Posts Tagged ‘tournament of champions’
Big-Name Poker Pros Survive WSOP Europe High Roller Day 1
September 22nd, 2010
Phil Ivey is easily the biggest name left in the WSOP Europe High Roller field.
The first-ever WSOP Europe High Roller heads-up tournament started yesterday and drew 103 players, meaning that 25 of the field drew a bye in the first round. Everyone else drew an opponent in the first round and got down to business.
A slew of players who have solid years in 2010 fell by the wayside yesterday, including Sam Trickett, Justin “Boosted J” Smith, Jeffrey Lisandro, Sorel Mizzi, Tom Dwan, Daniel “jungleman12” Cates, and November Niners John Racener and Joseph Cheong. Others who failed to make it to round three included 2010 WSOP Player of the Year Frank Kassela, former WSOP Europe Main Event winner John Juanda, 11-time bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, WPT Player of the Year Faraz Jaka, November Niner Michael Mizrachi, EPT London winner Jake Cody and LA Poker Classic High Roller winner Scott Seiver.
As for the winners, Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies defeated Mike Matusow in round two only to draw WSOP Tournament of Champions winner and former NBC National Heads-Up champion Huck Seed in round three. The November Nine’s Matt Jarvis conquered Brandon Adams and drew EPT Prague High Roller winner Martin Kabrhel. And Jani Sointula will play Phil Ivey for what might be the first time since they were both in the final three of the 2004 Monte Carlo Millions. (Sointula won that time.)
Other poker pros who survived to round three include Shawn Buchanan, Howard Lederer, Ram Vaswani, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, McLean Karr, Amit Makhija, Daniel Negreanu, Andrew Robl, Neil Channing, Chris Moorman and Ludovic Lacay. They’re already back in action and you can check in on their progress via WSOP Europe live updates.
WSOP Europe Event #1 Sells Out
September 14th, 2010
The wait is over – WSOP Europe has finally arrived. (Photo: Rob Gracie)
WSOP Europe Event #1, £2,650 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em, got underway at noon London time today – and all of its seats sold out almost immediately.
The tournament had a cap of 204 players, a number that was easily met by the crowd of bracelet hopefuls gathered at London’s Casino at the Empire. Dozens more players who couldn’t be seated immediately still wanted to play the tournament, so WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel extended registration to allow alternates to enter the field when players busted. By the time registration closed a total of 244 players had entered the event, making the first event of WSOP Europe a smashing success.
Among the early chip leaders was Phil Ivey, who stacked small pot after small pot en route to the top of the leaderboard. Other early leaders included WSOP Circuit Caesars Palace winner Andrew “LuckyChewy” Lichtenberger, two-time WSOP bracelet winner and former WSOP Europe Main Event final tablist Praz Bansi, 2010 November Niner John Racener, and 2007 WSOP Europe Main Event winner Annette Obrestad.
On the flip side, a number of notable pros have already found their way to the exits. Among them are Tom “durrrr” Dwan, Men “The Master” Nguyen, Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott, WPT London High Roller winner Justin “Boosted J” Smith, WSOP Tournament of Champions winner Huck Seed and 2010 WSOP Player of the Year Frank Kassela.
Play continues through the evening before pausing and returning to play down to a final table tomorrow, while WSOP Europe Event #2, £5,250 Pot-Limit Omaha, will begin on Thursday at noon.
WPT London Day 3 Begins Without Phil Ivey
September 2nd, 2010
There won’t be any WPT main event cash for Phil Ivey this time around.
Just 39 players returned today for Day 3 of the first-ever WPT stop in London – and Phil Ivey wasn’t one of them. Ivey enjoyed a good run until he lost most of his stack with pocket queens against online qualifier Giovanni Safina of Italy when Safina flopped three tens with J-T. The rest of Ivey’s stack went when Luke Schwartz flopped the nut flush against him, leaving the Great One plenty of time to play high-stakes London cash games before WSOP Europe gets started in two weeks.
A handful of notable players did advance to Day 3, though. Praz Bansi and Richard Ashby were among the group of British poker pros who won WSOP bracelets this year, and both are still in contention to win the first WPT event on British soil. Angry young man Schwartz made it through to Day 3, but he lost a coin-flip in the early going to bust out. WSOP Tournament of Champions winner Huck Seed also found a way to get to Day 3 and even moved toward the top of the leaderboard for a bit, though he took a nasty beat holding A-K against A-9 shortly afterward to find his stack in jeopardy.
Today will likely be a short day for WPT London, since there are two more days of play left and the last is reserved for the final table. Tomorrow will see the tournament play down to that final table, as well as the £15,000 WPT London High Roller event, which at three times the buy-in of the main event should be enough to get the attention of Phil Ivey.
GSN to Air Doubles Poker Championship This Weekend
August 12th, 2010
What’s that you say? Want a new poker show? You got it!
Cable network GSN is no stranger to poker programming, having once been the home of the World Poker Tour and still serving as the only place to see High Stakes Poker and coverage of the Aussie Millions on television. This weekend the network is adding another poker show to its lineup with the Doubles Poker Championship.
The new show features a unique format. Each episode, two teams of two players each that alternate playing streets of no-limit hold’em, with one player making the decisions pre-flop and on the turn and the other player taking control on the flop and the river. It sounds a little gimmicky, but the personality pairings should be enough to make it interesting television.
A top-tier lineup of players, including eight-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Ivey, high-stakes online cash game pro Tom “durrrr” Dwan, WSOP Tournament of Champions winner Huck Seed, new Women in Poker Hall of Fame member Jennifer Harman, 11-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, and Florida State Poker Championship winner Mike “Ted Forrest Has Been Paid” Matusow, took part in the tournament. They and 26 other top poker players put up $50,000 apiece to play four “regular season” match-ups with different partners. The top half of the field then advanced to the semifinals, with two teams moving on to the final table to fight it out for the $1 million top prize.
Filmed at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, the program was put together by Poker PROductions, Mori Eskandani’s prolific production outfit responsible for poker shows like High Stakes Poker, Poker After Dark, NBC’s National Heads-Up Poker Championship, Poker SuperStars and ESPN’s coverage of WSOP Europe.
The Doubles Poker Championship will air on GSN at 9 p.m. ET this Saturday, August 14.
ESPN WSOP Coverage Features Tournament of Champions
August 3rd, 2010
Huck Seed will get plenty of airtime on ESPN tonight.
After kicking off its coverage of the 2010 World Series of Poker last week with Michael Mizrachi’s victory in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, this week ESPN is bringing the Tournament of Champions to viewers around the world.
The field for this year’s Tournament of Champions – the first one held since 2006, when Mike Sexton defeated Daniel Negreanu heads-up for the title – was split between automatic qualifiers and players selected by the public. The three previous TOC winners (Mike Matusow, Annie Duke and Mike Sexton) and the reigning WSOP Main Event and WSOP Europe Main Event winners (Joe Cada and Barry Shulman) all got automatic invites; two seats were held back by the event’s sponsors, and the rest were selected by the public from the ranks of living players who had previously won a WSOP bracelet.
Former WSOP Main Event champion Huck Seed was among that last group, though he never expected to be there. But as he has done so often in the past, the 1996 world champion made the most of the opportunity presented to him. He jumped out to an early advantage and held on to it long enough to make the final table against a tough lineup that included Duke, Negreanu and Jennifer Harman. Then he outlasted Johnny Chan and Howard Lederer in three-handed play to win the $500,000 top prize – not bad for a guy who never thought he would get voted in to the tournament in the first place.
The two-hour coverage of Seed’s victory in the Tournament of Champions begins tonight at 8 p.m. on ESPN.
WSOP Main Event Day 1C Complete
July 8th, 2010
Johnny Chan flashed back to 1988 with his big-stack performance on Day 1C of the 2010 WSOP Main Event.
After two starting days that saw 2,614 show up between them, Day 1C of the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event drew almost that many players all by itself. A total of 2,314 starters showed up at the Rio on Wednesday, bringing the total number of entrants so far this year to 4,928.
The list of poker players who found their way to the rail was filled with familiar names. Tournament of Champions winner Huck Seed, $10,000 Seven-Card Stud World Champion Men Nguyen, $10,000 Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em World Champion Ayaz Mahmood, 2009 November Niner Steve Begleiter, 2007 WSOP Main Event final tablist Lee Childs, WPT Player of the Year Faraz Jaka, two-time WSOP bracelet winners Jeff Madsen and Eric Froehlich, 2009 EPT Grand Final runner-up Matt Woodward, former Irish Open champ Neil Channing, online pro Shaun Deeb, and former WSOP Main Event champions Phil Hellmuth and Jerry Yang were among the casualties on this third starting day of the Main Event.
As for those who fared better on Day 1C, Mathiu Sauriol led them all with 168,900 in chips. Trailing Sauriol by just a few thousand was two-time Main Event champ Johnny Chan, who bagged up 163,700. Other pro poker players in the top ten at the end of the night included Lauren Kling (149,650), Barny Boatman (144,050) and Robert Mizrachi (134,000). A little further back, but still with every reason to be happy about their performances on Day 1C, are David Williams, Billy Kopp, Hoyt Corkins, Lex Veldhuis, Todd Terry, durrrr-killer Simon Watt, Brock Parker, Theo Tran, Liz Lieu, Isaac Baron, Alex Bolotin, Annie Duke, Matt Savage and defending champion Joe Cada.
If the pattern we’ve seen emerging so far continues to hold, Day 1D should be the biggest starting day of the four scheduled for this year’s WSOP Main Event. The Rio is ready to accommodate 3,800 players for the fourth and final starting day. That number would make this the second-largest live poker tournament in history, just 45 behind the 2006 WSOP Main Event won by Jamie Gold. It’s unlikely that will come to pass – but one never knows, now does one now does one now does one?
2010 WSOP Main Event Day 1B Is In The Books
July 7th, 2010
James Danielson led all players on Main Event Day 1B. (Photo: PokerNews)
A healthy field of 1,489 players turned up for the second starting day of the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event, nearly 400 more than showed up for Day 1A. Despite starting with 30,000 in chips and blinds of 50/100, some 468 of those starters had been eliminated from contention after four and a half levels of play.
Two-time WSOP bracelet winner Mark Seif, hedge fund manager turned high-stakes tournament player Dan Shak, multiple NAPT final tablist Sam Stein, former WSOP Main Event champion Jamie Gold, former WSOP Ladies Event champion Jennifer Tilly, Tournament of Champions satellite winner Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Panorama Towers prop-bettor Justin Bonomo, PokerRoad founder and Twitter guru Joe Sebok, former WSOP Player of the Year Erick Lindgren, NAPT High Roller champ and yogurt-eating marathon man Ashton Griffin, online phenom Annette Obrestad, former November Niner (and Joe Curcio’s WSOP roommate) Craig Marquis, his fellow former November Niner Ivan Demidov, and former pro soccer player turned WSOP Player of the Year candidate Sam Trickett all fell by the wayside on Day 1B.
On the other side of the leaderboard are the biggest stacks. James Danielson led all Day 1B runners by running his 30K starting stack all the way up to 201,050, followed by Italy’s Filippo Candio (167,300) and American Robert Miller (155,225). Better-known players in the top ten at the end of the day included 2010 WSOP $5,000 NLHE bracelet winner Jason DeWitt (149,850), high-stakes crusher Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond (141,000) and former Aussie Millions champ Alexander Kostritsyn (131,200).
It remains to be seen how many players will show up when Day 1C kicks off at noon PT today. However many there are, they will add to the 2,614 who have already taken to the felt – and most likely make a few people nervous who have been betting on the total number of entrants in the 2010 WSOP Main Event.
Huck Seed Wins WSOP Tournament of Champions
July 5th, 2010
Add another prestigious title to Huck Seed’s collection. (Photo: Rob Gracie)
While most of the Las Vegas poker scene was partying it up on Independence Day, 17 of poker’s best-known players were at the Rio playing out the conclusion of the Tournament of Champions.
The final day of this $1,000,000 freeroll began at 11 a.m. after an attempted restart went badly the night before. The action got off to a quick start, and Allen Cunningham was the first to go when he ran his set of tens into Johnny Chan’s set of kings, which turned into quads on the river. Mike Matusow, who came in with the chip lead, would quickly follow; first he ran nines into Daniel Negreanu’s kings, and then he shoved with K-3 on a king-high board only to find that Negreanu once again held pocket kings. Matusdow and Cunningham were quickly followed by Antonio Esfandiari, Chris Ferguson, Scotty Nguyen, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier and Phil Hellmuth, setting up a ten-handed final table.
With only nine players getting paid one of those ten would be the unlucky person to pop the bubble. That ended up being Erik Seidel, who moved his short stack in with Q-8 only to run into Jennifer Harman’s pocket aces. TJ Cloutier immediately followed him in ninth place, but the action slowed down for a while before Annie Duke had her A-Q cracked by Barry Greenstein’s A-J and left in eighth place. The next few hours would see the departures of Harman (7th), Negreanu (6th), Greenstein (5th) and Joe Hachem (4th), all of them earning $25,000 just like Cloutier and the other cashers.
The final three players – Howard Lederer, Huck Seed and Chan – were all within about 20 big blinds of one another, and all three would take turns as both the chip leader and the short stack. Lederer would eventually cripple Chan with Q-9 against Chan’s K-J and royal flush draw, and the two-time WSOP world champion left in third place with $100,000 when his 7-5 couldn’t top Lederer’s J-9. That gave Lederer the lead going into heads-up play, but even The Professor knew that didn’t mean much. “Just got head up with Huck,” he tweeted. “I have 468 to his 342. Given his HU record, I feel like a small dog.”
Lederer actually increased his lead a bit before getting Seed all-in as an underdog with 9-6 on a 6-5-3 flop against Lederer’s own pocket tens. But an eight on the turn and a seven on the river gave Seed a straight, dramatically shifting the momentum. Only a few minutes later Lederer shoved with Q-8, Seed called with A-2, and an ace on the river sealed the deal. Lederer took home $250,000, while Seed walked away with $500,000 and the Tournament of Champions trophy- not bad for a freeroll.
WSOP: Tournament of Champions Day 2 Ends, 17 Players Remain
June 28th, 2010
Former TOC winner Mike Matusow holds the chip lead after two days of play in this year’s WSOP Tournament of Champions.
The WSOP Tournament of Champions has concluded its second day of play, and 17 of the original 27 starters still remain in contention for the $500,000 first prize.
Leading the way at the end of Day 2 was one of the handful of players who got into the tournament without relying on the public to vote him in. Mike Matusow finished the day with 85,500 in chips, or about 10.5% of the total chips in play. If he were to go on and win he would become the first player ever to win the Tournament of Champions twice. But with a minimum of 21 big blinds in everyone’s stack there’s still a long way to go – and unlike your typical WSOP event, there are no soft spots anywhere in this field.
Matusow’s fellow former TOC champion Mike Sexton was one of the handful of players who busted today. Sexton had the misfortune of moving his short stack all-in with A-K and running into Scotty Nguyen’s pocket kings. The other four players eliminated today were Dan Harrington, Joe Cada, Doyle Brunson and online qualifier Andrew Barton, who had his aces cracked by a Chris Ferguson two-outer to find his way to the rail.
Joining Matusow as the tournament’s big stacks are Huck Seed (73,000), Johnny Chan (68,600), Scotty Nguyen (64,700) and Joe Hachem (64,300). Day 1 leader Erik Seidel and Allen Cunningham are just behind those five, while TV-friendly personalities Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth lurk further down the leaderboard.
The original plan was to play down to nine today, but with 17 players still remaining the WSOP brass is working out a time when the remaining dirty work can be done to whittle this field down to an ESPN-friendly final table. The tentative schedule is to play the remaining levels between now and the final table out on July 3rd at 7:00 p.m, after Ante Up For Africa. The only thing that could possibly alter the schedule would be if one of the TOC players made the final table of the $25,000 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em – certainly a possibility given the quality of the field in the Tournament of Champions, but hopefully one that none of these players will have to contend with.
Into the breech of the WSOP
June 28th, 2010Going from my home in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina to Las Vegas requires only that I show a drivers license and boarding pass to the proper TSA authorities. Sometimes it feels as if I should be presenting my passport and proper inter-galactic transfer documents.
You get off the plane at McCarran and are immediately bombarded with a sea of humanity, the clang of slot machines, the larger-than-life ads for the various shows. Then you step outside the airport and are slammed with larger-than-life heat.
Toto, we’re not in Appalachia anymore.
In my particular case it was even more chaotic than usual. I branched directly from the airport to the Rio so I could get on the ESPN webcast of the Tournament of Champions at the WSOP. [1] The cabbie was pissed at me for asking him to take Paradise rather than the (longer) Tunnel/I-215 route so he got my bag out of the trunk, dropped it on the pavement and drove away without a word. The cabbie behind him looked at me with a bemused expression, clearly wondering what I’d done to twist the guy’s knickers. Ah, Vegas cabbies.
I dropped my bags at the bell desk and headed straight for the ESPN room. Like all broadcasting rooms, it was approximately 30% too small for the people and hardware that needed to be in there, but it was good to be back in the broadcasting saddle. This is my first gig with ESPN and I’m delighted to part of it. In particular, it’s cool to work with Matt Maranz, who heads up the ESPN broadcasting of both the WSOP and the NAPT. And it’s extra cool to be working with James Hartigan and Francine Watson, friends who I made while doing broadcasting on the European Poker Tour. I also got to see my old friend Dan Goldman who was doing some color commentary too.
Nerve center of the ESPN WSOP webcast
At the top left of the image you see the aforementioned Francine, and to her left, Dylan Boucherle, whose mom lives in my hometown. Small world. Producer Charlie Dixon, with whom I’m working for the first time, is front and center-ish.
It’s not NCIS, but it gets the job done
This is the view from the command post. The two backs in the front of the image are (L to R) Matt Maranz and Dave Swartz. Note Dave’s iPad already occupying a place of importance in the broadcast.
At least for now, it’s good to be back in the buzz. And it’s always good to hang with my poker milieu friends whom I see all too rarely. One of those people is Pauly McGuire, whose blog is a must-read for anybody who likes good writing, and/or Phish, and/or poker.
The Tao of the WSOP
[1] You can watch Day 2 today beginning at 3:00 PM Eastern Time at:
or
