A, but was reduced to a 5 outer on the river. Needing a Q or one of the two remaining 9’s, he was disappointed with a 3d. Both players ended up making a flush, but Mizrachi was on the short end of it with his only being J high to Q high.
He may be disappointed that he did not manage to hold on, but the $143,512 probably made that a little easier to take. Not only that, but he has some stake money for the WSOP that is right around the corner. Bonomo took down $237,692 for first place and also gets to wear the coveted ring. We can expect to see big things from both of these guys at the WSOP.
Day 1b proved to have a few more players than day 1a, 151 in fact, but it does make you wonder why this event was broken up over two days in WSOP fashion. Surely less than 300 players could have sat down in the same room to play. However, this is a topic of discussion for another day. This is about who managed to get through the day and get in on the field of 62 that will fight it out to the final table in this year’s tournament.
A quick glance throughout the room makes it obvious that there is going to be some serious and at times annoying Poker being played in the second session. Joe Hachem led the list of previous WSOP winners sitting down on this day and that means anyone at his table better be ready to play some serious poker. Hachem is one of the few recent amateur winners that has proven he has the game to play as a professional. While he is at one end of the spectrum, you have the Jamie Gold’s and Chris Moneymakers on the other end.
I can only imagine those that had to sit next to the Brenes clan. Umberto’s displays have become some of the most annoying things in Poker over the last few years and having to deal with his idiotic routine every time he wins a hand is enough to make someone push with 27o. Having to deal with three of them must seem like a day in poker hell. Luckily for the players, they did not fair very well during the first session and we will all be spared the chomping shark on day 2.
Unfortunately for Hachem, the cards would not come on this day and he was not really able to make anything happen. Every time he made a move it seemed as though his opponent was sitting on the cooler cards. His final hand of the tournament was more of the same as he was short stacked and forced to push with KQo and ended up getting called by AKo. The lady never came and Joe was forced to the rail.
All in all, 35 players move on from this session to join the 27 from day 1b to have 62 players vying for 9 seats at the final table. There is still plenty of firepower left at the felt and the next 2 days should be fun to watch.
