Tag: wsop

2011 WSOP: Week One

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WSOPThe first week of this year’s World Series of Poker has been both exciting and eventful. So far, 8 different bracelets have been awarded, with 6 of them being awarded to residents of the United States and the other two going to Brits from across the pond.

This year’s WSOP really has been an international affair. While the United States has won a majority of the bracelets, players from all over the world are playing. Players from over a dozen different countries have walked away with cash. Event 8: 1k NLH featured players from an astounding fifty different countries!

Numbers overall are up this year, too. Due to the events on Black Friday, most of the poker world expected the Rio to be a ghost town this June and July. However, throughout this first week, the opposite is the case. According to @WSOPRGUY, overall entrants are up 2.5% and prize pools are up 5.6% thus far. While it is still early, this is a good sign with 6 weeks still to go.

While, on paper, this year’s WSOP appears a success, many sources at the Rio have all commented on the same thing: the atmosphere. Most years, players are excited and hungry for yet another opportunity at poker stardom. This year, there is no excitement in the air. All of the players seem bitter and resentful, and understandably so. All are out here trying to get a big break, to take one last chance at making poker a career. Sadly, there can only be so many winners.

Good luck to everyone. Make a run, go deep, and take it down.

2011 WSOP Event 9 Recap

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WSOPEvent 9: $1,500 2-7 Draw Lowball is both our first draw and lowball tournament of this year’s Series. As could be expected with a Draw game, not many entrants registered, but 275 signing up to play is still a respectable number.

These players came out with the hope of besting a small field in order to obtain the bracelet, considering the $370,000 prize pool is the smallest of this year’s World Series thus far. 28 players cashed this event, all of who at least doubled their initial entry.

The story of the tournament is how incredibly tough the final table was. Resident pros Chris Bjorin, Thomas Fuller, Josh Brikis, ever popular Jason Mercier, and ESPN Poker Commentator Bernard Lee all put themselves in position to win as the tournament field was whittled down. Bjorin and Mercier were both trying to add another bracelet to their mantle, while the rest of them were trying to capture their first elusive. Brikis may have had the most drive, having had his opportunity to play heads-up for a bracelet in 2009, but coming up short.

Bjorin had his shot to add have another bracelet clasped around his wrist, going heads-up against Matt Perrins for the title. Perrins, however, proved too much, and prevailed in this battle between young and old. With this victory, Perrins claims the bracelet and the $102,105 for first prize.

Congratz Matt! Way to overcome a stacked final table.

Phil Ivey Fed Up: Sues Full Tilt, Boycotts WSOP

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Just a year and a half ago, Phil Ivey was sitting at the final table of the World Series of Poker, one of the esteemed November Nine. This year, he’ll be sitting out the event entirely, in protest to what he sees as Full Tilt Poker’s unfair treatment of its American-based players. On top of all that, he’s suing his former sponsor, Full Tilt Poker for what could amount to $150 million in damages.

Actually to be precise, Phil Ivey is suing Tiltware, Full Tilt Poker’s provider of software and marketing.

When Black Friday first occured, Phil Ivey came out asking players to have patience with the site as it worked out how to get its American players (now former-players) the money back from their Full Tilt Poker real money accounts. But since that missive, Phil Ivey’s own patience has run out. He now says Full Tilt’s actions have “embarrassed” him.

He says the reason he won’t be playing in the WSOP is because he finds it unfair that many other players who might otherwise be there too cannot be because the money they would have spent on travel and buy-in costs is locked up in Full Tilt Poker’s bank accounts.

Full Tilt Poker, meanwhile, is holding no punches either, calling Phil Ivey’s lawsuit against them “sanctimonious” since he stands to gain $150 million off of his fellow players’ misfortune, suing the site for the full amount that it owes all it’s other American former-players combined.

The reaction to Ivey’s actions in the poker playing community is decidedly mixed.

2011 WSOP Event 7 Recap

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WSOPWe have our first of the 10k championships in Event 7: $10,000 Pot Limit Hold’em. Being one of the championships (that isn’t the Main Event), this event brought out only the really good or really rich. Only 249 players registered to play this event, down a hair from last year’s number of 268. This created a prize pool of almost $2.4 million to be split among the top 27 finishers.

As could be expected, most those who finished in the money have their share of past WSOP success, including Nenad Medic, Jen Tilly, Mike ‘the Mouth’ Matusow, and Chris Moorman. Simply making the cash doubled your buyin, with a min-cash being right at $20k.

One player who just missed out on turning a profit from this tournament was Daniel Negreanu. Having once called PLHE one of the hardest games in poker, Negreanu showed just how hard it is by busting out on the bubble in 28th place.

The final table was not as jam-packed with big names as one may have expected for a 10k Championship, with Eric Cloutier and Sam Stein about the most well-known there. However, that in no way reflects the quality of play of the table, as the battle for the bracelet was hotly contested. Prevailing in this battle was Amir Lehavot. Along with the bracelet, Lehavot took home $573,456 in prize money. Not a bad return on a $10k investment, eh?

2011 WSOP Event 6 Recap

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WSOPEvent 6 of this year’s World Series of Poker, $1,500 Limit Hold’em, is our first LHE event this year. Limit events rarely bring out large fields, but with it still being a Hold’em tournament, 675 players registered to play.

A very interesting story developed in what would have otherwise been an event that flew under the radar. On the final day of play, defending champion Matt Matros was still in the field when the final 15 players came back. If winning a WSOP bracelet is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most people, what would winning the same one twice in a row be?

Sadly, though, he was not able to successfully do so. Exiting in 11th place, Matros, a published poker author, went to the cage, picked up his $12k, and went to find another game to play. There’s always next year, right?

With a prize pool set at just above $900,000, almost $3,000 went to anyone who finished among the final 63. With it being a limit event, many of those who turned a profit are unknown to the mainstream poker media. However, many popular pros still represented, including Dutch Boyd, JJ Liu, and a man with a shot at winning his 3rd WSOP bracelet, Scott Clements.

None of them had enough, however, to overtake eventual champion Harrison Wilder. Taking home the bracelet and $205,065, Wilder made sure not to be one of those unknown names any longer. With many limit events still on the schedule this year, I would not be surprised to be writing about him again over the next couple months.

2011 WSOP Event 5 Recap

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WSOPThis year’s first event without community cards being dealt, Event #5: $1,500 Seven Card Stud, brought a slew of top name pros. Non-Hold’em events traditionally have fewer players than the NLHE games, a point that held true in this event, with only 357 runners registering to play.

Your recreational players don’t tend to play stud events, so it is no surprise that those who cashed this event are mostly household names. Scott Seiver, Chad Brown, Shaun Deeb, and Ylon Schwartz all cashed, only to fall short of final table appearances. They all made at least the min-cash of $2,600 for finishing among the top forty finishers.

The final table also featured many players that have been featured on ESPN in the past, including Ali Eslami, November Niner Eric Buchman, and the eventual champion, who has also been on quite a tear the past year, Eugene Katchalov.

Katchalov went into heads-up play against Alessio Isaia at a 5-1 chip disadvantage. Isaia, who was at his third WSOP final table (with both of the others also coming from Stud events), looked as though he would simply waltz to his first WSOP bracelet.

However, Katchalov had his own agenda, wanting a new piece of jewelry. An early double up helped tremendously, and, after that, the PCA High-Roller champion kept marching until he had every chip in the tournament stacked in front of him. Winning the event earned him $122,909, a mere pittance when compared to the $1.5 million he won earlier this year.

Congratulations Eugene on getting your name off the infamous “best players without a bracelet” list!

2011 WSOP Event 4 Recap

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WSOPThe first No Limit Hold’em tournament at this year’s WSOP that Joe Everyman could enter, costing just $5,000 to enter, brought 865 players to the Rio for their chance at winning a WSOP event. Creating a $4 million prize pool to be distributed among 81 players, these $5k NLHE events are well-known to be among the hardest to beat in Vegas. Not as cheap as the $1,000 “Stimulus Surplus” events, nor as prestigious as the $10k championships, the number of players willing to play these events range within those who look at poker as more of a profession than a hobby.

As could be expected, the field was loaded with well-known pros. Scott Montgomery, Kevin Saul, John Dolan, and Carlos Mortensen, along with many others, all finished in the money, making at least $10k for their efforts. However, the story of this event is not about these men in the field. No, when we talk about Event 4 of this year’s WSOP, we will be talking about one person: Maria Ho.

On day 2, Maria was the last woman remaining in the tournament (something she has done before at the World Series, with her 38th place finish at 2007’s Main Event). She carried this all the way to heads-up play against Allen Bari, who has an impressive poker resume of his own. If she wanted to win, she had a steep mountain to climb, for Bari held almost 80% of the chips in play when play between the two began.

She came out firing, with an early double up to close the distance, leaving Bari with just a 2-1 chip advantage. Alas, it just wasn’t enough, and Bari dispatched of Ho shortly thereafter, winning the bracelet, $874,116, and the pride of knowing he topped one of the best fields of the World Series.

 

Million Dollar Tournament at 2012 WSOP

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WSOPDuring a break of the $25,000 NLHE Heads-Up Championship, Guy Laliberte and Phil Ruffin, in partnership with Caesars Entertainment, announced that the 2012 WSOP will have a special, marquis event: a $1,000,000 buyin tournament.

This event, which will be a bracelet event in next year’s series, is by far the largest poker tournament to be held in a major casino, taking the title away from the $250,000 Super High Roller Event at this year’s Aussie Millions. However, other than the differences in the buyins, these tournaments have some very distinct differences.

The $1 million tournament will have a much deeper payout structure, paying out 20% of the field. Also, this tournament will take place over the course of three days. So far, 15 players have signed on to play this event, including nosebleed players Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan, Gus Hansen, and Patrick Antonius, frequent Big Game competitors Daniel Negreanu and Johnny Chan, and the famous Texas billionaire, making his first trip to the WSOP, Andy Beal.

What is most special about this tournament is what happens to the tournament fees. Usually, a poker room will withhold 10% of the prizepool as a fee for the event. For this event, however, no fee will be taken for the casino. Instead, for each million, $111,111 will be taken out of the prize pool for the One Drop Charity Foundation. This foundation’s goal is to provide access to clean water and sanitation to everybody in the world. Laliberte, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Foundation, founded the organization in 2007 and has been working towards the goals of the organization since.

This tournament is bound to be the highlight of next year’s WSOP, and will be the buzz of much of this year’s series. It will be exciting to see how many players decide to play the event between now and then, who comes out of the woodwork, and who backs who for the tournament.

2011 WSOP Event 3 Recap

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In the first non-Hold’em event of this year’s WSOP, a $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo Split-8 or better tournament, we saw the largest field in an Omaha tournament ever assembled. 925 players showed up to play, greater than 100 players more than showed up for this event last year. This created a massive $1.2 million prizepool for the prize pool, one of the largest we will probably see in the non-Hold’em events this summer. 90 players earned cash in this tournament, the most players ever paid out in an Omaha 8/b tournament.

A min-cash netted the players just less than $3,000, as former November Niner Jeff Shulman found out. Other top pros, including Ted Lawson, Barry Greenstein, Erik Seidel (wait, he didn’t win?), Allen Cunningham, and Lex Veldhuis also profited from this tournament, but failed to make their way to the ever-important final table.

The final table was both entertaining and hard fought, with all players vying for the bracelet. Russian Vladimir Shchemelev, who put together a very hot run early in last year’s WSOP, was there, as was Costa Rican poker godfather Humberto Brenes, bringing his shark along with him. However, neither of them earned the bracelet this time, busting out in 8th and 6th place respectively.

The heads-up battle would be between two virtual unknowns in the poker world, Kostas ‘Gus’ Kalathakis and Francesco ‘Cheeck’ Barbaro. They were fighting for the ever-important bracelet and $262,283.

Honestly, and no offense to Gus, it wasn’t much of a fight. They entered heads-up play with Cheech 4,100,000 chips to Gus’s 150,000. However, they got it all in the middle in just the second hand of heads-up play, and Kalathakis doubled up to 300,000, trying to put a run together. His run, sadly, would not last much longer, as Barbaro’s commanding lead proved insurmountable, sending Gus home with a $161,675 consolation prize.

This tournament marks Barbaro’s first bracelet at the World Series. Who knows, will he find another along the way?

 

2011 WSOP Event 2 Recap

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WSOPBringing out one of the best fields we will see in this year’s WSOP, the $25,000 Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em Championship was bound to be hotly contested throughout the event. In a tournament that pitted distinguished pros against one another in match after match, including Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan, Vanessa Rousso, Daniel Negreanu, Gus Hansen, among many other popular players, we knew this bracelet would be one to cherish.

These events are not only about the bracelets, though. In an event that brought out only 128 players willing to pay the steep $25k, the prize pool swelled quickly. Min-Cashing in 16th place still earned you just north of $67,000. The winner, however, would take home a much better boost to the bankroll, netting $851,192, more than 25% of the $3 million prizepool.

By the time the event reached the quarter finals, many top names made their way to the rail, but all of those left had a poker pedigree that could not be argued with. Eric Froelich, Gus Hansen, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, and Jake Cody all have had their share of success on the felt, all of whom have had major tournament victories in the past. These semifinal matchups, with Froelich playing Timoshenko and Cody trying to take down the Great Dane (who won a similar event in Europe last year), were hotly contested, though both Timoshenko and Cody seemed in control of their respective matches the whole time. Eventually, Cody sent Hansen on his merry way (to one of the high-stakes cash games, no doubt) and Timoshenko outlasted E-Fro on his way to the finals.

Timoshenko blazed out to an early lead and seemed ready to steamroll Cody. However, Cody battled back, both by making pro-caliber plays and, as is necessary to win a tournament, hitting some cards at the right time. Eventually, Cody prevailed, winning his first WSOP bracelet and the first place cash prize.

It is still early in this year’s WSOP, but Cody put himself in a good position to make a run for Player of the Year. A couple more deep runs and he may sneak his way into a household name. One thing is true: he now has the bankroll to do so.