Posts Tagged ‘november nine’
2010 November Nine Reuniting at Foxwoods
January 10th, 2011
Foxwoods is getting the band back together – and you’re invited to come along.
Normally it takes a stroke of luck to get more than one former WSOP Main Event finalist at the same poker table. Next month, though, all nine of last year’s finalists will reunite at the Foxwoods Resort Casino.
Last year’s November Nine – Jonathan Duhamel, John Racener, Joseph Cheong, Filippi Candio, Michael Mizrachi, John Dolan, Jason Senti, Matt Jarvis and Soi Nguyen – are being reassembled as part of Foxwoods’ Mega Stack Challenge XIX, which runs from February 4th to the 13th. They will all serve as hosts for the tournament series, but more interestingly, they will all play in a three-table reunion tournament against winners of a series of satellite tournaments to be held at the casino from January 11th to February 3rd. The reunion tournament is scheduled for February 8th in the newly opened Foxwoods tournament room.
“We are thrilled to host these poker superstars at Foxwoods and are proud to be a part of such a historic event,” said Terry Chiaradio, director of Poker Operations at Foxwoods. “We are pleased to be able to share this reunion of the 2010 November Nine with not only the Foxwoods players, but also the entire poker community.”
This isn’t the first time Foxwoods has welcomed members of the November Nine to its property for one of its signature tournament series. Duhamel, the reigning world champion, hosted the Mega Stack Challenge last fall, and 2009 WSOP Main Event runner-up Darvin Moon has also played host at the Connecticut casino’s tournament series in the past.
Darvin Moon Hosting Foxwoods Poker Tournaments
December 2nd, 2010
Don’t piss off Darvin Moon. He has a chainsaw and he knows how to use it!
Ah, Darvin Moon. Going into the 2009 November Nine as the overwhelming chip leader, the fiercely independent logger from Maryland turned his nose up at the gold mine of online poker sponsorships because he didn’t want anyone telling him where to go and what to do. Now that he has the longest Wikipedia entry of any self-employed logger in America Moon is apparently perfectly okay with taking orders, because he’s the host of the upcoming Mega Stack Challenge poker tournaments at Foxwoods.
The six-tournament schedule at the Mega Stack Challenge XVIII (that’s “18” if you’re not into Roman numerals) is all no-limit hold’em, all the time. Buy-ins range from $200 for the bounty tournament to $1,100 for the Main Event, and each tournament also has a guaranteed prize pool. The biggest guarantee is $100,000 for the Main Event, with another $275,000 guaranteed across the other five events.
Darvin Moon isn’t the first November Nine star to host the Foxwoods Mega Stack Challenge – 2010 world champ Jonathan Duhamel hosted the last installment earlier this year while he was waiting for the final table to resume. Moon’s tour as host begins this Saturday, December 4, when the $560 event gets started at 11:00 a.m. at Foxwoods, and continues through next weekend when the Main Event will play out. If you want to keep up how poker’s version of the Tea Party handles his hosting duties you can check out Foxwoods Live.
Interest Adds Just $459 to November Nine Prize Money
November 4th, 2010
The 2010 WSOP November Nine just got $459 richer.
There are just two days to go until the November Nine sit down for the final table of the 2010 WSOP main event. On Saturday afternoon, they’ll start playing poker for a shot at the 1st place prize of $8,944,138. Or so we all thought…
The reality is that the prize pool for the nine finalists just got bigger. A lot bigger.
The surprising increase comes through the miracle of interest. After all, the 7,319 entrants in the main event paid their fees way back in the summer. And since the prize money has yet to be awarded, that means the good folks at Harrah’s, the company that runs the WSOP, have been sitting on all that cash as they await the results of the final table. To keep things all fair and legal, Harrah’s keeps the prize pool in a fund administered by Goldman Sachs. And so, that fund accrues some serious interest.
So how much bigger are those prizes? According to the WSOP press release (PDF link), the total remaining prize pool for the November Nine was $21,726,230 back when they set up the fund. And now it’s gone up to a whopping $21,726,689.
That’s right… in three months, that $21 million bucks racked up a grand total of $459 bucks in interest. And no, that number isn’t missing any zeroes.
Somehow, Harrah’s managed to stash their money in a fund with the world’s crappiest interest rate. And sure, the winner is getting over eight million bucks, so a few more thousand one way or another isn’t going to make a huge difference. But adding .000023% interest (or something. I can’t do actual math) for three months is a little silly.
For the record, the first place prize is now $172 more than it was. The 8th place winnings rose by a whopping five bucks… which should almost pay for a day’s parking at the Rio.
Just One Week to the WSOP Final Table
October 30th, 2010
Michael Mizrachi will be looking to add to his WSOP player’s championship win.
The one week countdown is on for the final table of the World Series of Poker main event. That means just a few days for the members of the November Nine to sew sponsor patches onto shirts, pray to whatever god they think will help and get a few last interviews in. And it means the sizeable crew at ESPN are resting up in preparation for their own WSOP marathon.
The players will make their way to the Rio in Las Vegas, and see their first cards at 12pm PST on November 6th. From then it will be a marathon of heartbreak and glory until just two players remain. At that point, heads-up play gets going at 8pm PST on November 8th, with a champ crowned and enriched a few hours later.
But just when the winner is counting his millions, and the losers are licking their wounds, the ESPN crew will be neck-deep in footage as they struggle to turn it into a TV show in just a couple days. Their coverage of the event starts November 9th, just three days after the event starts. To put it together so quickly requires twenty-one cameras, and a crew of seventy-one coffee-chugging commentators, camera operators and editors.
Like pretty much every year, the 2010 WSOP final table features players from the two extreme ends of the experience scale. This year, Michael Mizrachi plays the role of the seasoned vet looking for the ultimate poker prize. Last year it was Phil Ivey, but Mizrachi will be hoping to do better than Ivey’s early elimination. And this year’s Darvin Moon, the no-name player who’s suddenly appearing on the game’s biggest stage, will be played by amateur Soi Nguyen.
For those who like their WSOP viewing a little more raw, but timely, ESPN3.com will also be airing a delayed “live-stream” of the action.
TV Table Lineup Set at WPT Festa al Lago
October 20th, 2010
Legends of Poker champ Andy Frankenberger can win his second WPT title today.
The final TV table is set at Bellagio’s Festa al Lago – and the lineup is a bit more anonymous than you might have expected given the 13 players who started Day 4 with chips.
Incoming chip leader Annette Obrestad’s hopes for a big WPT score went south in a hurry as she doubled up Skip Wilson twice, first when his nut flush draw came home on the turn and then when her A-K couldn’t outrace his Q-Q. That gave Wilson, who entered Day 5 as one of the short stacks, all the spark he needed to make the TV table. Obrestad, meanwhile, was left short-stacked and eventually busted in 13th place when her Q-T couldn’t beat Brandon Steven’s A-T.
Jeff Madsen joined Obrestad on the rail in disappointing fashion, finishing in 11th place when his A-Q fell to Jason Koon’s A-4 thanks to four spades hitting the board to give Koon a flush. November Nine bubble boy Brandon Steven also fell short, busting in 9th place when his 8-8 couldn’t outrun Bobby Suer’s A-K. That didn’t help Suer much, though; he was the next to go in 8th place when he moved his short stack all-in holding A-8 but ran into Noah Schwartz’s Q-Q.
Finally Allen Kessler, who is enjoying the best year of his decade-long poker career, busted on the final table bubble. He moved all-in with A-K, only to find himself up against Koon’s A-A. No miracles meant the final table lineup of Skip Wilson, Michael Benvenuti, Jason Koon, Noah Schwartz, Randal Flowers and Andy Frankenberger was set.
Flowers and Frankenberger will each be seeking his second career WPT title at Festa al Lago – Frankenberger won the Legends of Poker just a few months ago, and Flowers won last season’s WPT Spanish Championship. Schwartz, meanwhile, will be looking to improve on his third-place finish at the Borgata Poker Open back in Season VI. The other three players are each making their first WPT final table and will be looking to upset the world to lay claim to the $831,500 first-place prize. Action gets underway at Bellagio today at 4 p.m. PT today.
Dan Harrington, Erik Seidel Named to Poker Hall of Fame
October 19th, 2010
Erik Seidel was drawing dead to this pot, but drawing live to a storied career.
One of this year’s new Poker Hall of Fame members has won the biggest tournament of them all – and the other came close in one of the most famous clip in WSOP history.
Dan Harrington was the 1995 WSOP Main Event champion, though his poker career since then has perhaps been more memorable. He made back-to-back final tables at the Main Event in 2003 and 2004, then the two largest fields that high-stakes tournament poker had ever seen, finishing third and fourth, respectively. He then went on to finish second at the 2005 WPT Doyle Brunson North American Poker Championship at Bellagio before winning his first WPT title at the 2007 Legends of Poker in Los Angeles. In between those feats, he wrote one of the most influential books in the history of poker, Harrington on Hold’em. Harrington has won $6.6 million in his poker career, ranking him 31st on the all-time money list.
Erik Seidel came close to victory in the 1988 WSOP Main Event, but his fall to Johnny Chan in heads-up play became the most famous second-place finish in the game’s history once it was immortalized in the movie Rounders. Never one to dwell on a missed opportunity, Seidel has since made the most of his time at the tables by winning eight gold WSOP bracelets in five different poker games. He also added a WPT title to his resume in 2008 at the Foxwoods Poker Classic. All told, Seidel ranks 10th on the all-time money list with $10.35 million in lifetime earnings.
“I’m very honored to be elected to the Poker Hall of Fame this year and it’s an extra bonus for me to be going in with Dan Harrington,” said Erik Seidel. “We have played together and have been great friends for my entire poker career. Both of us refined our games at the Mayfair Club in New York. I have such a high regard for the many members of the Poker Hall of Fame that I have played with over the years and it’s a real privilege to be able to join them.”
The two men will be inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame during a special ceremony at the Rio in Las Vegas held during the November Nine weekend next month.
Annette Obrestad Leads WPT Festa al Lago With 13 Left
October 18th, 2010
Can Annette put together her first WPT title run at Bellagio?
Another day of poker at Bellagio is in the books, this time taking the field at the WPT Festa al Lago from 41 players down to just 13. The overnight chip leader is none other than online poker legend and former WSOP Europe Main Event winner Annette Obrestad. Fresh off a heads-up tourney win at EPT London, the diminutive Norwegian bagged up 2,009,000 in chips at the end of the night to put her name in everyone’s overnight headlines.
Right behind Obrestad is Andy Frankenberger, the equity derivatives trader who won the WPT Legends of Poker main event in Los Angeles back in August. He finished the day with 1,820,000 chips. Close behind are Jeff Madsen (1,500,000), Allen Kessler (1,275,000), and John Monnette (1,271,000), with November Nine bubble boy Brandon Steven (977,000) a little further back. Other notables among the 13 remaining players include Florida poker pro Noah Schwartz, former WPT Southern Championship runner-up Bobby Suer and WPT Spanish Championship winner Randal Flowers.
Steve O’Dwyer came into the day with the chip lead, but after finding himself short-stacked he busted in 25th place when his queens fell to Brandon Steven’s 4-4. Also among the fallen on the day were Barry Greenstein (38th place), Tom Marchese (35th), Daniel Alaei (31st), Erik Cajelais (26th), Matt Affleck (22nd), Matt Stout (18th), McLean Karr (17th), Chad Batista (16th), Mark Newhouse (15th) and Lauren Kling (14th).
The plan for Day 5 is to play down to the TV table, which theoretically shouldn’t take long since the field only has to drop from 13 players to six and the uberaggressive Annette Obrestad is the chip leader. But this is tournament poker we’re talking about, and with a guaranteed $80,000 pay jump over 13th place money for everyone who makes the final table there could be plenty of incentive to slow things down, depending on who makes it close to that bubble. Action gets going at noon PT and as usual the WPT is covering the whole enchilada.
Steve O’Dwyer Leads, 41 Remain at WPT Festa al Lago
October 18th, 2010
Steve O’Dwyer seeks his second Bellagio WPT final table.
Three full days of poker are in the books at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, where poker pro Steve O’Dwyer leads the field at the 2010 WPT Festa al Lago.
O’Dwyer started slow with 157,100 chips and fell back a bit before doubling up in back-to-back hands, once through Jared Jaffee and the next through Matt Affleck, to move over the 500,000-chip mark. From there he used his stack to move up to a day-ending lead of 844,500 chips. He’ll be looking to use his advantage to make his second career final table at Bellagio, and hopefully to improve upon his sixth-place finish from last year’s Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic main event.
Right behind Steve O’Dwyer is everybody’s favorite conspiracy theorist/rapper/pro poker player, Jeff Madsen, who finished the day with 814,000 chips to lead the other 40 remaining players. Other notables with above-average stacks when play resumes today include WPT Spanish Championship winner Randal Flowers (795,500), former WPT chairman Lyle Berman (458,500), two-time WPT final tablist Jared Jaffee (426,500), used-car salesman and November Nine bubble boy Brandon Steven (425,000), Bay 101 champ McLean Karr (388,500), online MTT specialist Matt Stout (382,500), 2010 Legends of Poker champ Andy Frankenberger (360,500), reigning Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic champion Daniel Alaei (355,000), and 2007 WSOP Europe winner Annette Obrestad (343,500).
Cards get back in the air at Bellagio at noon PT (or shortly thereafter). You can follow the slow advance to the final table via the WPT site.
WSOP Main Event Action on ESPN Tonight
October 12th, 2010
ESPN’s WSOP coverage features the rise and fall of Matt Affleck.
The 2010 World Series of Poker main event final table is less than a month away. Yes, in just a few short weeks, the lucky (and good) members of the November Nine will sit down to play for obscene amounts of money. And with that climactic action looming just over the horizon, things are starting to heat up in ESPN’s weekly TV coverage of the event.
Starting at 9:30pm EST tonight, ESPN will show back-to-back hour-long broadcasts of action from day 7 of the main event. And for those who remember, things were starting to get plenty intense by that time. Stacks were large, the field was dwindling, and the relatively few remaining players couldn’t help but imagine themselves winning just those few hands necessary to secure themselves a spot at the final table.
Based on the promos up on the ESPN poker site, tonight’s action is going to feature a whole lot of Michael Mizrachi. And why not, given that The Grinder has secured himself a November Nine seat, and was one of the best known names still alive on day 7. It also looks like the young Matt Affleck will feature prominently in tonight’s show. For those who didn’t follow the action as it was happening this summer, the saga of Affleck is almost enough reason to watch all by itself.
Top Poker Pros Chase WSOP Europe Main Event Bracelet On Day 4
September 26th, 2010
Phil Ivey returns on Day 4 with a strong shot at making the WSOPE Main Event final table. (Photo: WSOPPhotos.com)
Of the 346 poker players who turned up for this year’s WSOP Europe Main Event, an unusually high percentage were players with serious tournament credentials. It’s no surprise, then, that there are still plenty of household names among the 22 players in contention as the fourth day of play begins.
Busting out before Day 3 was through but still taking home some pocket change were Irish Open winner James Mitchell (31st place), Freddy Deeb (30th), Bryn Kenney (29th), Yevgeniy Timoshenko (24th) and Barry Greenstein, who ended the day in 23rd place when his aces fell to Daniel Steinberg’s pocket tens. Though none of them cashed big, they did make the money, outperforming fellow pros like Huck Seed, Daniel Negreanu, Eli Elezra, November Nine member John Dolan, Nam Le, J.P. Kelly, Matt Stout and Nick Schulman.
Of those who will return to play more poker tomorrow, Brooklyn’s Ronald Lee is at the front of the pack with 947,000 in chips. Lee won two critical coin-flip hands early in the day before turning a flush in a big pot that sent John Eames home in 27th place and allowed Lee to make his first move toward the chip lead. A little further back in second and third places are David Peters (829,000) and Andrew Pantling (821,000), who finished right behind bracelet winner Phil Laak in Event #1 of this year’s WSOP Europe. And then there’s Viktor Blom, the Swede everyone in the universe is sure is Isildur1, sitting in fifth with 705,000 in chips.
As for the rest of the field, there’s a lot of hardware being toted around by poker pros at both ends of the leaderboard. Greg Mueller (151,000 in chips) and Roland de Wolfe (113,000), three WSOP bracelets between them, occupy the bottom two spots and will be looking to double up in short order. Meanwhile Phil Ivey (657,000) and Hoyt Corkins (566,000), who have 10 gold bracelets between them, occupy the sixth and seventh spots. And in between are two French players with titles from other tours, 2007 EPT Prague champ Arnaud Mattern (468,000) and 2009 WPT Merit Cyprus Classic winner Thomas Bichon (308,000).
Play down to the final table gets started in London at noon. American audiences who don’t want to follow live updates can watch Day 4 of WSOP Europe in its entirety, with hole cards, on ESPN3 at 12:00 p.m. ET.
