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2008 WSOP Main Event Day 5 Recap

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 09:37:16 +0100

Day 5 of the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event kicked off on time this afternoon with just 181 of the original 6,844 players still in contention. By the time the final hand had been dealt for the evening only 79 would remain in the race to see who can take home more than $9 million and the most prestigious tournament title in all of poker.

Incoming chip leader Jeremy Joseph came in with $2,197,000 and saw that total drop as low as a million before rebounding to end the day with an unofficial count of $3,200,000. Also making a big surge to put her ahead of Joseph and the majority of the field was poker video hostess Tiffany Michelle, who over the course of the day jumped from $909,000 to a whopping $3,800,000.

The biggest mover of the day, though, was Mark Ketteringham. After starting the day's proceedings with $1,600,000, Ketteringham surged to the top of the leaderboard by the end of the evening by finishing with $5,700,000 in chips. Almost one quarter of his gain over the entire day came during a key hand where Ketteringham held pocket nines against Jose Barbero's A-Q; the flop brought Barbero an ace but the river gave Ketteringham a set and the chip lead.

More than a few notable players who began the day failed to make the cut today, including EPT hostess Kara Scott, 2006 WSOP Player of the Year Jeff Madsen, 2008 Aussie Millions champ Alexander Kostritsyn, and 2005 WSOP Player of the Year, five-time WSOP bracelet winner, and 2006 Main Event fourth-place finisher Allen Cunningham. Also on the outs were Hoyt Corkins, Chip Jett, Gus Hansen, Jon Friedberg, Jeremiah Smith, Jeff Kimber, Shawn Sheikhan, "Action" Bob Hwang, Lonnie Heimowitz, and Mark Vos.

It's worth noting that the only former Main Event champion left in the field going into Day 6 is none other than Phil Hellmuth, Jr. The 11-time WSOP bracelet winner spent a good part of the day at the ESPN feature table, including the last portion of the evening. The very end, in fact, saw him incur a one-orbit penalty for the start of Day 6 after berating Romania's Cristian Dragomir for calling a pre-flop raise with 10 4. Unofficial counts at the end of the night had the Poker Brat with $890,000 in chips, up from the $581,000 he had coming in.

Also still in the hunt and among the "ESPN favorites" category along with Hellmuth is Mike "The Mouth" Matusow. The Mouth famously made the final table of the Main Event in 2005 but finished in a disappointing ninth place to earn $1,000,000. He's toward the back of the pack with just $1,200,000, but he's also playing some of the best poker of his career and certainly knows how to rise to the occasion.

Other survivors among the "known player" set include David "Raptor" Benefield ($2,440,000), Brandon Cantu ($2,400,000), David "Chino" Rheem ($2,300,000), Garrett "GBecks" Beckman ($1,920,000), Niklas Flisberg ($1,660,000), Matt Matros ($1,200,000), Kido Pham ($700,000), Victor Ramdin ($700,000), and Thomas "Thunder" Keller ($400,000).

Day 6 is due to kick off at noon Pacific Time in the Amazon Room, with the plan to play down to 27 players. As always, PokerListings.com will be there pwning the competition with the best WSOP coverage team in town.

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2008 WSOP Main Event Day 2a Recap

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:45:36 +0100

After four calendar days of Day 1 and a day off so everyone could drink entirely too much alcohol and watch Dita Von Teese dance at the PokerStars party at the Palms, the first of two installments of Day 2 of the 2008 WSOP Main Event kicked off today at noon.

The day began with 1,250 players who made it through Day 1a and Day 1b. By the end of the night only 469 of them would survive the span from Level 6 to Level 10 of this Main Event.

For the first time tonight, the Amazon Room was less than half full thanks to all the casualties of the day, a powerful reminder that this WSOP is just one week away from finishing up and being consigned to the history books - with the obvious exception of the Main Event final table, which has been delayed until November. By this time next week we'll all know who the nine players will be returning for that historic final table.

Today's ESPN feature table saw the likes of Ray Romano, the famous stand-up comedian and actor. Everyone at the table didn't love Ray enough to let him make it through the day, though, sending him home after dinner.

Finnish poker assassin and Full Tilt Poker pro Patrik Antonius played on the second ESPN feature table off to the side of the main set. He didn't get knocked out like feature-table player Romano, but he only ended the day with $52,000 in chips.

That actually leaves him second in his own family's Day 2a leaderboard: wife Maya Geller-Antonius finished up with $130,000.

Up at the top of the overall leaderboard at the end of the day was Brian Shaedlich, who has no prior live tournament cashes on his resume. At the close of play, WorldSeriesOfPoker.com reported his chip count as $745,000, a full 86% more than his nearest competitor, Hunter Frey, whose stack was worth exactly $400,000. Frey, an online player from Houston, Tex., finished in third place in a $2,000 No-Limit Hold'em event during last year's WSOP.

Some of the other notable big movers during Day 2a included Jeremiah Smith and Brandon Adams.

Smith told the PokerListings.com reporting team tonight that at this stage in the tournament he feels the game more closely resembles a deep-stacked cash game than it does a tournament like most of his competitors are used to playing. Having that mentality helped him to stay dominant at his table throughout the day and pick up several big pots to boost his stack to $390,000, including a major one where he flopped a straight with 7 5 and got his opponent to call all-in for about $100,000.

Despite doubling up Michael Watson during the last level to drop some chips, Adams picked up a healthy pot when he flopped a set of sevens and Sigbjorn Rivelrud turned a set of fives toward the end of the night. That significant boost helped Adams rise to $371,000 by the end of the evening.

Among the more notable bust-outs of the day were Bill Edler, Marc Karam, Vicky Coren, Jordan Morgan, John Hennigan, Billy Baxter, Barry Greenstein, Paul Wasicka, Svetlana Gromenkova, Jimmy Fricke and Jens Voertmann.

Day 2b is due to kick off on Wednesday at noon - be sure to follow all the action right here with the PokerListings.com WSOP Live Updates crew.

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2008: Best International WSOP Ever!

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:54:43 +0100

There's some evidence that Benny Binion foresaw the growth of the World Series of Poker from very early on.

"I look to have better than 20 (players) next year," Binion told historian Mary Ellen Glass back in 1973, the fourth year of the WSOP. "It's even liable to get up to be 50. Might get up to be more than that; it will eventually."

So given his foresight in other matters WSOP, it's not out of line to suggest that Binion gave his creation a name that it could grow into, a name that would someday be much more apt than its baseball equivalent. If that's true, he would be smiling at how much progress the WSOP has made as an international event in the last few years.

Through all the preliminary events of the this summer, the last of which will end sometime tonight or early tomorrow morning, the rough numbers from the WSOP staff indicate that representatives of 104 different countries have taken part in at least one tournament here at the Rio.

We've seen Swedes playing Stud and Hondurans playing Hold'em, contributing to a new record that eclipses the old one in much the same fashion as we've seen live tournament fields shatter attendance records for the last several years.

According to numbers quoted to me today by the WSOP staff, last year the WSOP set a new record for the most participating countries, with at least one citizen from 87 separate nations sitting at the felt. The old record broken that year had been set, as you might guess, the previous year as well; in 2006, a total of 54 countries participated in the WSOP.

If you don't think any of those numbers sound very big, keep two facts in mind. First, there are only 195 countries in the entire world. Second, the first World Series of Poker consisted of citizens from just one country: the United States of America.

Before this year, the international growth of the WSOP was best captured by the makeup of last year's Main Event final table. Six different countries were represented among the nine finalists, including Raymond Rahme of South Africa.

Rahme's appearance at the final table marked the first time anyone from the continent of Africa had ever made the final table of the biggest poker tournament in the world, and set off an explosion of interest in the game in his native country similar to the game's boom in Australia after Team PokerStars pro Joe Hachem won the 2005 Main Event.

This year we've seen the international theme of the last few years taken to new heights. Anyone who really believes all the talk that gets tossed around about how poker is dying should take a good look at where our bracelet winners are coming from and reconsider.

Through this evening, while two final tables were still in progress, a total of 10 nations had produced bracelet winners. That includes three apiece from Canada and Germany, two from Italy, and one bracelet winner each from Brazil, Denmark, France, Belgium, Holland and Russia.

The success of international players just goes to show that for every downward trend in poker in North America, there's an upward trend somewhere else around the world. One of the best examples is Russia.

Alex Kravchenko's fourth-place finish in last year's Main Event appears to have been the basis of a lot of enthusiasm for the game there. $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em bracelet winner Vitaly Lunkin, 10-time casher Nikolay Evdakov and several 2008 final tablists hail from the Russian Federation.

These are the kind of signs that say the growth of the game around the world is going to continue.

Regardless of what the particular climate toward poker is in America right now, in the rest of the world there's a second poker boom in effect that is bringing all sorts of people from a lot of nontraditional poker countries to the game. If you really love the game, you have to be happy when you see an international player take home a bracelet. Today's new kid on the block might just be the best hope for the game in the long run.

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Late-Night Food Options Nonexistent at WSOP

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:55:31 +0100

I've written several times this summer about what a good job Harrah's has done in regards to responding to player complaints and trying to make the overall WSOP experience a better one for everyone involved.

After several years in charge, the biggest casino company in the world has improved many facets of the WSOP. Unfortunately, there's still one important aspect that's been left untouched: the late-night food options.

If you're hungry for a bite to eat during a dinner break (or after an early bust-out) there are more than a handful of options available at the Rio. Seafood, Indian, Chinese, pizza, burgers, Italian - there's really something for everyone. The problem with food options at the Rio doesn't arise until after 11 p.m., when most of the sit-down restaurants have closed their doors.

The Miranda Noodle Kitchen, one of this year's new options in the WSOP area that actually happens to be quite good, shuts down at 10 p.m. The bigger-and-better 2008 Poker Kitchen, located just outside the Amazon Room and not quite as good as Miranda, closes down at 3 a.m.

All of the other restaurants in the Rio close down before then, save the All-American Bar & Grille, which stays open all night. Unfortunately, the menu in that establishment is limited during late-night hours and the dining area itself can't handle the influx of players from the WSOP who have to compete for space with all the other patrons.

This wasn't a problem two years ago, when the relatively nearby Sao Paulo Cafe stayed open late into the night. The WSOP announced before the start of preliminary events that the Cafe would have extended hours throughout the summer, but that hasn't come to fruition as promised; one night you can walk by at 2 a.m. and find it full of patrons, while on other nights it's closed down before 11 p.m.

In the real world, where you can pick up a meal no matter what the time of day, this food situation wouldn't really be a problem. But in this enclosed environment where poker players stay up late on a frequent basis, it's inexcusable.

WSOP events rarely end for the day before 2 a.m., and it's not uncommon for them to go until 5:00, 6:00 or sometimes even 7:00 a.m. So why, then, was there no planning to keep options open for the players who have worked the hardest?

The players who make it the furthest in tournaments are penalized for their accomplishments by being forced to either take the one food option available in the casino or to order expensive room service that can take up to two hours to arrive even during off-peak hours. That seems like a pretty poor way to reward high achievement.

One of the things that WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack has consistently worked to do during his tenure is to improve the players' overall experience. He has even made the food options a priority in past years, and we honestly are much better off in general than we were in, say, 2005. But without a doubt, this glaring omission simply has to be fixed in 2009. The players - who, after all, are the reason there is a WSOP in the first place - deserve better than what they've been given.

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H.O.R.S.E. Event Likely to Influence POY Race

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 06:39:28 +0100

As we close in on the end of the preliminary events at the 2008 World Series of Poker, the Player of the Year race is still wide open.

Despite his not having won a bracelet, Jacobo Fernandez's six cashes have given him 227 points. That's good enough to hold on to a seven-point lead over both Omaha Hi-Lo World Champion David Benyamine and double-bracelet winner John Phan, both of whom currently have 220 points.

Before this week that would have basically been the focus of the race, as the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. didn't count toward the POY standings.

Just before the H.O.R.S.E. event began, the WSOP reversed its position and made the biggest tournament on the schedule eligible for POY points. That created all kinds of possibilities, as several pros who entered the high-buy-in event were hanging around the standings behind Fernandez, Benyamine and Phan.

Barry Greenstein entered the $50,000 tournament in fourth place with 190 POY points. If he finishes in seventh place or higher, he can overtake the current leader with just a handful of preliminaries remaining on the schedule.

Just behind Greenstein with 185 points is Full Tilt pro Erick Lindgren. E-dog would need to finish in sixth place or higher to claim the POY lead.

Then there's Kid Poker, Daniel Negreanu, who currently has 170 points. It would take a better finish for him to jump ahead of the pack, but finishing in third place or higher would be enough.

As of this writing - at the dinner break of Day 4 of the tournament - all three of these men are still alive with 13 players still in the running. With only four more prelims on the schedule, several interesting scenarios could end up developing.

If Negreanu falls short in the H.O.R.S.E. (which he might, given his drop to just $300,000 in chips right before the dinner break), and Greenstein or Lindgren only overtake the lead by the minimum necessary finish, each would be aiming to cash in as many of the four remaining events as possible so as to stay ahead of the competition - including cashing machine Fernandez, who won't give up the fight lightly.

If Negreanu were to come back from the crushing blow dealt to him before the dinner break tonight and win heads-up against Greenstein, his lead wouldn't be safe at all. He would only stay ahead of his fellow Team PokerStars pro by a margin of 270 points to 265, meaning a single cash by Greenstein in one of the remaining events would put him into a tie for the lead.

Similarly, a win heads-up against Lindgren would give Kid Poker a 10-point lead - certainly better than five points, but by no means a safe lead.

If Lindgren were to beat Greenstein heads-up, he would be ahead by a margin of 285-265, meaning Greenstein would need to finish in 10th place in another event to tie or in ninth place to win.

If Greenstein were to win the H.O.R.S.E. tournament he would be a solid favorite for the POY honor, even against one of his closest competitors. With Greenstein at 290 points and a second-place finish for Lindgren, E-dog would still trail by 30 points, necessitating a ninth-place finish to tie or eighth place to take the lead.

The only scenario that provides for a clear-cut favorite in this race is if Greenstein were to win the H.O.R.S.E. and his rivals were to finish either off the final table or on the bottom end of it. That would almost require either Benyamine, Phan, Negreanu or Lindgren to win another bracelet - or Fernandez to win his first - to have a chance at winning the POY honor.

Whatever happens, it's certain that the WSOP higher-ups' decision to allow the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. to count toward the POY award is one that will have an immediate impact.

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2008 WSOP Day 27 Recap

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:37:09 +0100

There may have been a final table in play today in the Amazon Room, but the big story was Day 1 of the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event.

Even though the tournament is only in its third year, it has already become one of the single most prestigious titles in all of tournament poker. The event drew 148 runners, ranging from some of the most elite players in the game to satellite winners and rich amateurs who want to play against the world's best.

Day 1 saw the players begin with $100,000 in chips and five levels played out after the 5 p.m. start time. By approximately 2:45 a.m. local time, the final hands of the night had played out and 140 players survived through to Day 2.

Defending champion Freddy Deeb was in the field and ended the day with $111,600. Not performing quite so well was the only player in the event to have made the final table in both 2006 and 2007, David Singer. The Full Tilt pro finished with just $17,900 of his original stack intact.

Sitting at the same table as Singer but enjoying a much better run was day-end chip leader James Mackey. The 22-year-old Internet pro, who finished second earlier during this WSOP in the $10,000 Mixed Game World Championship, dominated play on Day 1 and finished up with $214,000 in chips. PokerListings.com talked to Mackey during the last break of the night and he admitted he had an experience deficit against the field.

"I think they probably underestimate me in all the games," said the young man known online as mig.com. "But they definitely have more experience than me.

"Whenever you look like me, when you're an online player and you don't have much experience, a lot of times they'll think I'm making beginner mistakes when maybe I'm actually not," Mackey concluded. "So I can use that fact to my advantage."

Day 2 of the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. is scheduled to begin Thursday at 3 p.m. PDT.

Before even a few levels of the H.O.R.S.E. tournament could be completed, the final table of the $1,000 Seniors No-Limit Hold'em World Championship had already wrapped up. The event drew a record field of 2,218 players, which was topped by Dan Lacourse of Toledo, Ohio.

The champion was crowned quickly thanks to an urgent pace of play at the final table and a good run on his part.

A 27-year veteran detective, Lacourse eliminated five of his opponents, including the last four in a row, en route to the $368,832 first prize. In his post-win interview, Lacourse told PokerListings.com that his win came mostly thanks to solid, aggressive play.

"I bought a lot of hands today, made a lot of position bets, kept my lead up, kept my chip lead up," said Lacourse. "I could intimidate some of the other chip stacks, so that helped me in buying a lot of pots."

Two other events played out in the Amazon Room today. The first was Event 43, the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Split 8-or-Better, which played down to a final table. The 720-player field was whittled down to nine faster than any other field of this WSOP, and the best-known player coming into the final table is certainly Erik Seidel.

The eight-time bracelet winner comes into the final table tomorrow with the second-largest chip stack at the table and a chance to add another title to his already-impressive tournament resume. The opportunity came at the cost of playing in the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event, but Seidel told PokerListings.com that there was a silver lining.

"I consider this a $50,000 bonus that I got to stay in this one," said Seidel. He and his opponents will face off at 2 p.m. PDT on Thursday.

Rounding out the day's schedule was Day 1 of Event 44, the $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em w/Rebuys. A big field of 839 players showed up ready to drop dimes in pursuit of a gold bracelet and lots of cold hard cash. The total prize pool came to $3,240,174, with first place taking home a healthy $693,392.

Ending the day as chip leader in Event 44 was Jamel Maistriaux, with a stack of $169,300 to his credit. He and 115 other players will return to action at 2 p.m. PDT Thursday.

As always, PokerListings.com's all-star live updates team will be on the scene at the Rio, bringing you all the coverage you expect starting when the first cards of the day get in the air at noon local time.

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Poker Musical Set for WSOP Debut

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:56:34 +0100

The World Series of Poker announced today that All-In: The Poker Musical, a theater production focusing on nine players at the final table of the WSOP Main Event, will debut at the Rio's Masquerade Showroom during this year's $10,000 World Championship. The mix of poker and Broadway-style musical is completely unprecedented and represents a new opportunity to showcase the human drama of the world's favorite card game.

While the "special preview concert" of the one-hour show won't occur until July 4 and 5, the folks in charge of the production gave this reporter special access to a dress rehearsal so we here at PokerListings.com could give our readers the skinny on what's sure to be the nuts at this year's WSOP.*

In the press release for All-In: The Poker Musical, none other than the great Phil Hellmuth stated, ""Through the lyrics of the songs and style of music, we see not only who these final nine players are, but we are able to see ourselves, our families, and our world."

We found the signature songs of the characters so appealing that we decided a sneak preview of each number was exactly what our readers needed. So without further ado, here's a look at the lineup and their signature tunes.

Johnson Jones - "I Ain't Drawing Dead Yet"

Old-timer Johnson Jones has been playing poker since the days of one-card Stud, hustling Texas cowpokes and oil men out of their cash before he was forced to move to Las Vegas to outrun all the players he fleeced. His song, "I Ain't Drawing Dead Yet," tells his tale succinctly:

I might be behind, but I got outs
These kids don't know what this game's all about
Until me and my maker done met
I ain't drawing dead yet!

Richie Patterson - "Raise Raise Raise"

21-year-old Internet phenom Richie Patterson, well-known for his hyper-aggressive style, has been playing online since he built a bankroll through freerolls in high school. He is in position to become the youngest Main Event winner in history. "Raise Raise Raise" sums up his philosophy quite well:

Why call and make them think you're weak?
If you limp and fold you're a freak
I don't have the patience to muck cards for days
So I'm gonna raise, raise, raise!

Theobald "Scooter" Belinglophe - "Money Don't Mean Nothing"

As CEO of MegaGloboCorp, Theobald "Scooter" Belinglophe doesn't care about the big prize so much as he wants the glory of beating poker's best players. In All-In, he sings:

Stocks and bonds don't make me quiver,
And a raise from you, kid, don't make me shiver.
You'll never see a card for free
'Cause money don't mean nothing to me.

Bob Smith - "Doing It For the Kids"

Bob Smith was just a mid-level manager for a giant retail chain before he won a $1 WSOP Main Event satellite on PokerStars. Now that he's here, he's trying to avoid any major mistakes because he has a goal:

This money sure means a lot to me,
My girls will grow up smart and happy, you'll see
I sure hope my luck doesn't hit the skids
'Cause I'm just doing it for the kids

Sven Potssen - "Monsterpotten"

The lyrics to aggressive Swede Sven Potssen's song, "Monsterpotten," are indecipherable due to Potsen's guttural death metal vocals and the heavy double bass drum, but all we can assume is that he loves to drag a giant pot with a bluff.

Phan Tran - "Cocktails!"

Phan Tran escaped Vietnam by boat with his family when he was just a baby and ended up becoming one of poker's most recognizable faces. He gets into his opponents' heads by making them think he cares more about free drinks than the game at hand:

I laugh in your face and show you my bluff
I take all your chips but that's not enough
I'm gonna bring every one of you to your knees -
Cocktails on the final table, please!

Jennifer Wilson - "I'm Just a Girl"

Jennifer Wilson is only the second woman in WSOP history to make the final table of the Main Event, following in the footsteps of Barbara Enright. Unfortunately the producers of All-In seem to have given her short shrift, skimping on the songwriting budget in favor of having her cover No Doubt's hit song "Just A Girl" in skimpy attire.

Nigel Bennington - "Dreadfully Sorry!"

How British uber-nit Nigel Bennington ever got to the final table is a wonder - he folds more than PokerListings.com reporter Owen Laukkanen does under the gun. What we do know is that Nigel is the single most polite player in the history of poker:

Oh dear, I'm dreadfully sorry!
I didn't mean to flop that straight on you
Please ask the tournament director
If it's legal for me to double through

Phil Hellmuth - "I Can Dodge Bullets, Baby!"

Phil Hellmuth makes a surprise appearance in the final nine of this Main Event, which is how we know it's a work of fiction. We were only able to sit through the first five minutes of the Poker Brat's monologue about how he makes the greatest lay-downs in poker before we had to get back to covering the preliminary events of the WSOP. We're sure we've heard it all before, though.

* - Totally, unquestionably, irrevocably untrue.

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Women Complain, Harrah's Listens, Seniors Benefit

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:05:32 +0100

When Event 15, the $1,000 World Championship Ladies No-Limit Hold'em, started up a few weeks ago the entrants all received $2,000 in starting chips. That's in line with the WSOP policy of giving double the number of chips in relation to the amount of the buy-in for every event, so things were fair in that regard.

What wasn't fair, though, was the structure: it was exactly the same as that used for the $1,500 NLHE open events running throughout the WSOP schedule, despite those events beginning with $3,000 in chips. More than a few women complained, and this writer even suggested a fix for next year's event.

It appears today that Harrah's not only heard those complaints, but actually decided to do something about them.

The main reason we know they decided to make a change is that today's Event 42, the $1,000 Seniors No-Limit Hold'em World Championship, started with a stack of $3,000 in chips.

That was a surprise to those of us in the media who came in to cover the tournament today; we had expected exactly the same starting stack as found in the Ladies Event. The new stack was good news for the players in today's tournament, as their starting chips were matched up with the structure of the tournament.

I asked Seth Palansky, the WSOP's new communications director, why the shift had been made.

"We felt it was the right thing to do," Palansky said. He told me that the number of complaints from women who had ponied up a grand for the Ladies Event had been so high that WSOP management decided to rectify the situation for the only other $1,000 event on the WSOP schedule, and that Harrah's would be revisiting the issue after this year's WSOP finished to make sure that such an inequitable situation didn't recur.

The solution wasn't a perfect one by any means, especially considering that every player who put up $1,500 for an open-field NLHE event so far this summer was paying 50% more for the same structure as the seniors got today. But I think Harrah's deserves a pat on the back for doing something about this situation.

It would've been easy to ignore the women's complaints from earlier in the WSOP and simply give the seniors in today's event the same starting stack the ladies received. Instead, Harrah's decided to take the initiative and rectify an obvious mistake without waiting an entire year to do so.

The alternatives to the way Harrah's handled the situation would have been keeping things the same, changing the structure of the event with no warning, or raising the buy-in to $1,500 on short notice. None of those options was palatable, so they went with the alternative that would make the greatest number of people happy for the short term while keeping an eye on coming up with a fix for the long term.

There will surely be people who complain about the decision made today. Some of them will likely be women who feel that if they were shortchanged, the seniors should have been too. But the fact is that two wrongs don't make a right.

Harrah's has shown throughout this WSOP that they're listening to the players much more than in the past, and that they're genuinely concerned about making the WSOP the best possible experience for the greatest number of participants.

Even if the women in Event 15 came out on the wrong end this year, they should be glad that their complaints have actually helped out some of their peers. Whatever the solution Harrah's comes up with for next year's Ladies and Seniors events, the situation should be an improvement over this year.

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This Game's Not Going Anywhere

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 06:43:20 +0100

I hear and read a lot of people talking about how poker's popularity is on the decline. Personally I think that's a silly idea that's fueled by what sort of ratings poker pulls on television.

My own personal journey through the last few years of tournament poker history tells me that the game is going to do nothing but continue to grow, regardless of whether people are watching the game on television.

I got my start in this business back in 2005 at the WSOP Circuit in Tunica, Miss., when I covered the entire two-week run on my own blog. I followed up each day's coverage writing articles at night for a Web site that paid me just enough to cover my expenses, a gig that came my way via my friend Paul McGuire.

Basically I broke even on the trip, but I got a lot of invaluable experience. I jumped in head-first and learned everything as I went. It was a wild ride where I met a lot of WSOP staff and players I still know to this very day.

On the flip side of things, I didn't meet a lot of media. Only two other reporters - Sharla Lehrmann and BJ Nemeth - showed up, and even BJ only came in for the main event. They both helped me out a lot, and it was easy to approach them because there wasn't the throng of media outlets on the scene that we have at tournaments today.

In the end Gregg Merkow won the 179-strong tournament and I graduated from the equivalent of a poker tournament reporter's boot camp. That experience eventually landed me a reporting job, which became the head of a trail that ends (for now) with me covering my third WSOP here at PokerListings.com.

From there, my journey into the world of poker has been a blur of tournaments around North America and (now) three years of work at the WSOP.

Over the course of three years my trips for poker tournaments have normally been very similar: lots of time spent indoors regardless of the location, watching 12 hours of poker a day, and meeting lots of new people everywhere you go. What has really changed since I got started in 2005 is the sheer number of people involved.

Not only is almost every particular major tournament bigger than it was in 2005, the number of tournaments on the annual schedule has blossomed and new tours are popping up all around the world in previously unexpected places. That means tens of thousands of people worldwide playing preliminaries and main events who weren't involved in poker just a few years ago.

The scale of things in poker is completely different just three years after I got my start, and the WSOP is the perfect example.

In 2005 there were only 42 bracelet events on the schedule, and now there are 55. Every year I've come to the WSOP a new attendance record for the largest non-Main Event tournament field has been set in a $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em event, sometimes more than once a year.

And even if the Main Event isn't the largest ever this year, it will most likely top last year's number, and numbers everywhere else at the WSOP this year are up as well.

One of the things that's most encouraging to me is how the game has grown internationally. In 2005, only six players from outside the United States won bracelets; this year we've already seen eight international players win and we still have another 13 or so bracelets to hand out.

It's things like this, along with new tours in Europe, Asia, and Latin America sponsored by online poker rooms like PokerStars, that make me think the idea that the game's popularity might be declining is way off base.

People who say poker is on the decline just aren't looking at things from the right perspective. Whether or not any particular poker show survives on cable has nothing to do with the popularity of the game. New tours around the world mean new players, and the continued steady attendance at the WSOP despite changes in the landscape of the American tournament scene means that the game is as popular as ever - if not more so.

That's what I firmly believe after being in the middle of it all for three straight years. All the signals point to the continued growth of the game, and I look forward to continuing to watch poker's evolution from a seat in the media room.

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Fernandez shakes up the Player of the Year race

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 07:52:43 +0100

Just last night I wrote a blog on the state of the Player of the Year race. One night later the state of the race has changed completely thanks to Jacobo Fernandez.

Jacobo Fernandez doesn't have a career resume a mile long, with his first major cash coming in late 2006. What he lacks in longevity, though, he makes up for in results. In only his second big tournament cash he took third place at the LA Poker Classic for more than $600,000, finishing just behind Eric Hershler and J.C. Tran in February 2007.

He started this year's WSOP with a bang, taking second place and $136,644 in Event 3, $1,500 Pot Limit Hold'em. Over the course of the next nine day he cashed another three times, including a fourth place finish in Event 21, $5,000 No Limit Hold'em. That score was worth another $238,781. When added to his other four cashes, Fernandez's total 2008 WSOP take as of tonight is $648,421

Earlier this evening Jacobo Fernandez walked away from Event 34, $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha with Rebuys, with a solid third place finish. He earned $222,659, as well as 60 points in the WSOP Player of the Year standings. He now has a total of 217 points, putting him 32 points ahead of Barry Greenstein and Erick Lindgren. Here's the full top ten leaderboard:

Name	WSOP POY points	Bracelets	Cashed	2008 WSOP Earnings
Jacobo Fernandez	217	0	5	$648,421
Barry Greenstein	185	1	4	$409,177
Erick Lindgren	185	1	4	$567,088
Daniel Negreanu	170	1	4	$378,224
Vanessa Selbst	163	1	3	$350,391
David Singer	160	1	4	$340,363
Chris Ferguson	160	0	4	$674,564
Farzad Rouhani	140	1	3	$265,443
Andy Bloch	135	0	3	$585,620
Scott Seiver	130	1	3	$781,866

The situation as it stands now means that in order to retake the lead, Team PokerStars pro Greenstein and Full Tilt pro Lindgren would need to finish in 8th place or better to surpass Fernandez. Out of the 13 remaining qualifying events for the POY race, there are quite a few that seem likely candidates for either of the two men to go deep in.

While higher buy-in events favor the top pros like Greenstein and Lindgren, only two of those remain. Event 46, the $5,000 No Limit Hold'em, and Event 50, the $10,000 World Championship Pot Limit Omaha, should both see relatively small fields since they'll be off-limits to the average player's bankroll. That's a good thing for anyone who's trying to win a bracelet, since the fewer opponents you have the more likely you are to achieve your goal.

The other thing that should work in these players' favor is the number of non-hold'em events remaining. In addition to the $10,000 PLO, there are four other events left on the schedule: Event 40, Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw; Event 43, $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha Hi-lo Split 8-or-better; Event 47, $1,500 Seven Card Stud Hi-lo Split 8-or-better; and Event 51, $1,500 HORSE. Two other events, Event 41 ($1,500 Mixed Hold'em) and Event 53 ($1,500 Limit Hold'em Shootout), also favor more experienced players and both men should have a good shot at final tabling them.

A few other players are still within striking distance, though they'd have to finish higher than 8th place to do so. Still, it's not unthinkable that Daniel Negreanu might finish in fifth place in one of the remaining events, or that David Singer might finish third, or that Chris Ferguson might win a bracelet. All these things are completely within the realm of possibility, and each would change the leaderboard significantly.

For now, it's Jacobo Fernandez who's in the lead and everyone else is chasing him.

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2008 WSOP Player of the Year Race Up in the Air

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:16:03 +0100

The WSOP Player of the Year award isn't an honor with an awful lot of history behind it at this stage in its existence. This tournament series began its life, after all, as a gamblers' convention where the "winner" was decided upon by the vote of his peers.

What the POY award lacks in history, it makes up by providing a quasi-objective way of declaring a winner. Poker is notorious for not having any real means of keeping score, so the POY gives those following (and participating in) the game some sort of framework by which they can judge who is truly the best player at the WSOP in any given year.

After 21 days of the 2008 World Series of Poker, the standings are tied:

Name	WSOP POY points	Bracelets	Total cashes	2008 WSOP Earnings
Barry Greenstein	185	1	4	$409,177
Erick Lindgren	185	1	4	$567,088
Daniel Negreanu	170	1	4	$378,224
Vanessa Selbst	163	1	3	$350,391
David Singer	160	1	4	$340,363
Jacobo Fernandez-Hernandez	157	0	4	$425,762
Farzad Rouhani	140	1	3	$265,443
Andy Bloch	135	0	3	$585,620
Scott Seiver	130	1	3	$781,886
Theo Tran	125	0	4	$550,168

It's easy to see that the POY race is wide open; as others have suggested, this is indeed the Year of the Pro. The higher number of high-buy-in events, with their attendant smaller fields, is leading to more final tables and deep in-the-money cashes for players like Team PokerStars pro Greenstein and Full Tilt's Lindgren. However, they're not out of the woods yet; anyone in the Top 10 could take over the top spot with a bracelet win in any open event, worth 100 POY points.

Imagine if Andy Bloch got things to fall his way and won a bracelet instead of finishing in second, or if one of the chip leads Theo Tran so consistently builds can hold up and propel him to a win. Either of those situations, both well within the realm of possibility, would make the winner in question the leader of the POY race.

Fans, fellow professionals, and the folks running the WSOP should all be rejoicing that we actually have a tight POY race that's likely to stay competitive right to the end. Even if this year's WSOP doesn't produce a two-bracelet winner à la Jeff Madsen, Bill Chen, Tom Schneider, Mark Seif or Scott Fischman, a couple of final-table finishes by any of the top players has the ability to alter the standings. In other words, nobody who really wants the title can afford to slip up because there's always someone else waiting to take advantage.

While poker tours are popping up all around the world, there's no denying that the mix of history and hard cash on the line make the WSOP the king of tournaments. Because of that, a competitive race here in Las Vegas is great way for poker to elevate itself to a status more in line with professional sports.

What's really encouraging is that the changes that Harrah's has made to the WSOP as a whole, such as improving the structures and adding more game variety to the schedule, are really what's responsible for the competition at the top of the leaderboard.

More established, solid tournament professionals are making final tables as a result of these changes. That means it's going to be very important for Harrah's not to fix what isn't broken. Continuing to add more Omaha, Stud, and Lowball events, as well as keeping the improved structures in place rather than changing them, will be the keys to preserving all this competition.

For now, since neither the Main Event nor the $50k H.O.R.S.E. event awards points, we have another two weeks to watch this year's POY race evolve and finish itself out. Right now Greenstein and Lindgren have the lead, but anything can happen given the number of preliminary events remaining on the schedule. Anyone who loves poker, and in particular the WSOP, should have a great time seeing how the situation shakes out.

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2008 WSOP Day 19 Recap

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:54:48 +0100

With only five tournaments running today, the WSOP schedule felt a little light compared to the average six-event days we've had so far this year.

Luckily the action in the events that were being played made up for the missing sixth tournament.

Two events started today in the Amazon Room: Event 32, the $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em, and Event 33, the $10,000 World Championship Seven-Card Stud Hi-Lo Split Eight-or-Better.

The $1,500 NLHE drew 2,304 runners, a bit smaller than this year's other $1,500 events but still a healthy field. Only 166 of them survived to Day 2, with Andy Garza leading the pack at $164,000 in chips.

Among those coming back tomorrow with solid stacks are Courtney Harrington ($95,000), Fabrice Soulier ($70,000), Shawn Buchanan ($65,000), Ray Henson ($57,000), Neil Channing ($48,000) and Phil Hellmuth ($45,000).

The $10,000 World Championship Stud Hi-Lo drew 261 players, and as of press time there were 144 remaining. Marcel Luske held the chip lead at $55,000 in chips. Joining him in returning tomorrow with lots of chips are Shawn Sheikhan ($47,000), Marco Traniello ($41,000), $1,500 Razz winner Barry Greenstein ($40,000), and Robert Mizrachi ($39,000).

One tournament played down to a final table today, Event 31, the $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em Six-Handed. Only 73 of the initial 1,012 runners came back with chips today, and there were more than a few known players in the mix. Recent bracelet winner Max Pescatori, Shannon Shorr, Shankar Pillai, Bill Chen and Bruno Fitoussi all cashed but came up short of the final table.

It looked like former Main Event champ Scotty Nguyen would be at the final, but in a flashback to last year's Main Event he came up just short. On a particularly brutal hand, Nguyen's pocket tens fell to Seth Fischer's 9 7.

Team PokerStars pro Dario Minieri comes in as the chip leader for tomorrow's final table with almost 50% more chips than anyone else at the table. He is joined there by Kevin Song, Justin Filtz, John O'Shea, Fischer and Stuart Marshak.

On the final-table front, it was a day of firsts at the WSOP.

Despite his home country's reputation for producing great poker players, Full Tilt Poker pro Rob Hollink's win in the $10,000 World Championship Limit Hold'em event made him the first player from the Netherlands to win a WSOP bracelet. The $496,931 win here tonight came against tough competition too, as Hollink outlasted the likes of J.C. Tran and Andy Bloch.

Coming in second to Hollink in the LHE World Championship was Jerrod Ankenman, coauthor with two-time bracelet winner Bill Chen of The Mathematics of Poker. This was the second time in the last three years that Ankenman was the runner-up in a Limit Hold'em event; the first time was in the 2006 $3,000 LHE.

While the World Championship LHE was playing out on the ESPN set, a more dramatic confrontation played out on the side table, where longtime pro John Phan outlasted 22-year-old Johnny Neckar to claim his first bracelet in Event 29, the $3,000 No-Limit Hold'em.

The heads-up match was one for the ages, lasting nearly seven hours. For a little perspective, consider that even though there were seven players left in the $10,000 LHE event when Phan and Neckar began their match, Hollink emerged victorious before Phan was able to shut his opponent down.

At one point late in the proceedings Phan found himself all-in with A-J against Neckar's K-J, only to find a king on the flop. After blanking the turn, Phan called specifically for the ace of diamonds - and hit it on the river to stay alive.

Following that turn of events, the two shoved all-in blind three times before deciding to slow back down. Phan finally closed the deal about 15 minutes later, taking home $434,789 for his effort.

Tomorrow promises just as much action as today, so be sure to join our live updates team for all the action here on PokerListings.com.

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WSOP Stories, 2008 Edition

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:08:08 +0100

We're just over two weeks into the 2008 WSOP and, just like there are every year, already there are plenty of big stories to follow.

Here's a look at those I've been following.

Selbst Control

Vanessa Selbst has been one of the best stories of the WSOP so far. My introduction to her was her performance at the 2006 WSOP $2,000 NLHE event, where she came into the final table third in chips and knocked out Carlos Mortensen before running a gigantic bluff right into an opponent's pocket aces. It's been said before that people judge those sorts of plays by whether or not they work; a lot of people (myself included) wondered what in the world she could have been thinking.

She won her first bracelet a few days ago in the $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha event, and then followed it up today by finishing in third place in the World Championship No Limit Hold'em for the second straight year. Combine that with her results last year and Selbst - who is still only 23 years old - has won over $600,000 at the Rio, making her one of the most successful WSOP players in the last three years.

If she can keep her current form, or even improve upon it, she has a legitimate shot at becoming the first woman to win the WSOP Player of the Year.

E-Dog's House

At this point in the WSOP, none other than Erick Lindgren sits atop the Player of the Year standings. E-Dog has been playing some of the best poker of his career since the beginning of the month, with his most significant accomplishment being the big win in the $5,000 Mixed Hold'em event. Before taking down that bracelet, Full Tilt pro Lindgren was widely considered one of the best players to never win a bracelet.

Lindgren also made the final table of the $5,000 No Limit Deuce-to-Seven Draw event against arguably the single toughest field of the entire WSOP, finishing in fourth place. He seems to have fire in his belly and unless something crazy happens between now and July he'll be in contention for Play of the Year the entire way.

The Mackey Factor

James "mig.com" Mackey won last year's $5,000 NLHE event and fell one spot shy of scoring a second bracelet in this year's $10,000 World Championship Mixed Event, proof enough that he is one of the greatest young players in the world today.

Then there are the two wins by Blair and Grant Hinkle, which can also be attributed, however indirectly, to Mackey's poker prowess. Blair Hinkle was Mackey's college roommate, and mig.com helped him to progress by talking poker with him. Blair then helped his brother Grant, who had been responsible for getting Blair into poker in the first place, to make the transition from cash games to tournaments.

Given the level of success the three have had already this year, it's hard to argue that Mackey isn't one of the game's great young minds.

Can Tran Do It?

Theo Tran has already cashed four times this WSOP, with two of them being final tables within the first seven events. His results this year have brought him to eight cashes and four final tables in his three years at the Rio.

Tran has a habit of building monster stacks but not quite being able to close the deal. However, he remains one of everyone's favorites whenever he's still alive at the end of a tournament. It's easy to understand why - without winning a bracelet yet this year, he sits sixth in the Player of the Year standings.

Still, the only real way to leave your mark at the WSOP is to win a bracelet, and Tran hasn't done that yet. Given his penchant for making final tables, it will be interesting to see whether he can get the monkey off his back and strap a little bling to his wrist.

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More Variety, More Shots at Bling for Pros at WSOP

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:47:44 +0100

During the course of covering Day 1 of the $5,000 No-Limit Deuce-to-Seven Draw w/Rebuys, I ended up speaking to Michael Mizrachi about playing a game that isn't in his regular rotation. He told me that he had played quite a bit of Limit Triple Draw, but hadn't played much of the actual game at hand.

As you'd expect if you'd talked to him much, Mizrachi was confident despite his lack of experience in the game. "It's a tournament," he said. "You can figure any tournament out."

The Grinder didn't end up cashing in the event, but his statement about being able to figure out a tournament strategy for a game you don't regularly play holds true. Players who don't know a certain game intimately have won bracelets in the past. One that comes to mind is Cliff Josephy, who hadn't played much (if any) Seven-Card Stud before winning the 2005 $1,500 Stud bracelet.

I won't be surprised at all if we see this sort of thing start to happen more often, both at this year's WSOP and in future years. Being able to adjust to new games is going to become more important at the WSOP as the schedule continues to shift.

Recent bracelet winner Daniel Negreanu called the 2006 WSOP schedule the "World Series of Hold'em," and for good reason: 34 of the 44 scheduled bracelet events were in Hold'em, with the remaining 10 spread across a wide variety of games ranging from 2-7 to Razz.

Negreanu's complaint certainly appears to have been addressed this year. Twenty of the 55 scheduled bracelet events are in games other than Hold'em, with another event (which started today) playing half Hold'em, half Omaha. So what does this shift mean in terms of its effects on the poker world?

For starters, the elite players in the poker world have more opportunities to win bracelets than they did two years ago. The shift to mostly No-Limit Hold'em had been a boon to newbies who could learn to play one game particularly well, giving them lots of cheap shots at bracelets and narrowing the gap between themselves and professional players.

Today there are multiple Stud bracelets, multiple Lowball bracelets, and multiple Omaha bracelets - all games which newbies don't often pick up as quickly as the easy-to-learn Hold'em.

Players like Full Tilt pro Mike Matusow, who won the $5,000 Deuce-to-Seven bracelet yesterday despite admittedly not having much experience in the game, are going to benefit both from having the cash to play these generally high-buy-in events and from their status as poker celebrities.

As the Mouth said in his PokerListings.com interview, "Because poker players become celebrities ... it's worth a lot more [for me] than for anyone else to win a bracelet because I'm a well-known name."

The WSOP's schedule shift toward more variety will also mean seeing more players like Mizrachi, Josephy and Matusow picking up unfamiliar games. Given their mastery of other poker variants, as well as their understanding of tournament strategy, it's a sure bet that a good percentage of them will pick up the new game well enough to give them a shot at winning.

And given the smaller fields in Stud, Omaha and lowball events, these players' actual mathematical chances of winning a bracelet are much higher than they are in the 3,000-man donkaments. Those extra shots at bracelets will give a lot of the younger players who have grown up with easy access to different games online the chance to become one of poker's "rock stars," get sponsored, and live the good life.

As for everyone else who doesn't want to play Razz or Triple Draw, they'll still have No-Limit Hold'em available to play almost every day. After all, the two-hole-card game is the backbone of the modern poker boom and that alone means it's not going anywhere. You'll just have to beat 3,000 players to win a bracelet, whereas everyone else has to outlast 500 or fewer.

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2008 WSOP Day 11 Recap

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:37:31 +0100

We're just 11 days into the 2008 World Series of Poker, but it may as well be a month with all the action that's been packed in. Another six tournaments were running today, including another marquee event whose field was composed of some of the world's best players.

The $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em final table played out turbo-sit-and-go style this evening in front of the Milwaukee's Best Light No-Limit Lounge.

Duncan "Pumper" Bell, a 32-year-old professional poker player from Vancouver, Canada, claimed the bracelet at the end of the shortest final table of this year's WSOP. His triumph was only his second career cash, his first having come in the 2005 Main Event.

"Every poker player's dream is to win a bracelet," Bell said afterward. "Some people have 11 of them. I'll be happy with just one."

Also playing down to a winner today was the $10,000 World Championship Seven-Card Stud event. Eventual winner Eric Brooks outlasted a strong final table that included Full Tilt Poker pro Erik Seidel, Minh Ly, David Oppenheim and 2008 Aussie Millions champ Alexander Kostritsyn.

It was the Russian Kostritsyn who took charge as players fell by the wayside, employing a highly aggressive style to pick up pots and put his opponents on the defensive. One big pot made all the difference in his finish, though, when his trip nines fell to Brooks' kings full of queens.

That swing gave Brooks, who had never before cashed at the WSOP, the momentum he needed. He took out Kostritsyn a bit later, and then outlasted Fu Wong to claim the bracelet. In a move even more stunning than his win over a tough field, Brooks announced he would be donating his entire first-place cash prize to the Decision Education Foundation.

Two events were set to restart and play down to final tables today: Event 13, the $1,000 World Championship Ladies No-Limit Hold'em event, and Event 16, the $2,000 Omaha Hi-Lo Split Eight-or-Better.

The Ladies Event managed to play down to the final nine as planned without much of a problem. Among the better-known players who cashed leading up to the final table were Linda Johnson (23rd), Evelyn Ng (48th), Kathy Liebert (47th), and Olga Varkonyi (37th).

When the tournament was down to two tables there was a large crowd gathered around to see who would make it down to the final nine.

Svetlana Gromenkova had bludgeoned the rest of the field most of the day and she will enter tomorrow with the chip lead, but Christine Priday snuck up to within $105,000 by the end of play.

Event 16, the Omaha Hi-Lo event, was scheduled to play down to the final nine tonight, but the tournament staff made an executive decision to end play at 3 a.m - much to the chagrin of players like former O8 bracelet winner Scott Clements, who prefer to play through and use their opponents' fatigue to get an edge.

Clements, Ted Forrest, Ralph Perry, Pat Poels, and Jimmy Fricke are among the 18 players who will come back to fight it out for the bracelet tomorrow.

Event 17, the two-day $1,500 No Limit Hold'em Shootout, began with a field of 1,000 players on 100 tables, each one playing down to a winner before the second round began. Unfortunately for the tournament staff, a few of the tables had very long heads-up matches that pushed the start of Round Two back to after 9:00 p.m. That delay pushed the tournament into the wee hours of the morning, and at publishing time there were still multiple tables in play.

The other event of the day was one of the most prestigious tournaments on the schedule this year: Event 18, the $5,000 No Limit Deuce-to-Seven Draw with Rebuys. Only 85 players turned up, but they were among the most skilled and successful poker players in the world. After eight levels only 39 players remained, including Phil Ivey, who reportedly is into the event for $60,000.

Be sure to come back tomorrow for more 2008 WSOP coverage here at PokerListings.com.

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A World Championship? Really?

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:56:41 +0100

Today's WSOP action saw the first day of play in what the WSOP has billed the "World Championship" Ladies No-Limit Hold'em Event. Unlike every other tournament this year with the designation World Championship, however, the buy-in for the women's tournament was not $10,000.

All 1,190 women who entered today paid $1,000 for a chance at a bracelet. The price tag is probably meant to be a bargain for women who want to play a WSOP event but don't want to play against a field comprised mostly of men; along with the Seniors Event (also dubbed a World Championship) it stands as the cheapest tournament on the WSOP schedule.

However, the smaller buy-in means a smaller chip stack to start the tournament, thanks to the Series' policy of having all starting chip stacks equal twice the buy-in.

This year's World Championship Ladies Event participants were given $2,000 in starting chips and the same structure as is used in the $1,500 NLHE events. With only 67% of the chips usually used in that structure, even some of the more experienced women were facing coin-flip situations earlier than they normally would, making luck a bigger factor in determining the winner than in any other WSOP event.

The first six levels of the Ladies Event saw the elimination of 82% of the starting field, a higher rate than your average guaranteed prize pool tournament on Full Tilt Poker or other online poker rooms.

Is that really the standard Harrah's wants to set for an event it bills as a World Championship? And furthermore, don't these women - who are, after all, paying customers - deserve better than what the WSOP has given them?

Some of the people I've talked to on the floor have suggested that a good solution would be to simply give the women $3,000 in starting chips for their $1,000 buy-in. I don't think that's any more fair to the players in other events than the $2,000 starting stack was for the women. The real solution is to raise the buy-in for the event to $1,500 from here on.

A higher buy-in would accomplish several important things. First, it would give the women enough starting chips to allow skill to play a greater role in the eventual outcome.

Second, it would put the event on par with every other event during the WSOP, instead of having it remain a sort of "minor-league" tournament amongst a major-league schedule.

And third, it would be a further signal from the WSOP to its players that their concerns are important and will be addressed.

The management at Harrah's might worry about having lower participation because of an increase in the cost of the tournament, but they shouldn't. If anything, they should be looking to promote a new starting chip stack in order to attract more skilled women to the tournament who don't currently play because they feel it's a crapshoot.

The women's event has grown as much as (or more than) other WSOP events since the beginning of the poker boom, going from 204 entrants in 2004 to last year's record of 1,286 players. Even with the small decline in participation this year, it's clear that women are becoming more interested in - and more skilled at - poker every day.

But as they grow more skilled and experienced in poker, these women players are deservedly going to ask that they be given the same starting stacks and structures as they get in other events. If they don't get what they want they may stop playing in the Ladies Event altogether, since they'll certainly be capable of staying competitive in open fields.

A World Championship event that no woman wants to play is the last thing that Harrah's wants. Next year's event should be a $1,500 so that the ladies tournament will sustain its popularity and help to continue to grow the game.

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Stories Abound at the WSOP

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 07:49:37 +0100

This is my third year working at the World Series of Poker, which means I've seen a lot of recent poker history up close and personal. Every year the number of the stories in the Amazon Room is nearly limitless, but there are certain ones that stick out and come to define the entire summer in your memory.

2006

In 2006, Jeff Madsen's two-bracelet run - including a heads-up win over Erick Lindgren - was the biggest story just in terms of the game itself. "The Kid" came out of nowhere to make four final tables in three different games, and he came more from a live poker background than the online pedigree that many in the community might have expected from the youngest person ever to win a WSOP bracelet.

The $50,000 HORSE tournament went off for the first time in 2006, with the late Chip Reese claiming his third career WSOP bracelet by defeating Andy Bloch in the longest heads-up match in WSOP history. The tournament had the largest buy-in of any WSOP event ever held and drew an all-star field. The final table was played as No Limit Hold'em, generating a bit of controversy as the game is usually not a part of any HORSE tournament.

The other huge story of the 2006 WSOP was the Main Event. It was almost a full order of magnitude larger than the 2005 Main Event, which itself was the largest poker tournament of all time. An astounding 8,773 players showed up to play the two-week-long tournament, which culminated in amateur player Jamie Gold claiming first prize over highly-regarded professional Allen Cunningham.

Gold generated more than a bit of controversy with his table ethics during the tournament, and later ended up embroiled in a lawsuit over a handshake agreement he'd made with another player, Crispin Leyser, for half Gold's winnings before the Main Event even began. (The lawsuit was eventually settled under undisclosed terms.)

2007

For the first time since the beginning of the poker boom, the WSOP did not allow online poker sites to buy their satellite winners into WSOP events. This policy was seen as a response to the passage of the UIGEA. Many player who won Main Event satellites on Full Tilt Poker or PokerStars simply held onto the cash, or bought into smaller events instead of the $10,000 event. As a result preliminary event participation was up, but Main Event attendance dipped for only the second year in WSOP history.

Last year saw many bracelet events and other WSOP tournaments being partially run in a tent located outside where the Poker Kitchen currently resides. The tent was unpopular for lots of reasons, not least among them the fact that being outside in Las Vegas during the summertime sucks, even with some attempt at air conditioning. It comes as no surprise that the tent was scrapped after the end of the WSOP as a total failure.

Also introduced last year were live streaming internet broadcasts of certain final tables not filmed by ESPN, complete with hole cards just like a television broadcast. What could have been a fantastic product ended up making nobody happy. Players who had to play for a bracelet inside a sequestered area where their cell phones were taken away and they couldn't have their friends and family watch them play. The public had to subscribe to get the final tables, and then had to deal with a one-hour delay from the live action on top of it all.

Vinnie Vinh became a tragic story during the WSOP in 2007. He built huge chip leads on Day 1 of several tournaments, only to go MIA on Day 2 and cash without showing back up. Rumors about the causes for Vinh's problems abounded, as will happen in any community as small as that of professional poker players. Whatever his reasons, Vinh's actions certainly had an impact on those around him.

Then there was Tom Schneider, who won the Player of the Year award by making three final tables and taking home bracelets in two of them. The Arizonan's cashes all came in games other than hold'em (HORSE, Omaha-8/Stud-8, and Stud-8) and proved that the WSOP had truly reversed course from being an all hold'em, all the time schedule.

2008

This year, the story to me so far seems to be the continued shift of the schedule. Last year Harrah's tweaked the schedule to offer more non-hold'em events, but this year they've added $10,000 World Championship events in many of poker's disciplines. So far the Pot Limit Hold'em and Mixed Game World Championships have drawn field composed almost entirely of top-flight pros displaying their skills and fighting for the bracelet and cash. In both events the final tables were composed mostly of world-class players, a big PR score for the WSOP folks.

There will of course be plenty more stories during the remainder of the WSOP, and I'll be on hand with the rest of the PokerListings.com crew the whole time passing them on to you.

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Down with Chaos, Up with Order at the WSOP

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:42:23 +0100

One of the most striking things to me during my brief 2008 World Series of Poker experience to date is just how much more smoothly things seem to be going than they have the past two years. The sense of chaos that permeated the Rio the past few years is nowhere to be found.

Where the previous years were marked by less-than-popular "features" such as starting events in tents during the Las Vegas summer heat, sequestering final tables like murder trial juries, and registration lines stretching halfway back to the Rio proper, this year has been a breeze of almost orderly satisfaction on the part of the players, staff and media alike.

Keep in mind, too, that the numbers of players in the Amazon Room have been even higher than last year. The tournament fields are more comparable to those of Sunday tournaments on PokerStarsFull Tilt Poker[[/link]] than to, say, a WPT event.

Compared to the last two years of barely contained chaos, it's almost like Harrah's hired a feng shui expert to align the room's energy properly and then had clergy from all the world's religions bless the grounds to ensure peace and prosperity.

That's really not all too far from reality, at least in terms of realigning the room. Some of the biggest changes involve foot traffic patterns in the room.

Moving the satellites to another room was a fantastic start, freeing up nearly a quarter of the space in the Amazon Room for more tables in WSOP events. Then the WSOP management moved the cage to its own area and made separate cages for tournaments and cash games to speed up the process for those recently bereft of their chips.

Then there are the other popular changes like the additions of more high-buy-in events and more mixed-game events to the schedule.

Of course, making the decision to implement such changes isn't the same as following through on them. Without leadership and initiative on the part of the people behind the WSOP, no number of changes would make any difference. Luckily for everyone involved, it appears that on an organizational level the ship is being run the right way.

I talked with Tournament Director Jack Effel while waiting for the $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em w/Rebuys event's bubble to burst today, and asked him what exactly has made the difference in how this year feels compared to the past. He attributed it to preparation on the part of all the departments involved in pulling off a successful event.

"We wanted to make sure everyone was following suit," he told me. "We got all the departments together ... you don't want to leave accounting out, or customer service, or the cage. You want to get everyone together and hold them to the fire to make sure they're doing their jobs."

He also credits a new registration system designed to get players in the game faster than ever before, which has led to higher customer satisfaction.

Apparently the approach is paying dividends. Effel says that all the comments he's gotten from players have been positive. "There will always be operational challenges, of course, but - knock on wood - there hasn't been anything major this year."

If turnout stays steady for the rest of the summer and the management continues steering the ship in the right direction, it won't be a stretch to say that 2008 was the best WSOP of the modern era.

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The Donkfish Strike Again: Day 2 Madness

info@www.Pokerlistings.com — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 03:25:29 +0100

Last year's first $1,500 NLHE event, won by Ciaran O'Leary, drew a whopping field of 2,998, setting a record for the largest preliminary bracelet event in WSOP history.

That's no longer a record, though: registration for Event 2 hadn't yet closed in the middle of the day and the field was already well over 3,500, with approximately 4,000 expected by the start of Day 1b.

One of the many changes to this year's WSOP involves splitting these types of events into separate flights in order to relieve some of the congestion that comes with the huge crowds. Today's Event 2, the $1,500 NLHE, is the first chance Harrah's has had to employ its new strategy.

The hallways leading to the Amazon Room were, of course, packed wall to wall with the normally elusive American Donkfish (Piscus americanus), all of whom took the low-buy-in bait to feed their dreams of winning a bracelet.

The crowd wasn't quite as thick as in past years, however, and there were no registration lines snaking out to the Rio proper. All this would seem to indicate that the "two flights" plan was working out well.

The play was as bad as the local cardroom donkaments, as all WSOP regulars have come to expect of these monster fields. Plenty of players were calling monster raises before the flop with a range bigger than Montana, and then floating post-flop with pair draws. That's bad for good players who get unlucky, of course, but it truly makes the tournament a fantastic value for anyone with even a modicum of skill.

Among those who were taking advantage of the weak field was Jay Greenspan, author of Hunting Fish, a chronicle of his journey through casinos and home games across America to build a bankroll for the WSOP. He was already up to 23,000 when the average stack was still hovering around 5,000. It looked in the middle of the day like all that practice hunting fish across the continent was great preparation for the old-school poker writer.

All the madness won't end with the close of play today, thanks to the second flight due to begin tomorrow. We'll have plenty more doses of donkalicious goodness for you from the floor then.

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