Main Event Busto

Well, so much for the building interest level of the WSOP Main Event that I was talking about last week. Monday was like D-Day for all the notable players and stories remaining in the event, as basically every last one of them was eliminated as we played down from 57 to 22 players remaining out of the 6500+ field that started about a week and a half ago at the Rio in Las Vegas.

First it was Andrew Brokos of Thinking Poker, who was one of the first bustouts of the day on Monday in the low 50's, and a big bummer to me as I long for the day when someone I consider to be an actual poker blogger (as opposed to a pro who also keeps a blog, etc.) wins a gold bracelet somewhere, somehow. Then Erick Lindgren, probably the last widely-recognizable pro remaining and one of the just a couple of full tilt red pros to cash in this year's Main Event, busted in the low 30s a few hours later, leaving us with no really recognizable names left in the field of still four tables remaining at the time.

But even then, there was still at least one interesting story left to me -- Erika Moutinho and David Sands, a boyfriend and girlfriend who not only both cashed in the Main Event, but both ran deep deep deep to the final 30 players and who even sat right next to each other at the ESPN featured table throughout Monday's play. To think that a couple would both survive this deep in such a huge poker tournament is truly unbelievable, and that they got to sit with each other and enjoy this once in a literal lifetime experience just strains all credulity, but it happened. I could not believe what I was seeing, actually -- these two played a few key pots against one another, but for the most part they were whispering to each other what cards they were holding whenever they folded without having to show. Right in front of everybody. I was salivating at the thought of all the media coverage this destined-for-fail pairing was going to bring if they could survive down to the final couple of tables (and obviously at the final table, if that could even be imagined), while at the same time frowning at the tournament director for allowing what was very overtly the sharing of hole card information after the respective hands were played, but which when I have played at the WSOP requires one to tell the entire table what they had if they reveal their hole cards to any one or more players. But somehow, because these two were seated next to each other and allowed to whisper with abandon in between playing hands, I could not believe what I was seeing. Not that I have the perfect answer to this conundrum, but yknow Jack Eiffel, you could have maybe just seated them at different tables -- or at least not directly next to each other -- in the interest of promoting fairness and equality for all the players involved.

In any event, eventually both boyfriend and then girlfriend ended up busting pretty close to each other in the 20s, eliminating what to me was the very last thing worth caring about in the WSOP Main Event this year. Especially since the advent of the ridiculous "November Nine" such that we won't even know which of the unknowns is the eventual winner for another several months here at this point, Monday just took the last scraps of air for me out of this year's World Series of Poker. It's unfortunate really -- I mean, I know some people get off on seeing a bunch of noobs playing it out on live tv for the $8 million first prize, and of course I will be happy for whoever survives to pull off that feat this fall in Vegas, but in reality, there's very little more boring to me than the thought of watching nine total and compelte unknowns whom I never cared about before this tournament and won't care about after this tournament, slinging poker chips around with mostly preflop allins. I'm not saying the WSOP needs to change anything or that this is any kind of an unacceptable outcome, but rather than my level of interest in the WSOP Main Event just fell off a cliff on Monday as the last of the stories fell by the wayside once and for all. Let's just say that I won't have wsop.com on auto-refresh anymore starting today, as there'd be nothing for me to even follow along with that is of any moment to me whatsoever.

And thus ends for me the first WSOP without myself there in participation since 2006. I actually made it through ok, all things considered; no bouts of withdrawal, no urge to jump on a plane and call my wife from the air when it was too late to turn around. Playing that tournament at Foxwoods a couple of weeks ago helped to ease the pain a little bit, and I am planning on a similar outing sometime in August or September as well, probably down to the Borgata to play in the Fall Poker Open or maybe back to Foxwoods to get a little more of my poker on later in the year. But not playing at the WSOP in 2011 was ok in the end, and I certainly do not regret my decision not to throw away a couple grand on a tournament that I am nowhere near practiced-up enough to play my best in. Here's to making it back out to the desert for my annual summer reunion in 2012, when some 15 months of no online poker in the United States is I can only assume set to produce lower fields than the record numbers we saw across the WSOP this time around as players made that extra effort to take their existing rolls out to the WSOP given the shutdown of online poker in April 2011.