Posts Tagged ‘wsop main event’
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.
Tom Marchese Wins Card Player Player of the Year
December 24th, 2010
Merry Christmas, Mr. Player of the Year! (Photo: WJMedia.net)
With the last major tournament of the year now put to bed in Atlantic City, Card Player magazine has its 2010 Player of the Year: live tournament circuit rookie Tom “kingsofcards” Marchese.
Marchese’s year started off in style with his first-ever live tournament cash, a third-place finish at the Borgata Winter Open championship event. It didn’t give him any POY points, but it was good for $190,027. Then Marchese won the NAPT Venetian main event ($827,648), took fourth at the Wynn Classic ($73,356), took fourth at the EPT Grand Final High Roller event ($350,125) and finished sixth at the WSOP $10,000 Pot-Limit Hold’em World Championship ($123,364), all by the end of the summer.
From there Marchese upped the ante with final table appearances at EPT London (7th, $157,159), the WPT Foxwoods World Poker Finals (3rd, $211,759) and the NAPT Los Angeles Bounty Shootout (5th, $24,000) before closing out the year with a $45,958 win in a $1,000 rebuy tournament at Bellagio’s Five Diamond World Poker Classic. All told, his two titles and 11 final tables earned him more than $2.1 million in 2010.
The incredible year for Marchese overshadowed another impressive year from Dwyte Pilgrim, whose five titles (including the WPT Borgata Poker Open), 13 final tables and $1 million in earnings were good for second place on the Card Player POY list. The rest of the top five was made up of Borgata Spring Poker Open champ Sorel Mizzi, NAPT Mohegan Sun and Partouche Poker Tour winner Vanessa Selbst, and 2010 WSOP Main Event runner-up John Racener.
Tom Marchese joins some pretty select company as the Card Player Player of the Year. Past winners have included Michael Mizrachi, Eric Baldwin, Men “The Master” Nguyen, T.J. Cloutier, John Phan, David Pham and Daniel Negreanu.
Breaking Down the Matt Affleck WSOP Bustout Hand
December 3rd, 2010
For some people, it aches just to look at this.
Without a doubt, Matt Affleck’s bustout hand at the 2010 WSOP Main Event was one of the single most dramatic moments captured by ESPN’s cameras since the network began devoting serious airtime to poker in 2003. In the latest edition of Card Player’s The Scoop, Affleck lets you savor the pain of that beat for yourself as he breaks down exactly what he was thinking from the time he was dealt those two aces until Jonathan Duhamel called with his two jacks on the turn.
It’s worth clarifying here that Affleck is a consummate pro and is obviously over the beat. Still, The Scoop’s hosts Adam Schoenfeld and Diego Cordovez walk through the hand with Affleck in such a detailed manner that everyone who watched it on ESPN gets the opportunity to relive the hand all over again from Affleck’s perspective. You might not necessarily feel like hiding your face in your hat or hurling your bottle of water in disgust at a trash can outside the Amazon Room, but your stomach will probably turn just a bit.
Interestingly, Affleck says that Duhamel later told him that he likely would have shipped his entire stack in pre-flop if Affleck had opted to raise Duhamel’s four-bet instead of simply calling it. The result obviously would have been the same, but thankfully for poker players everywhere Matt Affleck chose to call and gave us the kind of post-flop poker that we can actually talk about. Check out the video here.
Tony G Buying Eastgate’s WSOP Bracelet For His Dog
November 21st, 2010
Tony G posted this mock-up of his dog Zasko and the bracelet.
As you may have heard, 2008 WSOP main event champ Peter Eastgate is selling the bracelet he won for that event on eBay. And poker pro and provocateur Tony G has publicly stated that he’s in the running to buy the bling, for his dog.
After winning over $9 million just two years ago, the young Danish champ isn’t selling the bracelet because he’s gone bust. Instead, he maintains he’s not really a big jewellery guy, and it was just going to sit around at his house gathering dust. So instead of letting that happen, he decided to throw the WSOP trophy on eBay, with the proceeds of the sale going to UNICEF. As of this writing, 67 bids have driven up the price to $56,700, with just over three days left in the auction.
And, if you believe his blog, at least a few of those bids were by Tony G. But if he wins, he doesn’t plan on sporting it himself. As he says: “…the plan is to get it adapted into a special collar for my trusted German Shepherd Zasko. The ultimate dog bling – as my gladiator and protector he deserves to be kitted out in such style.”
So is it disrespectful to outfit one’s domestic animal with one of the biggest prizes in the world of poker? Not according to Tony G himself: “People will accuse me of making a mockery of Peter’s WSOP Main Event win but that is not the intention – I really want to do this. I respect Peter’s decision to turn around and say that’s it – each to their own and hope that the money I give him for the bracelet goes to a good cause.” Of course, we (and he) still have to wait a few days to see if it actually ends up in his possession.
NAPT Los Angeles Main Event Begins Today
November 12th, 2010
For the first time ever, it’s NAPT time at the Bike.
With Las Vegas and its glitzy WSOP Main Event finally out of the way, Los Angeles once again steps into poker’s limelight this weekend as it hosts the latest stop on the North American Poker Tour.
The NAPT Los Angeles main event kicks off today at the Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, Calif., the venue best known for its Legends of Poker festival held every August. The $5,000 event boasts two starting flights, and if the typical crowds at L.A. poker tournaments are anything to go by, both flights should see solid turnout. The main event will play out its final table next Wednesday, November 16, but in between now and then there will be a slew of smaller events running, including HORSE, pot-limit Omaha, six-max, no-limit hold’em and ladies-only tournaments.
Unlike the NAPT’s Venetian and Mohegan Sun events earlier this year, there won’t be any coverage of the NAPT Los Angeles main event airing on ESPN. That’s because the Bicycle Casino is an original member of the World Poker Tour and its contract grants exclusivity to the WPT in the area of television rights. So to make sure they get at least a little exposure for their jaunt to LA, the NAPT folks arranged to have their $5,250 Bounty Shootout at the nearby Crystal Casino. If you haven’t heard of that venue before, it might just be because Crystal Casino is located in Compton (link NSFW) and hasn’t hosted anything resembling a major poker tournament since 2007, when Bill Edler beat Barry Greenstein in the final of its 1st Annual Heads-Up Championship. (Despite solid turnout for the first year, there was no 2nd Annual Heads-Up Championship.)
Assuming everyone makes it out of Compton in one piece next Friday, ESPN2 will air coverage of the NAPT Los Angeles Bounty Shootout later in the year.
WSOP Circuit Crowns Another Champion in Biloxi
November 10th, 2010
Travis Lutes: not bad for a second career cash. (Photo: PokerNews)
While the WSOP Main Event was finishing up in Las Vegas, the main event of the latest WSOP Circuit stop was just getting started in Biloxi, Miss. Now, after three days of play, it has its champion.
Travis Lutes became the latest player to earn an automatic bid to the WSOP Circuit National Championship by outlasting the competition at the final table of the WSOP Circuit stop at the Imperial Palace in Biloxi. The finale was very much a regional affair, with seven of the nine players coming from Georgia, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama. The only players who weren’t from the American South were Jerry Monroe of Columbus, Ohio, who finished in seventh place, and champion Lutes, who lives in Crawfordville, Ind.
The $1,600 main event at the IP drew a total field of 270 players, building a prize pool worth $392,850. The size of the field was pretty close to the other non-Regional-Championship main events on the WSOPC this year – smaller than the 289 at Horseshoe Southern Indiana, but larger than the 251 at Horseshoe Council Bluffs. Lutes’ take for winning the tournament – just his second live tournament cash after a sixth-place finish in a $100 tournament at the Pot of Gold festival in Reno last month – was $95,253. He also earned his first gold WSOP Circuit champion’s ring.
The next stop for the WSOP Circuit is Harvey’s Lake Tahoe in northern Nevada, where the tournament action gets started tomorrow with a mega-satellite to the $1,600 Main Event. The first of nine gold ring events there, a two-day $345 no-limit hold’em tournament, gets started on Friday.
Tom Dwan Sorry for Durrrr Challenge Delays
November 10th, 2010
Tom Dwan: too busy hat shopping to play the durrrr Challenge? (photo courtesy of PocketFives.com)
Lost in all the hoopla surrounding the WSOP main event final table is the complete suckiness of the Durrrr Challenge. Remember that? Tom Dwan, who we all thought was one of the most exciting young players to ever happen to the game, was supposed to be taking on the best and brightest of the poker world in a heads-up high-stakes challenge with millions of dollars on the line. But, as we’re seeing now, this thing should probably be re-named the Nevurrrr-ending Challenge.
For those of you who were smart enough to never follow this thing in the first place, the rules are this: 50,000 hands of heads-up NLHE or PLO poker, with the winner getting an additional $500,000 (if it’s Dwan) or $1 million (if it’s the other guy). So far, two players have taken the challenge, Patrik Antonius and Daniel “Jungleman12″ Cates. The Dwan/Antonius battle started back in 1972 or thereabouts, and still isn’t done. The Dwan/Jungleman12 match got underway in August of this year. They started strong, but things have completely shut down of late, with the most recent action coming back on October 5th.
But in a recent blog post, Dwan apologized for the lack of any progress, and promised to get things back underway soon. He says: “I have two challenges open, both of which haven’t had much play in the last few weeks. I was busy with WSOPE then traveling a bunch – but in the next few days/weeks I should be putting in a ton of hands with “jungleman12″.” On the Antonius challenge, he goes on to say: “I don’t know if we’ll be finishing soon, but hopefully we will, and sorry to the people watching the challenge that it’s gone on so long.”
Erik Seidel, Dan Harrington Enter Poker Hall of Fame
November 9th, 2010
The two newest members of the Poker Hall of Fame surround WSOP tournament director Jack Effel. (Photo: WSOP)
Before the final heads-up match of the 2010 WSOP Main Event could get started last night, WSOP officials attended to the matter of this year’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
The first inductee was Dan Harrington. The 64-year-old Harrington first came to prominence in poker when he won two bracelets at the 1995 WSOP, including the Main Event championship. He then pulled off the incredible feat of making back-to-back Main Event final tables at the 2003 and 2004 WSOPs, finishing third and fourth, respectively. Shortly afterward he penned the seminal poker strategy guides, the three-volume series Harrington on Hold’em, securing his place in poker history by teaching an entire generation of poker players how to run over big tournaments. Then, in 2007, he added the WPT Legends of Poker title to his resume. All told, Harrington has won more than $6.6 million in live poker tournaments during his 25-year career.
This year’s other Hall of Fame inductee was Erik Seidel. The 51-year-old Seidel has been one of the most consistent performers in poker since he finished in second place behind Johnny Chan at his first major poker tournament, the 1988 WSOP Main Event. Though he has more high-profile runner-up finishes on his resume than arguably any other major poker player, he has also won eight gold bracelets over the years in six different forms of poker, placing him behind only fellow Hall of Famers Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan and Johnny Moss for the most events won in WSOP history. He also has a WPT title to his credit from the 2008 Foxwoods Poker Classic. Seidel’s total career earnings since 1988 total more than $10.35 million.
With the additions of Harrington and Seidel – both former regulars at New York City’s legendary Mayfair Club – the Poker Hall of Fame now has 40 members.
Jonathan Duhamel Wins WSOP Main Event
November 8th, 2010
After months of waiting, poker finally has its 2010 World Champion.
As tonight’s heads-up match began at 8 p.m. PT, Jonathan Duhamel held a massive chip lead. With the blinds at 600,000/1,200,000 and antes of 200,000, the young Canadian pro’s stack was worth 188,950,000. In contrast, John Racener held just 30,650,000, leaving a lot of work ahead of him to pull off one of the biggest comebacks in Main Event history. Oddly enough, the Florida pro’s path to heads-up play was nearly stopped by Duhamel on Saturday, but Racener’s A-Q beat his foe’s A-K to keep him in the running with five players left.
Racener’s patient approach from the rest of the final table carried over to the heads-up match, as he alternated between limping most of his buttons with the occasional fold. Duhamel, on the other hand, tended to raise most buttons, mixing in a limp here and there. The first significant action went against Racener when he elected to raise a Duhamel bet on the river with the board reading Jc-9s-3s-4d-Ts. Duhamel called with J-4 for two pair and Racener mucked to take himself down to 18 million, less than two-thirds of his starting stack.
After that hand, the blinds rose to 800,000/1,600,000 with antes staying at 200,000, and Duhamel shoved on the button on the very next hand with K-4. Racener snap-called with pocket queens, and the board came down J-8-6-2-7 to put Racener back at 36 million. Both players seemed committed to playing small-ball, and by the first 10-minute break Racener was down to just 22 million.
Once the two returned from the break, Duhamel applied maximum pressure at every opportunity and whittled Racener’s stack down to just nine big blinds before Racener finally called his stack off against a Duhamel shove. Duhamel held As-Jh to Racener’s Kd-8h. The 9s-4c-4d-6c-5c board brought no help to Racener, and this year’s WSOP Main Event came to a close.
Congratulations are due to both players. For his second-place finish, Racener takes home $5,545,955. Duhamel, meanwhile, earns $8,944,310 and enshrinement into poker history as the 35th player to win poker’s world championship. He also becomes the first Canadian to win the WSOP Main Event.
WSOP: How to Watch Racener vs Duhamel Heads-Up
November 8th, 2010
Jonathan Duhamel may soon have nine million reasons to smile.
As you’ve probably heard by now, the final table of the 2010 WSOP main event is now down to two. Tonight at 8:30ish PM PST, Jonathan Duhamel and John Racener do battle to determine the winner of the World Series of Poker main event. And for those who want to watch history being made, there are a couple options available… at least for viewers in the US.
ESPN3′s website offers a live stream of the final table. You won’t be able to see the hole cards, but they do have commentators weighing in on the action. Saturday’s stream was, from all reports, a bit of a mixed bag, viewability-wise. They had some technical issues with parts of the match, but let’s hope they get that worked out for today. On that same site, viewers from the US can also go back and check out the stream from Saturday’s final table action.
If you prefer your poker on the bigger screen, ESPN has a two hour broadcast of highlights of the whole final table, and not just the heads-up portion, set to go on Tuesday night at 7pm PST.
And though the final heads-up action is hotly anticipated, it may not last long. Duhamel has a commanding chip lead, and the blinds are huge. Going into tonight’s final, Duhamel is sitting on 188,950,000 in chips, while Racener has just 30,750,000. To start, ante is at 200,000 and the blinds are 600,000/1,200,000. The eventual winner will walk home with the coveted bracelet, and an even more coveted $8,944,310 in prize money.
