The PokerListings Daily 3-Bet is a refreshing series of showers to help cool the blistering heat of the summer mid-afternoon poker news world.
You can contribute to the 3-Bet by making suggestions for future pieces in the comments section below.
In today’s Daily 3-Bet we’ll take a look at Daniel Negreanu bowing out of the WSOP, an extraordinarily big prize pool and the dream of a winter WSOP.
1) Negreanu Ends Incredible WSOP
The Main Event loses a little luster once Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth bust. This year not one of them made it to Day 3.
It makes sense Ivey didn't go far considering he didn't even play the Main Event but many were hoping for a deep run from either Negreanu or Hellmuth.
Solid WSOP for Kid Poker
Hellmuth has had a decidedly cold WSOP with no bracelets and just one final table but Negreanu was coming in hot with 11 cashes and a mind-boggling eight top 18 finishes.
His journey in the 2017 Main Event came to an end when he put his short stack in the middle with pocket sevens and got one caller.
Negreanu was actually ahead as his opponent had a pair of sixes but a rivered flush spelled doom for the Canadian.
Not one to linger on defeat, Negreanu quickly Tweeted that the 2017 WSOP was his best ever — with the exception of not winning any bracelets.
Negreanu ends the Vegas-portion of the 2017 WSOP POY race in seventh place thanks to the controversial ranking system. John Monnette currently leads with 14 cashes and one bracelet victory.
So where do we go from here? Well we still got plenty of old-school stars in the field including Johnny Chan, Scotty Nguyen and Mike Matusow.
Hellmuth, as you might expect, busted in a traditional Poker Brat way.
2) Dota 2 Tournament Offers $20m Prize Pool, Biggest Ever
The 2017 Main Event has been an amazing success with the third biggest prize pool ever but there’s another big prize pool event that sets a new record every year.
The next poker?
We’re talking about the International Dota 2 Championship, which will award $20.8m when it plays out next month.
Last year Chinese team Wings Gaming chopped up $9.1m for winning the event, so first place should be even bigger this year.
eSports have been on the rise for years but the International is drawing prize pools that would make some of the biggest traditional sports blush.
It’s interesting because Dota 2 publisher Valve essentially crowd-sources the prize pool for The International by offering a special battle pass, which offers added in-game content for players. A quarter of the proceeds from the battle pass go towards the prize pool.
Now the International still has a ways to go before it reaches the gargantuan $60+ million prize pools of recent WSOP Main Events but it certainly seems like it’s going that direction.
3) Seiver Working on World Series of Cash Games for 2018
We’ve been covering the WSOP for over a decade now and we’ve always wondered why the WSOP doesn’t branch out with a winter festival.
Considering the WSOP has no problem piling on 70+ events for the summer series it’s always seemed a little strange the entire thing goes dormant for a year (outside of WSOPE events).
They could even start with something small like 10-20 events and move on from there. It also might be a decent way for Caesars to experiment running the series at different venues.
Regardless it appears that something is in the works for Las Vegas in the winter but it won't necessarily involve tournaments. Instead noted high-stakes pro Scott Seiversaid he’s working on a World Series of Cash Games (WSOCG?) for February 2018.
I'm working on making the World Series of Cash Games, it will be February '18. More details to come.— Scott Seiver (@scott_seiver) July 13, 2017
There’s very little information available but color us intrigued. Maybe it might be enough to get the attention of cash game wizards like Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan out of Asia for a bit.
