Once again the World Series of Poker kicks off with a new special tournament – The Poker Player’s Championship which commands a $50,000 entry fee.
At the 2009 WSOP a one-off $40,000 tournament started the longest running poker festival in the world to celebrate the series’ 40th anniversary. That particular event attracted 201 players and was eventually won by Vitaly Lunkin of Russia who netted $1,989,120.
This year Harrah’s, owner of the World Series of Poker, have introduced the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship which will see some of poker’s elite battle it out over eight different poker variants. The games to be played are fixed-limit Hold’em, fixed-limit Omaha hi/lo split, Razz, Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Stud hi/lo split, no-limit Hold’em, pot-limit Omaha and 2-7 Triple Draw. Games will rotate every eight hands although the final table will be solely no-limit Hold’em.
Harrah’s have decided to use this tournament to replace the $50,000 HORSE event which attracted only 95 entries last year, down from 148 in 2008. Much of the blame for the reduced figures must go down to the decision to not air the final table on ESPN so many of the player’s sponsors refused to buy their players into the tournament. This mistake will not be repeated in 2010 as the final table of the $50,000 event will be broadcast by ESPN who have the rights to the WSOP for the next couple of years. Tournament poker videosof the event should also be available.
Another new tournament that is sure to draw in the crowds, especially the internet tournament specialists, is Event #52 – the $25,000 6-max no-limit Hold’em tournament. Each of the players will start with 75,000 chips and play to blind intervals starting at 150/300/25, increase every hour. The short-handed format should generate a lot of action and the coverage of the event should boost ESPN’s viewing figures as thousands will tune in to see some super-aggressive poker.
For anyone who is waiting to see the main event on TV when ESPN begins its coverage later this month, read no further. The rest of you who want to keep updated can follow along.
It is the end of Day 7 for all of the 27 players remaining and the 11th total day for the tournament. The biggest news has to be the presence of Phil Ivey who is 4th in at the end of the day. He has put his large chip stack to work by punishing the rest of the field. It will be his first cash in the Main Event since being bounced on a bad beat by Chris Moneymaker in 2003, a hand that was immortalized as one of the best hands of the year. He has to be the odds on favorite to win the title as he is one of only a few professionals remaining. He is within firing distance of the chip leader, Darvin Moon, who has over 20 million in chips. Ivey sits with just over 11 million.
Another notable pro who is remaining in the tournament is Antonio Esfandiari. With a little over 4 million in chips is on the short end of the field. Esfandiari has seen little success in the WSOP and has a small fan base thanks to other televised poker events such as High Stakes Poker and the WPT. He has a very good skill set and can be dangerous at any point in a tournament so he is one to watch out for, but “The Magician” needs to have a few tricks up his sleeve to take down this bracelet.
After today, the ”November Nine” will be set, so look for updates on the tournament along with player profiles right here.
It has been two very long hard weeks of poker and it all comes down to one day. The November Nine, as the final table of the WSOP has now been dubbed, will be decided on Wednesday and then they have almost 4 months to stew on what could possibly be the greatest opportunity of their life.
With only 27 players remaining, the pressure gets turned up and we will see what these guys are made of. While most of the pros that have entered have since gone to the rail, two names are still glaring on the leader board. Antonia Esfandiari (4,470,000) has never really had a truly great run of cards, but he seems to make the most of every hand that he is involved in. He is grinding away and continues to survive. His style of play is ideal in this type of tourney and while he may never get that monster stack, do not be surprised to see his name on the final table.
The one person that everyone has to fear at this point is Phil Ivey (11,350,000). He is currently sitting in 4th place, but that doesn’t really matter. As he has been having an incredible WSOP, the rest of the field must take notice and beware of any hand that they play with him. He has a tendency to go early or go deep and deep is obviously the case here. Only one other player managed to get three bracelets this time around and Phil obviously has his heart set on being the second one to hold that honor this year.
While the rest of the players are going after the bracelet and the $8,546,435 that goes with it, Phil Ivey probably stands to make more in side bets were he to take down the Main Event. Everyone knows he loves to gamble and the circuit that he hangs around in is not scared to throw out a $1,000,000 on anything. You can rest assured that if Phil makes it to the final table, the gallery will be a star studded field of poker superstars with their hands in their wallets.
The overall leader of the tournament is an unknown player by the name of Darvin Moon (20,160,000). He has never had a cash in the WSOP and has sure picked a great time to break his cherry. At this point, all of the players are guaranteed well over $300,000 and once they get it down to two tables, the payouts start to increase significantly.
Unfortunately for Moon, he will have to sit across from Ivey when play resumes. You can be assured that his eye balls will be popping out of their sockets when he sees that chip stack and make it is sole purpose in life to move it across to his side of the table. How will Moon handle the pressure of being the big stack with one of the greatest poker players in the world on his table? Only time will tell, but we should have that answer in about 24 hours.
While Hellmuth’s cards ran a little hot and enabled him to build a decent stack, his cards were not the story of the day. The Poker Brat was in fine form as he threw temper tantrum after temper tantrum. When is this guy going to grow up? Does anyone still find this entertaining or has it become as old and annoying to you as it has to most of the poker fans that we know?
While he had several outbursts, 2 of them stood out from the rest. In one hand, he went to the flop with the lead of KQ to KJ. His opponent took the lead on the flop with a J hitting and the K on the river spelled disaster for Hellmuth. He continued to call down and then expected to win when he hit the river. He went off on the dealer about how he allowed a dominated hand to catch up to him as though it is unacceptable for anyone to hit a hand against him.
His last tirade of the day came during the last few minutes. The tournaments have had countdowns in the last 10 minutes by drawing cards to decide how many hands would be played. This prevents players from stalling so that they can avoid the blinds at the end of the day. For some reason, the tournament director allowed them to play down to zero and Hellmuth once again went off. While his point was correct, the scenes that he makes are quite annoying.
While the antics of Hellmuth tend to steal the headlines, the real story is the humongous stack that Bertrand Grospellier has managed to build. With a stack of 1,380,500, he holds over 400,000 to the second place player. While he was building his stack, well over 1,500 players found the rail. Some of the most notable victims of the day were: Jennifer Harman, Grey Raymer, Marco Traniello, John Cernuto, John Juanda, Robert Mizrachi, Jason Alexander, Matthew Vogel, Jeff Lisandro and David Ulliott.
Even though he was knocked out, Jeff Lisandro has wrapped up the Player of the Year Award as he had outlasted everyone that was within striking distance. There is no denying that he was far and away the best of the season with 3 bracelets to his credit and several other deep runs.
Day 4 will kick off at noon and there should still be plenty of fireworks to see. With 800 players still alive, we are over 100 people away from the bubble. Expect some aggressive play until there are about 10 players to go when the play will slow down dramatically. The short stacks will delay every hand in the hopes that someone else will get knocked out before them and the big stacks will get hyper-aggressive in the hopes of stealing blind after blind.
We all knew this was going to be a marathon and that the biggest names in poker were going to have a target on their heads. The survivors from Day 1a and Day 1b sat down at the tables yesterday and some of the names that had managed to build up formidable stacks were shown the rail by the end of the day. All in all, 1,476 player started the day and only 630 of them still had chips when the final hand was dealt.
Some of the players that failed to make it through the day were Mike Matusow, Jennifer Tilley, Phil Laak, Gus Hansen, Eli Elezra, Todd Brunson, Gavin Smith, Amarillo Slim and Tony G. While they will be watching from the side lines, Chris Ferguson, Andy Black, Greg Mueller, Mike Sexton and Thor Hansen have all managed to get through to the next session.
Day 2b should be interesting as the field for this session will be much larger. A lot of players chose to play in the 2 late Day 1’s and we will see about 3,500 players start the day off before they combine fields to move forward. It was also interesting that a lot of the professionals chose to start off on the later days as they knew they would also be packed with a lot of the amateurs that were getting satellite tickets into the Main Event.
We have talked many times about how difficult it is for the pros to navigate through large fields because of the fact that everyone wants to be the person that can say, “I took out (fill in name of pro here).” Not only that, but by playing in one of the first two sessions, you would get a significant more amount of rest in compared to the later days when the fields get combined. Make no mistake about it, these players will wear down with the grind that they are faced with.
We are a long way from the bubble as the top 648 players get paid. You can expect that stage not be reached until Friday at the earliest. When that time approached, play will come to grinding halt as everyone can smell the money and do not want to be the person that goes out on the bubble in the largest stage that poker sees every year.
Strap in and get ready for another long session of poker on Wednesday. They will hopefully get this field down to under 1,000 players, leaving less than 2,000 overall to go into Day 3. That is when the real fun begins as we will have all of the players in the same room for the first time since the tournament has started.
It has been two very long hard weeks of 
