On the Eve of the Apoc...

Friday, July 6, 2007

On the Eve of the Apocalypse: Seidel Victorious as Main Event Looms

There was only one tournament played on Day 35 of the 2007 World Series of Poker, but the Amazon Room was a gong show nonetheless, as a cornucopia of poker diversions took place to complement the final table of the $5,000 No Limit Deuce-to-Seven Lowball w/Re-Buys final table.

The day began barely five hours after Day 34 ended, with the annual media event. For those caught unawares, media events are renowned the poker world over as being the home of ultrafast structures, low starting stacks, and a style of play that rewards the non-poker-playing newscasters who use their network pull to get seats in the freeroll and then limp-call their way to suck-out success.

Unfortunately, we could not enter Arnold in the media event.

None of the PokerListings.com gang was able to avoid the donkstrikery, succumbing one by one to the play of luckboxes from other so-called media outlets. Tragedy might have been averted had I, a suckout artiste in my own right, not slept through the morning's proceedings, but hung-over from the success of Hendon Mobster Ram Vaswani mere hours before, I slept through my alarm and was thus rendered mercifully exempt from donking off my stack to the Action 13 sportscaster.

Following the media event (won, we hear, by an Irish man of dubious origin and credential) came the WSOP press conference , wherein Series Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack proclaimed the 38th Annual WSOP a "tremendous success," although PokerListings.com has a hunch the man would have seen his proceedings through glasses just as rose-colored had nuclear winter erupted outside with only the cockroaches left to check-raise and fold.

Hellmuth's induction, mercifully shroud-free.

Regardless, the man also presided over the inductions of Phil Hellmuth and Barbara Enright into the WSOP Hall of Fame, which will no doubt do wonders for the Poker Brat's ego as he'll now be able to tell donkeys they've just eliminated not only the best player in the world, but a Hall of Famer at that. As for Enright's induction, we have nothing snarky to contribute so we'll just say congratulations.

Kicking off in the afternoon was the second day of the final preliminary event of the WSOP. Event 54's 17 survivors had to contend with the sound and the fury of the Ante Up for Africa celebrity event, which featured such notable poker-playing pros as Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Alexander and the gay sidekick from Sex and the City, who seems to make a habit of attending these celebrity events, presumably because he has nothing else to do now that he's no longer commiserating with Carrie Bradshaw.

And we wondered why Dick Bavetta didn't show.

Anyways, it was a charity event, and if you keep your eyes on the Poker News section of the site you can hear about how it all went down. We'd love to give you more details but as credentialed poker media we were denied much access to the proceedings, forced to railbird behind 300-pound Iowans for whom a brief glimpse of Ray Romano constituted the story of the year while People Magazine and its associates in trash were treated like royalty.

Again, it was a charity event and if railbirding behind overweight, sitcom-loving Midwesterners is what it takes to help the Darfurians, PokerListings.com is happy to do our part.

Meanwhile, in a secluded corner of the room, a bracelet-awarding final table was being played out. The $5,000 No Limit Deuce-to-Seven Lowball w/Rebuys (NLDTSLWR) affair saw 17 of poker's biggest names return for the second and final day of the epic contest, including Player of the Year potentials Tom Schneider and Jeffrey Lisandro.

Unlike some media outlets, PokerListings.com can recognize the 2007 Player of the Year without the aid of his wife.

Since only preliminary events count towards WSOP POY points, what transpired on Day 2 would decide who walked away with title, which comes with a prize package that includes buy-ins to next year's Main Event, WSOP circuit events and the WSOP-Europe Main Event, although curiously no Harrah's sponsored makeover.

Lisandro trailed his rival by fifteen points and needed to finish in the tournament's top seven to claim the prize, but though Schneider would bow early in the proceedings his pair of bracelets was enough to stave off Lisandro after the latter fell to Andy Black in fifteenth place.

$@*&%!

That left only the question of the bracelet, and as the famous faces fell flat feltside, a final table of seven rounders emerged that included Chad Brown, Erik Seidel, Black, Freddy Deeb, Todd Brunson, and a venomous Sean Sheikhan, who PokerListings.com decided must hate children after his profanity-laden tirade at Barry Greenstein late on Day 1.

You know what they say about Karma, however, and after Brunson (7th, $51,669), Deeb (6th, $73,813), Black (5th, $118,101) and Lamar Wilkinson (4th, $162,389) were eliminated, Sheikhan could make it stick no longer, falling in third place after an intense three-handed match that concluded only when Brown made a nine-low to edge out Sheiky's ten-low. Revenge-minded children will be disappointed, however, to find that Sheikhan earned $206,676 for his foul-mouthed display.

Winnar.

Sheiky's elimination left only Erik Seidel and Chad Brown to battle for the bracelet, and battle they did, with a long and tumultuous heads-up session that saw both players land crushing blows before the Gentle Giant sprang up from the mat one last time, doubling through Brown while crippled and then striking the knockout punch with an 8-7 low to Brown's 9-7, earning the decision as well as his eighth WSOP bracelet, $538,835 in prize money, and the right to have his exploits chronicled via overdone boxing metaphors on PokerListings.com

Thus ends the preliminary events at the 2007 World Series of Poker, but fear not; in roughly seven hours the Main Event will begin, bringing with it a circus-sideshow of attention-hounds, B-list celebs, a highly-paid columnist in Bill Simmons who will refuse to see his inevitable elimination as anything other than a horrendous beat, Jennifer Leigh in lingerie, and, if we're lucky, some professionals reinforcing the thesis that poker is, indeed, a game of skill.

Let's get ready to rumble!