Unbearably Bad Poker

So I've been watching a little bit of ESPN's WSOP Main Event coverage from time to time this year, moreso here as we wind down towards the November Nine, and I find myself struck by frankly the same thought that I've had in each and every one of the WSOP Main Events I have ever watched over the past decade or so:

These people absolutely suck shit at poker.

Yeah that's right, I said it. It's true. These people play like absolute anusshit. And that, I think, is being kind.

I mean, this is the biggest tournament of their lives by definition. Each and every one of these guys, once we're down to the final 27 players or so, is for sure playing poker for the most money they have ever played in their lives. There is not just the immediate cash payouts on the line, but the sponsorship opportunities involved with making it to the November Nine final table and with potentially winning the tournament. There is a literal lifetime of playing poker and never having to have a real job again within their grasp. All this and more is at stake here for every single player left as the ESPN coverage worked its way down this week to the final table and a half remaining in the WSOP Main Event.

And what are these players doing with this tremendous opportunity?

They're reraising an early-position raiser preflop from middle position with 42o.

They're calling large bets on the flop for a quarter of their stack with just an overcard and an inside straight draw.

They're reraising allin preflop with A7s.

They're calling allin preflop for 50% of their stack with AQs.

And, my personal favorite, a super aggro guy who's been raising all day raises again preflop, this time with pocket Aces. The guy on the other side of the table reraises with JTs. The guy with AA re-reraises again, a fairly small amount, which itself was a truly bad play because (1) it makes it very, very obvious that he has precisely pocket Aces, and (2) the small raise gives the first player now better than 5-to-1 to call the re-reraise with his JTs, well known as the literal best hand to crack what he now knows his opponent has in pocket Aces.

And then the shithead insta-folds his JTs, getting better than 5 to 1 to call the re-reraise!!!

You could not make this stuff up, and you certainly can't defend these plays from a poker perspective. I've watched the Main Event coverage on ESPN for years, albeit some years more than others. But every single year, my reaction to the quality of play I've seen throughout has been more or less exactly the same.

The Main Event is an absolute donkfest. Sure, good skill will work much better for you than no skill, and a player who has played on the big stage before and knows how to extract chips will always have a better chance of surviving than one who doesn't know shit and is quaking in his boots because of the amount of money on the line. But that increased chance of success is still utterly minuscule, given the field and what it takes to survive the kind of indefensible, thoughtless donkery you will be facing right from the first deal on Day 1A, and clearly lasting all the way up to the final table itself. Last year it was that unthinkable idiot Chino Rheem freaking six-betting allin preflop with Ace-rag with just a few players remaining and directly costing himself probably about $15 million in tournament winnings and sponsorships as a result -- if you don't know you're not only beat but crushed after your opponent re-re-re-re-reraises you preflop and you are holding Ace-rag, then you are absolutely, utterly hopeless as a poker player on the big stage -- and this year the play to make the final table is enough to make just about anyone with half a poker brain scratch their head in amazement.

Somewhere, I imagine Phil Ivey is out there watching this week's coverage with that same absolutely classic look on his face as when Jen Tilly didn't bet her boat on the river against Patrick Antonius and then proclaimed that she thought he had pocket Kings, at 2:03 of the clip below:



All I know is this: the raging clowns playing for the biggest money of their lives at this year's WSOP Main Event are doing nothing to help anyone out there who loves to argue that poker is a game of skill and not luck. Sure, there is more than a little skill involved, but for these players to have lasted this long, and to be playing for this amount of money after surviving some 6600 other entrants, while playing as unmitigatedly horrible poker as they are here even at the end, it's certainly not helping the luck vs. skill debate.

Big, Big Folds

For those of you watching ESPN's WSOP Main Event coverage as it runs on Tuesday evenings, did you see the hand they showed the last part of this Tuesday night when one player 6-bet small preflop with pocket Jacks? My eye was literally twitching when I watched someone make as bad of a play as that, and then my entire side started aching as I watched the other player move all in with pocket Queens, and then I passed out when the guy with the Jacks instacalled. I mean, it's one thing to call an allin reraise preflop when you're fairly short and there's not sufficient chip utility out there to play a 3- or 4-bet pot before or after the flop. But in this hand, the guy had 6-bet with pocket Jacks from something like 2.1 million to something like 3.5 million, opting specifically not to move allin (a horrible play with Jacks, btw, in particular if you're just going to instacall if your opponent pushes in his entire stack). Despite the idiocy and horribad fishiness of this hand on both sides, the bottom line is that, in my experience, if someone 6-bet raises you preflop, and they're doing it not even moving all-in but instead a smaller amount that seems more callable, and you have Queens, you are probably about 25% to win the hand if you call, plain and simple. In that scenario, you'll be up against pocket Aces probably about 85% of the time, pocket Kings 14% of the time, and an incredibly fishily-played AKs or some other garbage the other 1%. That the other player would be so unmitigatingly terrible at no-limit holdem as to get it allin in that spot with a hand as bad as pocket Jacks, is such an outlier that it doesn't even show up in the percentages. I think that might literally be the only time in the history of poker that somebody in a big, big spot (1300 players left in the Main Event, not down to two tables in the Mookie) 6-bet raised small preflop, and only had pocket Jacks. I said it above and I'll say it again: when you get 6-bet small preflop in no-limit in a big spot, it's pocket Aces pretty much every single time. That is equally true about a four-bet, for that matter, but for six bets it's a complete joke.

How either of those monkeys got themselves through 5000 other players in this event is beyond me, because if one thing shows what an inexperienced, amateurish nlh player someone is, it's not folding a hand like pocket Jacks or pocket Queens for all your chips when you are obviously, obviously beaten preflop. Play enough nlh and you'll run Kings into Aces, let alone Queens or Jacks into Kings or Aces, more times than you ever thought possible. Seriously -- KK vs AA sounds to many players like the rarest of long shots, but when you actually sit down and play a million hands of holdem, you just can't believe how many times setups like that can and do occur. And in this case, that small 6-bet raise should have been the absolute last possible straw to tell the pocket Jacks and the pocket Queens guy that they are hopelessly behind and they should GTFO of the hand right then and there. Queens vs Jacks for a small 6-bet and a call preflop. God, you could hardly dream up a worse-played hand between two absolutely hopeless poker clowns.

This all reminds me of a hand described on Goodnight Moon's blog a few weeks back involving Toph Moore, the 21st place finisher in this year's WSOP Main Event. As Moon describes the hand:

"At 80-160k blinds, Anton Makiievskiy, a strong young Ukrainian player, raised early and Toph called in position with the AJ of hearts. Toph had Anton outchipped roughly 12m to 10m. The flop came out KJJ rainbow. Anton fired a standardish continuation bet of 450k on the flop and Toph raised to 1.1 million. Anton then made it 2 million to go, and Toph clicked it back to 2.9 or 3 million. This all took a while going back and forth with both players carefully considering, but then Anton quickly moved all-in for about 9.2 million, and Toph quickly called. Anton had KJ and the board ran out blanks."

The majority of the commenters about this hand on Moon's blog generally seemed to think that it is simply results-based thinking to be focusing on this hand, that it was an all-time great cooler and there is no way anyone should ever even consider getting away from AJ on the KJJ board in this spot, which occurred late on Day 7 of the Main Event, well into the money positions already. Like Moon, however, I do not think I agree with this over-simplified analysis, and it really comes down again to the number of raises, and what the smallish size of the raises says about the hands in question.

Of course, Anton is a highly aggro player and thus his standard c-bet on the KJJ flop means precisely nothing. When Toph raises him to $1.1 million, though, that's where the hand starts to get interesting. To me, a raise on flop, absent any other information or relevant details, generally signifies a good but not necessarily monster hand. Most players will at least consider checking, or check-calling on the flop if they have a monster, not wanting to scare away their opponent, whereas a flop raise more often than not defaults in my mind to signifying a good but beatable hand, usually a top pair good kicker type of hand, or on occasion a solid draw on a semi-bluff. The raise sizing for Toph here seems more or less normal, and thus my first thought on the KJJ board when seeing Toph raise the 450k c-bet to 1.1 million, is that Toph thinks he is ahead but is not totally sure. Maybe a KQ type of hand, maybe a medium pocket pair, something like that, and that's what I would expect Anton to put Toph on once Toph slides in that 1.1 million chip raise.

When Anton re-popped this hand to 2 million, the alarm bells first start going off in my head. I mean, you can't fold AJ in that spot to the reraise to 2 million chips, because Toph's raise on the flop is generally going to signify a good but not monster hand, and thus, with Anton knowing that, he could easily be trying to put a move on Toph on the understand that Toph is not super strong, and the small size of that raise could be consistent with either a flopped monster wanting to draw Toph in, or someone making a move with nothing great, but not wanting to lose too many chips if forced to fold to a reraise there. But still, re-raising in that spot at a huge inflection point in the world's biggest poker tournament, that definitely got my dander up, even holding the AJ for top trips in Toph's hand.

Toph responds as I probably would in his spot, which is to bump it up again, and he opted for what amounts to very nearly a minimum re-reraise, to around $2.9 million or 3 million chips. That's as small a raise as you can get, and as I mentioned above, when you're seeing a 3-bet or 4-bet (or 6-bet, see above) that is itself a minimum raise, you are looking at the stone cold nuts almost every single time. In this case, Toph did not have the mortal nuts but the third nuts, losing to KK (high boat) and KJ (under boat), but the fact is that Anton could not perceive a reraise there from 2M to just 3M -- given effective starting stacks of around 10M -- to be anything other than extreme strength. It screams such obvious strength that I don't even like the bet from Toph, who I think should probably have just moved in rather than making such an obviously-strong min-re-reraise there, but in the end of course it would not have mattered.

What does matter is that Anton then takes this clear and obvious showing of strength from Toph, and quickly pushes allin. And this is where the analysis on Moon's blog breaks down in my view. I mean, if I am Toph in that spot, I am pretty sure I would fold my AJ face-up, confidently knowing I have to be behind, and just move on disgustedly to the next hand. I mean, it's not close. AJ on a KJJ board looks super pretty, and the fact that it is trips with top kicker is very attractive, I won't deny. But as I mentioned above, this isn't even one of those one-outer type of scenarios where it's just so mathematically improbable to be beaten that you just have to call -- rather, in this case, as I mentioned Toph isn't sitting on the nuts, or the second nuts, but rather the third nuts, albeit a very pretty-looking third nuts -- but once he puts in that silly min-re-reraise to 3M, and his opponent responds to Toph's obvious showing of extreme strength by quickly moving all-in, if you think about it could it be more obvious that AJ is facing one of those two superior hands?

I know this is a huge, huge fold, but the truth of the matter is that I don't think Toph should have min-raised there, but since he did, Anton's response could not have screamed any more that he was ahead of the third nuts. Do you think any kind of a decent player is going to reraise that flop with a hand like JT (maybe, at best), and then follow that up by re-re-reraising allin after the most obvious monster-hand bet that Toph has ever made in his life? With a Jack and a medium-strong kicker? I am just not seeing it, and neither should have Toph, who in my book should have made the biggest fold of his entire poker career, and done so confidently knowing he had to be hopelessly behind given the action in that spot.

It took me a long time and hundreds of thousands of nlh hands under my belt before I started accepting the frequency with which absolute setup fuckings happen to anyone who plays this game. But several years ago at this point, I learned to accept that if all possible signs point directly to my opponent having one of the two or three mathematically improbably hands that could beat my strong hand, he almost always does. Despite the craziness of folding AJ on a KJJ flop this late in the biggest tournament in the world, as I read the hand history the very first time through, I knew the AJ was behind the minute I saw Anton's instant five-bet push following Toph essentially screaming at him with his 4-bet that Toph has AJ. In my game, when you basically get in someone's ear and scream at them that they're beat, and they insta-allin you, it's time to start thinking like PLO and assuming that whatever the stone nuts is, it is out there against you.

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.

The Main Event

I have to admit, over the past several years, these have been some of my most fun days from an internet lurking perspective. For television, those first few days of March Madness every year is the event, the one that has me glued to the tube for hours on end, just watching and taking it all in. Well, in terms of things that aren't televised live like college basketball games, that thing is the Main Event of the World Series of Poker.

The first time I remember really following along with the Main Event coverage live on the web was when Greg Raymer made his incredible back to back run so deep in the big one. I must have followed Raymer's stack and hand histories like a hawk for several days as we wound down from the early rounds, to the money, and especially as we worked our way down to just a few hundred, and then eventually under 100 runners remaining. I remember obsessively railing another incredible deep run from our very own blogfather Iggy in the Main Event a few years ago, one that had me finding a whole new set of websites where I could look up individual players' chip counts on a fairly realtime basis. In the more recent past -- mostly with the advent of the ridiculous "November Nine" schedule -- there haven't been quite as many big storylines to follow, and yet every year I'm out there lurking to get the latest on Phil Hellmuth's rantings, Darvin Moon's huge bluff, or the latest story about Dennis Phillips's fan club. And then of course last year, it was Phil Ivey and, to a lesser extent, Antonio Esfandiari who really captivated my attention and made themselves something I really cared about for a few days in the middle of June.

Well the Main Event is back again now, and I am following along, as usual. We had the usual array of bustouts early in the first four levels on Day One, but there are a number of people I have some interest in whose stacks I will be keeping an eye on for the time being, while they're still alive in the tournament anyways. Former Main Event champion and investment banker Robert Varkonyi, a guy who played right next to me at the Taj Mahal in AC a few years ago and again in the tournament I played at Foxwoods just a couple of weeks back, is alive and kicking, with 118,000 chips as of this writing. After his father's uninspired first-day bustout, Todd Brunson has basically the same stack, and another former ME winner and very dangerous player in Carlos Mortensen is also in action on Day 2b with 85k in chips at the moment. E-Dog Erick Lindgren, a guy I've always liked, is very short with under 30k but he's still alive and kicking here about halfway into Day Two, so that's another guy worth watching at least until he either doubles up or gets crippled. For those who love HSP, Patrik Antonius has a nice stack with around 220k in chips, and Steve Dannenmann, who has himself has two deep runs in the Main Event in the past few years, is looking solid with 135k in his stack as well, to go along with around 50k in chips for Darvin Moon. All of these guys are worth watching for me here on Day 2b, in addition to Thomas Fuller, whose blog I've enjoyed reading for quite some time, and who I'm following pretty actively on the twitter feed as well, and Terrence Chan, author of another blog I've enjoyed for years. Both are nursing fairly short stacks at or around the starting stacks, which as Day Two draws on are going to start looking awfully small in comparison to the size of the stakes likely being played at their respective tables. Edit: Moon won some pots in the last hour, and has now nearly doubled his previous stack to over 60k. Go Moon!
Further edit: Moon went on a great post-dinner run, made some big folds, turned a flush and flopped a set, and ended Day 2b with 145k in chips, nicely above average. Wtg Moon!!

Adding to the Day 2b action are those who survived strong from Day 2a yesterday, which list includes online pro Shaun Deeb with nearly 300k in chips, and his father Freddy who is also alive although on a much smaller stack at the moment, and there's Peter Feldman -- Nordberg from the old full tilt days whom I used to love to follow and whom I watched win a WSOP circuit event a few years ago, also sitting on over 275k in his stack. Miami John Cernuto finished Day 2a over 180k chips with still plenty of room to move, and Andrew Brokos, another very prominent longtime poker blogger, is sitting on 137,900 chips after two days of play. Former Main Event champion Tom McEvoy -- whose books on omaha I have read several of over the years -- survived Day 2a with 143k in chips, and I am also following along with Eli Elezra -- another HSP regular -- who has just over 151k in chips.

Any one of the people I mentioned above would be an interesting story that I would definitely be following along with over the coming week of increasingly higher-stakes play at the Rio. And, there are a whole bunch of other players not listed above in whom I would also take an avid interest if they start making a deep run. Despite the staggering proliferation of poker over the past decade both in this country and around the world, and in spite of the several years of mass availability of the game from a great many online sites in most counties in the world, and even with the WSOP continuously selling out by increasing the number of bracelet events year after year in a blind push to growing the gross participation in the WSOP without regard to damage being done to the overall brand, the Main Event continues to stand out as the one big poker event of the year that everyone wants to keep track of, and I am certainly no exception.

Now That is a Horribad Call

From wsop.com:

7/7/2011 4:04:33 PM PST (about 1 hours and 21 minutes ago) Arieh Eliminated
Preflop action had left three players still in the hand, including Josh Arieh in the big blind. Together the trio had built a pot of 6,100.

The flop came Q64 rainbow, and the small blind checked. Arieh fired a bet of 2,400, then the player in late position raised all in for about 20,000. The small blind got out, and after tanking for a bit Arieh called the raise, committing his entire stack of about 19,000.

Arieh tabled AQo for top pair, but was behind his opponent's 64s. The turn was an 8and river an offsuit 2, and Arieh -- who finished third in the WSOP ME in 2004 -- hits the rail before the end of Level 2.


Wow. I mean, Josh Arieh is a guy who clearly is supposed to see himself as one of the skill guys in the tournament, that we know for sure. And here he is, calling off a raise of 10x his bet on the flop -- representing 190 big blinds at 50-100 -- with just TPTK. That simply makes no sense. What hand is he ahead of here? Seriously, who is pushing in 200 big blinds on a flop raise with KQ in this spot? In a raised pot no less. That's basically impossible. And on top of that, this is just about the dryest flop in the world -- in a raised pot, there's no way someone is semi-bluffing a draw here, so that raise is absolutely screaming "monster!" How Arieh goes down calling like this just over four hours in to the WSOP Main Event is beyond me. Odds are the guy is still tilted after losing a big chip lead late in the 50k buyin championship event the other day. That is just the kind of play that the predators in this thing are waiting for one of the fish at the table to screw up and make.

By the way, I'm just reading the live coverage that we are looking at just south of 900 runners on Day 1A of the WSOP Main Event. Building in for the usual growing crowds as we head into the later Day 1's, I'm thinking this looks more like a 5000-person field than last year's 7300+.

The Question Nobody Wants to Ask

So with all the fallout from last Friday's online poker ban in the U.S. still working its way through the collective psyche of poker players and enthusiasts everywhere, one question seems to be looming out there, growing ever larger by the day as online poker players in America get further and further away from the days when we could toil away at our pc's accumulating valuable hand experience at a rate several times faster than any live grinder could ever hope to achieve. And yet, for some reason, I haven't seen anyone writing about this question, or what its ramifications are in the longer-term for this game we all know and love, or for live, televised poker in general:

What's going to happen to the WSOP Main Event this summer in Las Vegas?

With online poker firmly cemented into the offices, studies, living rooms, dens and bedrooms of Americans, the question hasn't needed to be asked for years, not since 2006 when the specter of the UIGEA first reared its ugly head and threatened to stop the long-term growth cycle in the largest televised poker tournaments around. Despite that UIGEA-inspired dropoff in 2007, the Main Event resumed it climb in attendance in 2008, and it has grown in each of the years since then, vaulting back over 7300 entrants in 2010 as the field in the massive 10k-buyin tournament last summer in Las Vegas proved to be the second-largest ever in WSOP history, second only to the 2006 Main Event just before the UIGEA was passed in the United States. I recall a few short years ago that pokerstars alone had sent over 3000 online qualifiers to the Main Event, and lord knows full tilt, UB and the other major poker sites out there all chipped in with solid contributions of their own to these swelling fields in the biggest buyin nlh tournaments around the world.

But with pokerstars, full tilt and UB now all blocked from serving U.S. players, and with anyone who plays on any other site having to be an damn fool to put anything more than a trifling amount into that site (and knowing it may be next to impossible to get anything out of the site even if one does win), it's a safe bet that WSOP attendance in general is going to take a huge hit this year. Just how big is anyone's guess, but 2010 saw total WSOP attendance jump nearly 17% just from 2009, and over 22% over just the past two years. With more or less no U.S. players able to qualify for the WSOP Main Event via online satellite tournaments, and with U.S. players' poker bankrolls in general under attack, unable to grow from online poker play between now and the WSOP, and in many cases stuck in limbo in the cashier somewhere of full tilt, UB or otherwise, one can only assume that we will be looking at a much smaller number than 2009's 7,310 runners in the ME.

How much smaller is anyone's guess. Personally, I'm thinking we're probably looking at closer to 3000 runners than 7000. Maybe less. But then, I bet the satellite room in the back of the Rio is gonna be rockin, pretty much dawn to duskdawn for the next couple of months.

November Ivey

Looks like my rant about Pedro Martinez will have to wait for another day. My sense is there will be plenty of apropos opportunities to vent my frustrations with that whole megillah, but something in the poker world is just more interesting to me today.

Phil Ivey did it. He will be among the November Nine, the delayed final table of the Main Event of the World Series of Poker for 2009. Phil Ivey successfully navigated a field of 6,494 and has reached his first Main Event final table, after already scoring two WSOP bracelets this summer. He did it.

Barely.

But I digress. Despite the happy ending with Ivey making the final table, the few other stories with mainstream attraction came to quick endings, with tournament short stack Leo Margets (last woman standing) busted out within half an hour, followed within an hour or so by a few other players including Antonio Esfandiari. You can't kill the Magician for the early bust -- he was real short coming in if you recall, and being a pro he would be well aware of the need to double in order to get back his chances of a deep run instead of just lasting one more payout plateau. Ultimately Antonio was eliminated in 24th place, which was close to his chip position coming in to Day 8. In any event, this basically left Ivey as the sole player left out of 23 remaining who anybody outside of the Amazon Room knew anything at all about. For now.

As I imagine ESPN, the WSOP and basically anything and everything associated with the world of poker are feeling, it is very fortunate that Phil Ivey was able to survive to the final nine players. And I use the word "survive", because after a rocky start that included two early losses with pocket Jacks, Ivey was short-stacked for the entire second half of the day, often within the bottom two or three remaining players. And all the while, previous chip leader Darvin Moon -- easily the coolest name among the remaining players in the tournament -- was growing, growing, growing his stack, capitalizing on a huge 40M+-chip pot around midway through the day to eliminate fellow big stack and former chip leader Billy Kopp. Then, literally just minutes into the final table bubble (10 players remaining), Eric Buchman raised it up to 650k preflop, already big chipleader Moon cold called, and then Jordan Smith reraised it to 2.6 million. Buchman folded, and Moon cold called again with what turned out to be pocket 8s. Moon flopped top set, insta-calling with the mortal nuts when Jordan Smith raised allin on the flop with his pocket Aces, Smith's second pocket Aces of the past hour's action.

Seriously, how's that for a real drag? You're in 4th place out of 10 on the ME final table bubble, and you're dealt pocket Aces for the second time in an hour on one of the very first hands on the bubble. Some guy with a bailout's worth of chips across the table separately cold-calls not one but two raises before the flop against your Aces. You get him to bet out on the all-rags flop, and he calls your all-in flop raise with what is probably some overpair. Whooops! Set of 8s, and since he was chip leader, you go buh-bye and no November Nine for you. See everybody else in four months. Poor guy is all I have to say for him. Poor guy with $896,000 more in his bank account this morning. But I imagine that one is still gonna sting for some time with him, especially come the second week of November.

Anyways, Ivey will be the big story for months in the poker world, and the November Nine may finally actually be watched by some people this year. What's more, wouldn't it be awesome if ESPN decides to hire somebody who knows something about televised poker to figure out the best way to broadcast the November Nine? I mean, could last year's coverage of the final table have realistically been any worse? Both in the selection of hands, the number of hands shown, and the way those hands were portrayed, take your pick. Seriously. No matter how ESPN decides to spin it, though, Phil Ivey is going to have his work cut out for him given the starting stacks of the 2009 November Nine:

Seat 1: Darvin Moon - 58,930,000
Seat 2: James Akenhead - 6,800,000
Seat 3: Phil Ivey - 9,765,000
Seat 4: Kevin Schaffel - 12,390,000
Seat 5: Steven Begleiter - 29,885,000
Seat 6: Eric Buchman - 34,800,000
Seat 7: Joe Cada - 13,215,000
Seat 8: Antoine Saout - 9,500,000
Seat 9: Jeff Shulman - 19,580,000

Let me also list those same people this way, in order of how many chips they hold:

1. Darvin Moon 58.9M
2. Eric Buchman 34.8M
3. Steven Begleiter 29.9M
4. Jeff Shulman 19.5M
5. Joseph Cada 13.2M
6. Kevin Schaffel 12.4M
7. Phil Ivey 9.8M
8. Antoine Saout 9.5M
9. James Akenhead 6.8M

Play stopped with a short time left in Level 33 of the tournament, which means a 30k ante and blinds of 120k-240k. After the resumption in early November -- assuming no changes are made to the structure prior to the tournament resuming -- after a few minutes the cost to play should jump to a 40k ante and 150k-300k blinds. So, just like I said with Antonio Esfandiari coming in to Day 8 (and look how well that turned out!), Ivey is very short stacked but he should still have plenty of room to wait for a good spot to get his chips in for the double-up. Right now he has still just over 40 big blinds, and for the next two hours after the quick level change at the beginning of the final table, he will still have 32 big blinds to play with. Make no mistake, he is not in a good situation, but he is far from hopeless here. My last point will just be to say that, when I look at the chip stacks in order like that above, it is clear to me just how similar a position Ivey is in to the one I was in coming in to Day Two at the Venetian last month. About two-thirds of the way down the leaderboard, surrounded by all the biggest remaining stacks in the tournament, many of them having several multiples of my own chips, and knowing that I basically needed to make a move within the first couple of hours or it wasn't worth fighting for. Ivey should have a little more time than that to hang on, but sooner or later in the first part of that final table, Ivey is going to have to make an attempt to double up in the best spot he can find. And if he can double early -- especially if it's against the chip leader Darvin Moon (can't you just envision that now?) -- the scene should start getting pretty electric early on. I might actually even have to watch the November Nine this year, that's how crazy this is!

WSOP Main Event -- The Final 27

Tuesday claimed a few more of the guys I had any specific interest in heading in to the Day 7 action of the World Series of Poker Main Event, starting right off the bat with pro Prahlad Friedman and just a short while later with PokerRoad guy Joe Sebok. Not that I particularly care about or even like Prahlad Friedman or Joe Sebok, but they are known poker pros, and I think if a known poker pro wins the Main Event, that would actually be huge for poker right now. What pro won't be chomping at the bit to play all the World Series events every year for the rest of time once someone demonstrates to them that, with skill, it is possible for a pro to navigate even the largest minefields in live tournaments? These days, you've suddenly got the many of the pros staying away from the smaller-buyin "donkaments" that comprise the ever-growing World Series of Poker, but if a known pro can win this tournament, I think it could actually spark pros' interest in playing in all the Series' events in the future. If you really know these poker pros, then you know that each and every one of them believes that if Phil Ivey can survive 6500 donks in one tournament, then so can they. Every single one of 'em. Anyways, it's something I would love to see for a lot of reasons and I think it could have an interesting aftermath just like Moneymaker's win back in 2003. But it won't be with Prahlad Friedman or Joe Sebok in 2009.

Another sad moment was later in the afternoon hours, when 2008's last remaining November Nine participant, Dennis Phillips, busted from the tournament in 45th place. He nabbed another $178k to go along with last year's 4.5M take from the Main Event. I don't know what it is about Phillips that seems to have made him such a fan favorite (myself included), but ultimately I suspect that it comes down to this feeling that Phillips is just an all-around good guy. It's certainly the aura I pick up from watching him play, talk in interview, etc.

A couple of hours later, just before the dinner break in fact, the last of the non-huge poker pros busted in 34th place in Blair Rodman. I never liked Kill Phil -- can't believe I paid money for that thing in fact -- but I do kinda like Blair Rodman nonetheless and I would have loved to see a guy who not only plays professional but wrote a well-known poker book and essentially crafted a known tournament poker strategy run deep in the biggest tournament of the year. When no name players were among the last few eliminations on the day, the action stopped around 10pm local time with 27 remaining in the field of the WSOP Main Event.

In a way, all of the eliminations above made things easy for me and probably for a whole bunch of others of you out there, because it really leaves only two names in the field who most of us will recognize and thus have any inherent level of interest in. Of course, the November Nine will be studied, vetted and pried into by the media in the coming months and we will be well aware of whatever stories lurk among the details, but I'm talking about inherent interest -- interest in how these guys do even before knowing anything new about them. In this case, those two players left in the final 27 players of the 2009 WSOP Main Event are Antonio "the Magician" Esfandiari -- another guy whose book I've read, and actually enjoyed for the most part -- and the immutable Phil Ivey. Who hasn't written a poker book unfortunately, but I imagine that's probably because he's too busy prop betting on poker, golf or anything else he can dream up to fulfill his fix.

When the action starts up for Day 8 on Wednesday at noon local time, Darvin Moon, who I believe was also chip leader after Day 6, will once again be in the top spot with 20.1M in chips. Billy Kopp is in second with 16M, and then there is a crush of eight different players in the 9M-12M range, including Phil Ivey who is currently in 4th of 27 with 11.3M.

Esfandiari is not in nearly as good of shape, currently in 20st of 27 with 4.5M in chips. That being said, the very favorable structure of the Main Event means that even someone near the bottom and significantly below average this late into a huge field still has plenty of play, as Round 29 will begin early on Wednesday, which features just a 10k ante and blinds of 50k-100k. So even the Magician in 20th place out of 27 remaining is sitting on almost 45 big blinds, meaning that he has plenty of time to wait for a good spot rather than get involved stealing with total crap. And that means that he will have more of an opportunity to use his skill advantage over the other players to make something happen for himself.

With just 27 players remaining in this 10k buyin event with nearly 6500 runners, we are playing for massive money with every elimination at this point. On Wednesday, those players eliminated from 19th-27th place will each receive $352,832 from the prize pool. Finishers 16 through 18 will each win $500,557, 13th-15th will take $633,022, and finally for today 10th through 12th place will each win $896,730 for their time. It's pretty awesome when you think about it, and although as anyone whose had some real deep tournament runs knows, it's always bittersweet, given a little bit of time everyone who is eliminated today will come to appreciate just how awesome this whole run has been, and how great the institution of the World Series of Poker really is. When the action begins today with 27 players remaining, the average chipstack will be 7.2 million, but as often happens very late in large tournaments when a few enormous stacks can really skew the overall average, only 11 of the 27 players are actually above that mark. So even the shorties around 4-5M like the Magician are still more than half of average. Plenty of room still to play some poker, and two pros whom we've all seen play huge with big, big money on the line are still lurking, one having some work to do and the other in fine shape.

From worldseriesofpoker.com, the Day 8 starting table assignments:

The Chick table (Leo Margets is the last woman alive in the 2009 WSOP Main Event):

Jesse Haabak - 2,750,000
Ian Tavelli - 4,385,000
James Calderaro - 6,475,000
Jonathan Tamayo - 3,300,000
Warren Zackey - 5,485,000
Eric Buchman - 10,005,000
Leo Margets - 1,530,000
Tommy Vedes - 5,070,000
James Akenhead - 8,615,000

The TV table (current chipleader plus Phil Ivey):

Phil Ivey - 11,350,000
Jeff Shulman - 10,170,000
George Caragiorgas - 1,615,000
Nick Maimone - 1,545,000
Andrew Lichtenberger - 5,625,000
Marco Mattes - 5,285,000
Joseph Cada - 6,565,000
Darvin Moon - 20,160,000
Jordan Smith - 4,510,000

The Magic table (Antonio Esfandiari plus current 2nd place in Billy Kopp):

Jamie Robbins - 9,795,000
Antonio Esfandiari - 4,470,000
Francois Balmigere - 1,440,000
Ludovic Lacay - 5,610,000
Steven Begleiter - 11,885,000
Ben Lamb - 9,410,000
Antoine Saout - 11,135,000
Kevin Schaffel - 11,245,000
Billy Kopp - 15,970,000

Pauly's coverage has been awesome as always, it's still the best way to follow along with the action for any casual observer of the game. I know I'll be responsible for about 150 hits on his site tonight, just me. Maybe I will see some of you there while I invent new ways to run bad on full tilt. Hey wait, didn't the Mookie used to be on Wednesday nights?

WSOP ME Day 6

Well, Day 6 saw two of the guys I would have most liked to see survive to the November Nine -- former ME champions Peter Eastgate and Joe Hachem -- both hit the rail late in the day as neither one could hold on and make an improbable second run through the monstrous field that the WSOP Main Event attracts each year these days. Ultimately, Eastgate was more of a fad with me, as I don't know anything about him, and the only poker I've ever really watched him play was the late stages of the 2008 WSOP when he got luckier than just about anyone I've ever seen who hasn't been playing me in an mtt since I returned from Las Vegas earlier this month. Hachem I have always had a good feeling for, first when he stormed through the 2004 WSOP ME field to win out against 6000-some runners, and then when I had the opportunity to sit next to him for a couple of hours in my first World Series of Poker tournament the following summer, when Hachem not only sucked out a 2-outer to eliminate me early from the tournament on the turn, but he took advantage of the short time we played together to really rub off on me an impression of a generally good, down to earth guy. If you've read here for a while you may recall my story of when the dealer failed to recognize Hachem -- then the reigning World Champion of Poker -- and Hachem was really cool about it in a spot when I guarantee you a bunch of other name pros would have sliced and diced the dealer in front of everybody. So Hachem and Eastgate are out, eliminating the last of the former world champions and meaning that we will definitely have a picture of a brand new face hanging up in the Amazon Room after this year's final table comes to an end in November.

After 6494 players put up $10,000 apiece to play in this year's WSOP Main Event, we are now down to just 64 players remaining as we head into Day 7 of action at the Rio. The payouts for the first players eliminated today will begin at over 100 large, and the plan for the day is apparently to play as long as it takes to get down to just 27 players remaining, which means that the final table-full of eliminations this evening will each be paid $253,941 for their efforts. Needless to say, with such an F-load of money waiting to be disbursed, there is a ton at stake here even for the shortest of short stacks with just a wing and a prayer to get back into things before it's too late.

And, although two of my favorites remaining were busted on Monday, among the 64 guys still standing are some fun names and some solid chipstacks to go along with it. The big story, almost since Day One, continues to be Phil Ivey -- he of the perpetually emotionless poker face -- as Ivey recovered from losing set-over-set early on Monday to now sit in 3rd place heading into the Day 7 action with over 6.3 million in chips. Also in the top ten remaining is another well-known-from-tv pro, Antonio Esfandiari, who has quietly been climbing up the leaderboard for days and now sits firmly perched in 6th place overall with 5.6 million in his stack, making for some fun possibilities right there as far as name pros to last this deep into one of the biggest poker tournaments of all time. Also still alive and kicking in the event among other people I have some interest in are last year's November Nine participant Dennis Phillips, currently in 43rd place of 64 remaining players with 2.3 million in chips, with Kill Phil co-author Blair Rodman right on Phillips's heels with 2.1 million. Young pros Joe Sebok and Prahlad Friedman round out the list of people still alive who I care at all about, each sitting in the bottom handful of stacks with under a million chips apiece to start the day.

The action begins again at 3pm ET on Tuesday, so be sure to keep checking in with Pauly, wsop.com or wherever else you are getting your real-time WSOP Main Event updates fix.

WSOP Main Event -- After Day Five

Unfortunately, the Main Event of the World Series of Poker got a lot more boring for me personally this weekend, with the eliminations on Days 3-5 of former champions Greg Raymer, Jesus Ferguson, Phil Hellmuth, Bobby Baldwin and Dan Harrington. Meanwhile, on the celebrity side, George Kostanza was also knocked out on Day 3, and even actor Lou Diamond Phillips, who managed to make it all the way to the very last hand of Day 5, got eliminated in 186th place before they packed it up for the night in the Rio when he got allin preflop with KK against AA and AA. Gotta love it.

As an aside, could we have had worse coverage across the major media outlets of Phil Hellmuth's bustout hand? Sure the guy is an absolute douchebag, but the simple fact remains that most of the people who care enough to read blogs for live updates of the main event will clearly want to know how Hellmuth busted, and more importantly, how he behaved when it happened. Based on last year's late elimination, my guess is not well. But, that's just a guess since basically nobody out there could tell me much of anything about how he busted. Hellmuth busted late on Day 4, within the last few eliminations of the day (I think), and all I was able to find anywhere was a simple statement that he was gone. No how, no when, no what he did. That's poor right there. I guess I read somewhere that ESPN was being kinda dick about controlling the information on the goings-on at their featured tv tables -- where I assume Hellmuth was playing, if ESPN's head is not up its ass -- but to not even be able to get a report on how the biggest public spectacle left in the Main Event busted from the tournament is just sad.



Anyways, on a positive note, there are still a good number of people who I would be interested in seeing final table this thing still alive as of the end of Day 5. Heading into Day 6, we have 185 runners remaining out of the 6494 who started, and we are already well into the money here, which started when we had 648 players remaining. At this point, most of the people who adopted a strategy of just waiting until the money back with seven or eight hundred players left are now long gone, and what we're left with is a field of 185 runners who are mostly going to be strong, aggressive players with their sights set not on moving up another payout plateau but rather amassing enough chips to final table the main event, thereby ensuring over one and a quarter million as a guaranteed payout in addition to sponsorship by one of the major poker sites to boot.

Although all those former Main Event champions above were eliminated over the weekend, a few still remain in the field of 185. Peter Eastgate, last year's Main Event champion, continued his huge recovery from around 8000 chips late on Day Two, closing the Day 5 action with 927k in chips. Eastgate will be seated along with Phil Ivey to start Day 6, who survived a set over set debacle early in the day to nearly double on his last hand on Day 5 when Ivey's pocket 8s held up against AQo. Eastgate's 927k in chips joins Ivey's 1.38 million-chip stack at Blue 18 in the Amazon Room, along with current tournament chip leader Warren Zackey, who currently holds 4.872 million chips.

Joe Hachem, the 2004 WSOP ME champion, will start Day 6 at Blue 38, sitting on 540k in chips, joined by J.C. Tran (720k) and last year's final tablist Dennis Phillips (1 million) as well as six other players whose names I do not recognize.

Other notable players still remaining in the field include David Benyamine, who will headline Blue 16 on Monday with 764k in chips. Prahlad Friedman is still alive, with 715k in chips, and will join Tom "Donkeybomber" Schneider (3.168 million) -- currenty in 4th place on the tournament leaderboard -- at Blue 20 to start the day. Blue 30 will also be an interesting stop for those covering the event, as Euro pro Bertran "ElkY" Grospellier (973k) and young pro Joe Sebok (992k) will begin the day at the same table and with very similar-sized stacks. Blue 44 will be another hotspot, where Antonio "the Magician" Esfandiari will start in third place at his table with 1.227 million in chips at a table that includes former top-ten chipstack in this event and apparent tax cheat Eric Cloutier. Blair Rodman, co-author of the popular Kill Phil poker strategy books, will be seated at Green 155 with 905k in chips along with eight names I do not recognize, so Rodman may be in good shape for the early allin and double in addition to many of the others I have named above.

With 185 runners remaining and 30k starting stacks, the average chipstack to start Day 6 should be 1.053 million. This means that most of the pros and other well-known players mentioned above will head into Monday's action at noon PT with at least around average stacks. Even those with 750k or so are just a few blind-and-ante steals away from average, so there is plenty of play left for the big guns remaining in the 2009 WSOP. Looking at the money to be awarded, those who finish between 185th and 163rd will receive $36,626, while 100th-162nd are slated to get $40,288, and then after that the payouts will climb approximately every table (nine spots) from there, starting at $47,003 for 91st to 99th place, $57,991 for 82nd to 90th place, $68,979 for 73rd to 81st, and $90,344 for 64th to 72nd. Once we reach 55th to 63rd we will cross the six-figure plateau at $108,047, while 46th to 54th will pay $138,568, 37th to 45th $178,857, and 28th to 36th, $253, 941, over the quarter million mark. My guess is that they won't get to this level on Monday, but there will still small fortunes to be won with every flip of the river by the time Monday's action heads into the late hours.

The Main Event Rolls On

I have to admit, I have had a fun time tuning in when I can to ESPN's coverage of the 2008 WSOP Main Event this week. They've smartly been running it every evening this week, I imagine to capitalize on whatever interest there is out there right now while the 2009 Main Event is happening live at the Rio, and I think it's been working. I've spoken with at least two other blonkeys who have been enjoying watching this week as well, culminating last night in the annual elimination of Phil Hellmuth. After having to watch him just generally be a pompous ass and pimp hard for the cameras over the past few days, Thursday night brought Phil's eventual elimination from the event when his AQ -- pushed allin preflop from early position for his last 10 big blinds -- failed to catch against a late position opponent's JJ.

Last year's Hellmuth elimination was different from most of his recent big tournament bustouts. Instead of flipping out and going crazy on the guy for his call or his play in general that led to Phil's elimination, this time there was simply nothing he could do or say to attack his opponent's play. Phil was short, he pushed from EP and the guy woke up with pocket Jacks. Moreover, Phil hadn't spent the past two days bitching and moaning about how everyone else at his table sucks balls at poker (unlike previous years), so he couldn't even go off for an hour about how horrible everyone else had been playing. Instead, all the way down to I think 45th place, we literally got to watch Phil's emotions get the best of him. When he fails to make that Ace or Queen on the river, we can see for the first time how surely Phil believed he was going to win the ME in 2008. Tears literally welled up in his eyes, and he for a few minutes looked like he was going to bawl right there on camera for all to see. He even managed to get in the utterly ludicrous statement "I get so unlucky in this god damn tournament" as we got to watch him try to cope with losing after a long day of getting outplayed by amateurs over and over again. Yeah, the guy with the most cashes -- by far -- in World Series of Poker history, the guy who 20 years ago became the youngest player then ever to win the WSOP Main Event, that guy is unlucky in the WSOP. Right.

Then the camera panned away, and before we knew it, it was all gone. The next shot we see of the Poker Brat is him walking away down the back hallway behind the Amazon Room at the Rio, explaining to the camera that he plays 10,000 times better poker than every single other person at his table. Now that's the guy we all know and are disgusted by.

Anyways, will today be the day that Phil Hellmuth busts from the 2009 Main Event? It could be -- the action will begin with Day 3 at noon Pacific, 3pm Eastern time, and Hellmuth joins another 1700+ remaining of the nearly 6500 who started last week, with all 1700 playing together today for the first time since the Main Event began. After four Day 1s and two Day 2s, today is the first time that the Rio has the resources to seat everyone in the big ballroom and play. And with Hellmuth sitting at about a third more than average, he's got enough chips to wait for the good hands, but at the same time Day 3 will definitely be a day where you have to make some moves and climb up the leaderboard. Assuming that roughly half the field is eliminated during today's action, that means the average chips will double again today to somewhere around 240k. If Hellmuth folds for 10 hours and doesn't do much to accumulate further here, he'll be at a quarter of average or less by nighttime, so you can bet he will be looking for spots to make some moves and take some big hands deep into some pots.

Otherwise, thanks to Astin for some of the information I was seeking. It sounds like Lucko busted somewhere on Day 2B, leaving just sprstoner -- easily the best performing member of our crew in this year's WSOP -- among bloggers remaining to play Day 3. Stoner's blog indicates that he dropped from 70k to 43k over the last hour of play on Day 2B, but if anybody can find a way to nab a quick double and start building from there, it's stoner. That said, 43k is quite a hole to be starting in at this point, down close to a third of the average stack, so stoner will begin Day 3 quite short on chips and in need of something good to happen fast.

One other question I have, which occurred to me after watching the 2008 WSOP on Thursday evening: where is Tiffany Michelle this year? Her website indicates an appearance at the Playboy Mansion this coming Saturday, but do you mean to tell me that after last year's performance, Michelle never even came out to play in the Main Event this year? That can't be, can it? Just from watching her last year, it was obvious that she truly believed she was the best player in the room, so how could she pass up another shot at 8 mill? If that is the case I will be utterly flabbergasted.

OK so that's a wrap on the WSOP Main Event preview for this weekend. Action picks up at 3pm ET today with Day 3, and I believe the cash should be hit somewhere probably on Saturday as the Day 4 crowd inches down to the 648 players who will receive payouts for their ME performances this year. By the end of the weekend we should be down to a very small number of players. Will Phil Hellmuth be among them? Will Phil Ivey keep accumulating chips and for a deep run in 2009? Will Greg Raymer double early and continue his push to a third deep WSOP run in the past five years? And will Dan Harrington continue his run to an amazing fourth WSOP Main Event final table? Only one way to find out: follow along with the action, whether it's with Pauly like me, or at pokernews, worldseriesofpoker.com or otherwise.

WSOP Main Event Thoughts Through Day 2

Try as I might, I have just not been able to keep up with what's been going on at the WSOP Main Event as much as I would like, what with work, family and all that I have to do this week after 10 days away from my life. Now, with all of Day Two officially over with after Wednesday's Day 2B action, and with a rare day off on Thursday for the Main Event, I thought I would take the time and use this space just to gather the information I personally am interested in as far as who is left and who is gone from the Main Event heading into the weekend. This is not meant to be anything new, but rather just an amalgamation of information culled from other sites covering the Main Event into one place, with a particular focus on the players I personally am interested in.

OK, so first things first. How many total runners ponied up the 10k for this year's Main Event? 6494. Per Pauly this makes the prize pool a cool $61 million, to be paid out to the final 648 finishers. This will easily be enough to ensure more than a million bucks goes to each member of the November 9, the ME final table which will be suspended until November as it was last year. The 9th place finisher should nab over one and a quarter mill for his efforts, and the eventual winner will take home over $8.5 million. As of the end of all the Day 2 action, according to worldseriesofpoker.com, there remain 1724 players in the running for that grand prize. By my count, we have four or five of last year's November Nine still left in the field. This includes the 2008 WSOP Main Event champion Peter Eastgate, as well as eight other former WSOP Main Event winners each still on the prowl for their second ME bracelet.

Now, who's out already that I care about? Lots of players:

Jerry Yang. Former ME winner, busting early without making much noise at all for the second straight year, this time out about nine hours into Day 1A. There's just a sense of fairness, of rightness, seeing the guys who donkeypunched their way to millions bust out early this time around.

Allen Cunningham. One of my favorite players and a guy who played a lot in the underground cardrooms of New York City back in the day, AC was eliminated in the final round on Day 1A. No 6th WSOP bracelet for Cunningham in 2009, who remains 7th on the all-time WSOP earnings list.

Andy Bloch. You just never like to see a fellow lawyer go busto, especially a cowboy hat-wearing all-around nice guy like Andy with a lot of poker skill to go along with his J.D. degree and Harvard Law diploma. Andy busted late on Day 1A.

Chris Moneymaker. Here is another former Main Event champion, out in under four hours on Day 1B. Not sure what to say about this guy, but maybe he shoulda just quit while he was ahead and made the 2003 WSOP his first and last live poker tournament.

Doyle Brunson. Doyle busted about 7 1/2 hours in to Day 1B. This caps off an extremely frustrating WSOP for Doyle, who I read somewhere grew so fed up with the increasing donkament aspect of the tournaments that he ended up playing fewer WSOP events than any recent year in 2009. It's always a sad day in my book when the Godfather of Holdem goes busto from the Main Event. With son Todd also eliminated late on day 2A, daughter Pam becomes the only member of the Brunson family still alive in the Main Event through Day 2.

Jamie Gold. The former Main Event winner and nationally-acclaimed douchebag made it about seven hours in this year's Main Event Day 1B, continuing his streak of poker futility that began, well, within seconds of him lucksacking his way to the largest winning purse in poker history a few years ago.

Daniel Negreanu. Out early on Day 1C. Talk about a guy who has cooled from his pace a couple of years ago. There was a time when I met have said Danny Boy was one of my favorite poker pros. Now I barely ever even think of him anymore. What have you done for me lately, Daniel?

Shawn Sheikhan. God, remember when people actually cared about this guy's poker play for about 5 minutes? Out late on Day 1D.

David Williams. Ditto the above comment. What ever happened to this guy, huh? Eat one too many feet maybe? Or perhaps the rest of the field finally caught on to his aggro small-ball ways. Also out late on day 1D.

Phil Laak and girlfriend Jennifer Tilly. Both out very early on Day 2A. Oh well. I guess we won't get to see the Unabomber rolling around on the ground with his hoodie pulled tight to hide his entire face other than maybe the tip of his nose. And with Tilly gone I guess so are the hopes of another famous soul read like when she was so sure Patrik Antonius had pocket Kings in that one hand of High Stakes Poker:



That look on Ivey's face between 2:06 and 2:13 is pure classic.

Gus Hansen. Always a bummer when ole' Gus goes busto. Perhaps the best tournament poker player to never have won a WSOP bracelet (present company excluded, of course), and again this won't be the year after Gus's early Day 2A elimination.

Johnny Chan. Too bad, but the 10-time bracelet winner seems nearly irrelevant in today's mega poker world. Also out early on Day 2A.

Barry Greenstein. I didn't like his book, but he's a heck of a poker player and still the loser of the biggest suckout I've ever seen on High Stakes Poker, at the hands of a two-outer by Sammy Farha for about 400 Large of real cash:


High Stakes Poker Farha KK VS Greenstein AA - The most amazing bloopers are here

Ugh, I have to run to the bathroom every time I watch that garbage. In any event, Greenstein's early Day 2A elimination is probably nowhere near as bad as that hand was.

LJ. This one was a real bummer. Apparently LJ pushed real hard with pocket 8s on an all-undercard board early on Day 2A, and got called all the way through the river by pocket Tens. Some of those details might be off, but I've been there and I have probably lost more tournaments with an overpair to a higher overpair in my day than any other way other than suckouts. One of the significant adjustments I have made to my no-limit game over the past couple of years is to either find out if my mid-overpair is ahead early, or lay it down to sufficient pressure if the action all through the hand indicates a good possibility of a higher pocket pair out there. Anyways, that sucks, I really thought LJ had a good shot this year.

Tony G. No Russian loudmouth asshole to rival Hellmuth in the douchebag department. Out about four hours in to Day 2A.

Michael Craig. No Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide author to kick around anymore. Out around 5 hours in to Day 2A.

Mike Matusow. Sucks, but The Mouth is out about eight hours in to Day 2A. No drug-dealin', drug-usin', crybabyin' loud mouth druggie to follow during another Main Event deep run.

Anguila. This is a poker blogger, a professional player from Spain, with a good blog but who apparently lost late on Day 2A with AK in his third consecutive Main Event, according to Pauly. Another blogger bites the dust.

Erick Lindgren. Always one of my favorite players. From reading his book and listening to him in videos, he seems to approach the game the most like myself out of all the pros out there. Erick is out within the first hour of play on Day 2B.

Erich Froelich. Also out late in the first round of Day 2B. Good. This is the guy who 2-outerdonked me out of the big 1k FTOPS event a couple of years back. I don't care how many bracelets he won in 2006. "E-Fro" is finished as a poker player.

Howard Lederer. Busted around midway through Day 2B,I have no idea how. Both Howard and his sister Annie Duke are early casualties in the Main Event this year.

David Sklansky. Out midway through Day 2B. I played with DS for about five hours at my table during the 2007 WSOP, and he played just about the most boring, by-the-book five hours of poker I've ever seen. Including of course the super-young Asian girl railbirding him from behind his left shoulder. Well, add this to the list of another year where Sklansky fails to do anything significant in the world of tournament poker.

TJ Cloutier. Amazingly, TJ was among the biggest names who were shut out of the Main Event this year thanks to Harrah's brilliant planning (yet again) and consequent inability to make room for everyone for the first time in WSOP ME history on Day 1D. Not having TJ in the field is pretty ghey if you ask me, given all of his WSOP cashes over the years.

Shannon Elizabeth. I didn't see where or how, but apparently the American Pie star and hot WSOP fixture these days was eliminated somewhere during the first two days of play. Anyone who's been around the WSOP over the past few years has to have seen Elizabeth around, as over the past year or so she's even managed to get her name on the screens as an early chip leader from time to time. But everyone's favorite Rio eye candy is busto. I wonder who the hottest chick left in the Main Event is?

OK, now on to some happier news: who's still alive that I care about, heading into Day 3 on Friday?

First off, the overall chip leader heading into Day 3 is? Amir Lehavot with 610,500 in chips. The rest of the top 10 are no-names from my perspective, with #10 coming in with 370k in chips. And what about after the top 10?

Phil Ivey 325k. This is a huge story in the making, and if he can survive another day or two of eliminations, the press is really going to start going nuts on one of the most reserved, introverted players out there, at least as far as the persona that comes across on the tv.

JC Tran 254k. JC will always hold a special place in my heart because (1) he is an awesome nlh player, and (2) he's the guy whose table I got moved to on the bubble of my WSOP cash in 2007. I've never seen anyone abuse, maul and bully his opponents with a massive stack like JC did that day. Maybe he gets another chance to bully with a big stack in this year's Main Event?

Josh Arieh 225k. Everyone's favorite super dickhead from ESPN's coverage a few years ago has been hanging around near the top of the pack for much of the way through the Main Event so far.

Paul Wasicka 210k. Winner of the National Heads-up Championship as well as a ME final tablist two years ago, Wasicka is in good position with nearly twice the average chip stack.

David Benyamine 199k. Who doesn't love a French guy who donks it up at high stakes on full tilt while banging one of the hottest chicks in poker? Me. I can't stand Benyamine, but he knows the game and is well above average heading in to Day 3.

Justin "ZeeJustin" Bonomo 190k. And everyone's favorite multi-accounting online cheater is once again blazing in yet another big poker tournament. Does anyone hate how good this guy obviously is more than I do?

Lou Diamond Phillips 190k. That's right, this is not a typo. The 47-year-old star of Stand and Deliver is in the top 50 in chips heading into Day 3.

Dennis Phillips 190k. Perhaps the most recognizable and likeable member of last year's November Nine, DP is still alive and doing well with 190k in chips after two full days of play.

Dan Harrington 183k. Anyone who claims not to want to see Harrington make another run to his fourth WSOP Main Event final table is lying. Harrington is everyone's favorite cutiepie old guy at the tournament, and more than a few players know to be scared whenever one of the tightest players around voluntarily puts money into the pot.

Jeff Lisandro 180k. Lisandro has had perhaps the best WSOP of anyone so far in 2009, and here he sits well above average heading into Day 3 of the Main Event. He will definitely be a player to watch over this coming weekend.

Antonio Esfandiari 164k. The Magician is also alive and kicking after two days and nine two-hour blind rounds of play. Average is 113k, so Esfandiari has some room to work his magic early on Day 3.

Jean-Robert Bellande 160k. One of the biggest dickheads from the Main Event a couple of years back, the calmer, quiter JRB sits in good shape after more than 20 hours of poker so far in the 2009 WSOp Main Event.

Dutch Boyd 140k. Keeping with the theme here, surely Boyd is another of the big asscocks of the poker world who are clustered around the 150k plateau. Here's hoping that someone jacks him of all his cash while he is playing on Friday.

Phil Hellmuth 135k. Doubtless the biggest douchebag in all of poker, the only question is not if but when does the ranting start? This clown dressed up like Julius Caesar for his annual three-hours-late grand entrance on Day 1C this year. Let's hope he ends up just like JC did two thousand years ago. You can be sure the ESPN cameras will be all up in Hellmuth's UB-clad mug from now until the moment he blows up like a volcano is eliminated.

Joe Hachem 130k. The 2005 Main Event winner is slightly above average heading into the Day 3 action. Maybe he can suckout-eliminate someone early like he did to me in my first WSOP tournament back in 2006.

Cliff "JohnnyBax" Joesphy 107k. Sitting right around average is one of the big online pros still alive in the field. JohnnyBax has probably eliminated everyone I know at least once from a tournament on full tilt or pokerstars, and he will look to do more damage when the action resumes on Friday at the Rio.

Peter Eastgate 98k. Last year's Main Event winner came in to Day 2B as a short stack, and got even shorter in the earlygoing. PokerNews is reporting, however, that Eastgate rallied from down to around 8k in chips near the end of the day to wind up with 98k and an near-average chip stack (average is 113k per wsop.com). Anybody who flops like he did at the final table last November has got to be considered armed and dangerous while still alive in this tournament.

There are lots of other well-known pros sitting well below average at this point (Jennifer Harman, Devilfish, John Juanda, Miami John Cernuto, Humberto Brenes to name a few), but no need to do more than mention them at this point. If these guys can double up once or twice, then it may make sense to pay some more attention. I understand that 7-time WSOP bracelet winner and fellow New Yorker Erik Seidel is also still alive, although I am having trouble locating a chip count for him which makes me think he could be busto and just not reported correctly to this point. Same deal for Greg Raymer, who I saw in a PokerNews interview was around 100k about halfway through Day 2B, but can't find anything final on him since then. Of course, Seinfeld star Jason Alexander is also still alive and kicking, the first time he has survived until Day Three in the Main Event after his Day Two elimination back in 2007, but unfortunately I don't have a chip count for George Kostanza either.

Lastly, does anyone have any information on the only other two members of our blogging crew that were left playing heading into the Day 2B action? This would be lucko and sprstoner. I know both of their names but cannot locate chip count information on either one on any of the major sites. Any info would be appreciated, in the comments.

ESPN and the WSOP

Some other people have written about this with respect to Scotty Nguyen's embarrassing performance in I think the HORSE tournament at the WSOP this year, but there is no doubt that the WSOP coverage on ESPN in 2008 is showing the extreme dickery of some of the game's biggest personalities like never before. Given what we've seen in the past, you would want to assume that this is because the players are being bigger a-holes than ever before, but our blogger brethren who have actually been out there covering the WSOP events for the past several years all seem to agree that Scotty's always been like this, just that ESPN is just finally showing the truth for the first time. If so, that is an abomination on ESPN's part, but not a surprising one. Remember when they hired Pauly to do WSOP coverage for the world's biggest sports network, I guess that was about 20 months ago at this point, and then suddenly dropped him out of the blue a few days later? All because some suit at the network realized that Pauly's brand of WSOP coverage, while totally true, was not likely to paint the game in the overly positive light that ESPN was hoping to portray? Disgusting. Well now it seems things have come full circle. Now that the popularity of televised poker is clearly on the wane, now that the WSOP telecasts are nowhere near the cash cow that ESPN once thought (and hoped) they would be, only now are they willing to show the true side of the game and the players we love in it.

What a bunch of dogs.

Anyone who's been keeping up with the WSOP broadcasts this year knows exactly what I'm talking about. In that HORSE telecast a couple of months back, Scotty Nguyen got hammered after sucking down beer after beer after beer at the WSOP, and then he started taking on another guy at the final table heads-on, getting far out of line with his dick chat early and often during the final table broadcast. I mean, you've almost never seen someone be such a dick and go so overboard about one perceived misplay by another guy at the table (I say "almost" because, well, see below). Of course, what do you expect when a guy who is apparently known for being a drunk and going overboard is allowed to -- and chooses to -- drink heavily while on live television. Scotty -- previously always cast as the smiling face, the good guy of poker with his "I love you baby" and similar commentary -- completely lost it on that show and with it, he lost my respect as a player. Not just as a person, where I know now beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's a cock of a man, but as a poker player as well, because anyone who acts like that -- especially knowing that he is on tv -- has very little respect for the game and is at his core a selfish and little man.

But speaking of guys who act like asshats at the poker tables even knowing they're on tv, of course I have to mention Phil Hellmuth. Now with Phil, I can't exactly say that I hadn't known what a baby the Poker Brat could be at the tables, as even ESPN has recognized over the past few years the television appeal of capturing Phil's many whiney rants for the viewing audience. But this year, at least to me, I've never been more disgusted about the guy. And while I haven't read many poker blogs lately, I haven't really seen Phil's behavior at the WSOP this year mentioned a whole lot, which surprises me because I can't believe what a fucking loser he is being. For the past three weeks I have had to sit and watch Phil whine like a fucking baby loser idiot at least three or four times per episode. I mean, I can't wait until this guy is busted this year. In the past, I will admit that I have generally enjoyed watching Hellmuth's ridickulous antics, but not this year. I think the difference more than anything else is that, instead of just whining about bad beats in general, he is repeatedly launching personal insults at the other players at the table. You couldn't count how many times he has called other players at the table "idiots" in the past few weeks. He verbally assaulted at least one dealer -- as if the dealer has a dam thing to do with the cards that come off -- never mind the fact that that particular dealer had just sat down at the table to begin with.

We've all been there before, haven't we? It's bad enough when people are F-heads in the chatbox in online poker, but at least you don't have to deal with them directly, you don't have to read it or hear them, and in fact if you so choose you can just mute the chat entirely. But at a live table, having some tiltmonkey asshole there, complaining about every card, every hand, every fold? It sucks. When that guy is personally insulting you and/or others at the table though? Attacking the dealer for the cards he is -- I guess, purposefully -- dealing to a particular player? It's horrible. You want more than anything else for that guy to just get busted or some other way just to get the hell off the table. At least for me, it more or less totally ruins my experience playing the game. And down to under a few hundy players left in the biggest poker tournament of most of these players' lives, to have their experience forever tarnished by the memory of a raging asshole like Hellmuth is a terrible thing.

It's time for Harrah's to put a stop to Hellmuth's stupidity at the tables. I don't mind a good tilter -- heck I can tilt as hard as the rest of 'em -- and I'm not such a Stalin that I think anyone complaining about a bad beat should be penalized, but personally I don't see why they don't have a rule about personally and directly insulting the other players at the table, at least to an excessive degree. I'm not worried about there not being a bright line rule on this one -- just having some discretion on the part of the dealer or the floor with a rule like this is enough for me, because lord knows we all can agree that Hellmuth has easily crossed it in this WSOP Main Event. For the last several hours at least. The guy is such a fucking baby, and a whiner, and a dick for the things he is saying to the other players, he deserves to be forcibly kicked out of the Amazon room at the Rio, and forced to sit outside and cool off while his not-so-big chip stack dwindles through the blinds and antes. I think just the threat of that would shut his ass up real quick, given his never-large stack size in this thing, so every single other player (and dealer) in that room would win, as would every single viewer on ESPN who might have enjoyed his antics at some point but who are all just tired and disgusted by it here and now. And if Phil doesn't calm down with this rule in effect? Then we really win, because we get to watch him get removed by security from the room and we get to watch his chips slip away, all the while knowing that Phil knows his chips are being eaten up while he sits on his annoying baby ass and cries like a little girl.

Of course, the best part about all of Hellmuth's rants this year in the WSOP ME are that I think in every single case, Hellmuth got straight-up outplayed. I mean, he's probably blown up on 6 or 7 occasions on tv just the past few weeks, and in every single hand without exception, his opponent maybe made a questionable raise or call before or on the flop -- the same "questionable" preflop or flop moves made with regularity by most of the top pros in the world today -- but then outplayed him the rest of the way through the hand. Of course I've seen Phil raise or call with total garbage hands several times during this World Series, but naturally all of those were great plays. In his mind. But otherwise, there is just one reason why Phil has never been able to get out of the hole all the way through the second half or so of this Main Event -- he isn't playing well. At all. And deep down he knows it, which I'm sure is why he is acting like such a whiney bitch all the way through this year's coverage, even down into the final 100 players out of the 6000 or so entrants.

FWIW, Hellmuth's rants are I think far worse than Scotty's in that drunken tirade he went on on his way to winning the HORSE bracelet this year. Scotty was being a total and utter asshole, but it didn't seem at least to me to consist of the kind of repeated, personal insults directed at the intelligence of his opponents. With Scotty it was more that one misstep made by his opponent at the final table that made him angry, and he just could not let that anger go. Phil, on the other hand, is constantly calling his opponents idiots, loudly, publicly and to the millions of viewers on the cameras as much as anything else. And of course Phil is doing it to basically all of his opponents, basically just because they are beating him out of hands with superior play, not just to one of them over a specific incident like Scotty was. That's not in any way to excuse Scotty for his behavior, which I would describe as objectively deplorable, but rather to point out that Hellmuth's is just much, much whinier and worse. I mean, is there any doubt in a single viewer's mind out there that Phil Hellmuth has a small penis at this point? I mean, teeny tiny eensy weensy. To me it's obvious. Nobody whines and insults others like that without a physical shortcoming like this to back it up. I can spot the littledicks from a mile away, and Hellmuth is lucky if he has two inches to back up all of his recockulous behavior.

This week's outbusts were so bad that even Mike Matusow had to tell Phil at the end of the episode from a couple of seats away, down to some 80 players remaining, to back off and that Phil was "way, way out of line". Now you know it's bad when Matusow is calling you out for being out of line. Matusow, of the "You have teeny, tiny cojones, but I have huge brass cojones" line to eventual Main Event champion Greg Raymer a few years ago. Who knew back then that Matusow was right, only he was talking to the wrong poker pro?

MATH Recap, MTT Bender, the Main Event, and Cheating NBA

17 runners came out for Mondays at the Hoy this week, creating a $408 prize pool for our second-ever MATH Shootout. 17 entrants got us three starting tables of 6, 6 and 5 players each, a nice round starting setup with almost all full shorthanded tables to begin with. Unfortunately the full tilt shootout payout continued to pay only the top two finishers, even though we had three starting tables and therefore three starting table winners to come to the final table. I played one of my best MATH's in quite a while, but got sucked out on four times, lost a race and eventually lost when my full stack was called allin by A4o preflop to corron10 who eventually eliminated jeciimd to win my starting table. The three table winners on the night were corron10, scottc25 and ElSnarfGrande with scottc25 winning$265.20 for first, and corron10 finishing second for $142.80. Once again the shootout format seemed to work out very well, and a good time was had by all. Thanks to everyone who came out, in addition to at least one first-timer and potentially yet another blogger playing on a second account on full tilt. Good times.

So, I thought I would take stock here of my mtt bender last week in retrospect. First things first -- profits. In the end, I made about $4500 over the six days of my bachelority, an awesome week by any standards I have set here over the past few years, and of course at the end of the day, my longtime readers know that following the cashish is the only real way to keep score in this game. Although I won a number of small sngs, finished second in a 90-person knockout sng, and cashed multiple times in multiple tournaments during the week, the bulk of the $4500 net over the week of course comes from my 4th place finish in the 5050 last Sunday night, followed by my 5th place finish in "the" 32k on Tuesday night, both on full tilt. Both of these scores are in my top 10 cashes for the year so far in tournament poker, and in that sense busting out with two of those in three nights of poker was definitely a great time. I really do wish I could isolate what it is about my poker play when I am home alone as compared to when I'm home with the rest of my family asleep nearby. It's not like I had any loud outside stimulus going last week that I don't usually have, and it's not like I got more hammered than usual or anything -- it would not be possible for me to more hammered than I usually am, at least for the big blonkaments every week -- and there's really nothing else tangible I can think of. But obviously something must be different, as now over two 5-day periods during the week after July 4 in two consecutive years, I have won around 5k in tournaments in two separate scores in both of those weeks. Now I'm no mathematician, but that has got to be statistically significant.

Changing topics a bit, at some point on Monday I finally looked into the WSOP Main Event. Sadly, I am not familiar in the least with anyone who made the final table. It's sad, but I guess it is not really at all surprising, given that we're looking at what, 6800-some-odd donks who entered this thing? The odds of anyone in the final 9 out of 6000-some will be anyone I know -- especially given how few poker players I really know in my life -- have got to be quite astronomically low, and yet perhaps I've been spoiled by guys like Alan Cunningham last year, Dan Harrington a few years back and a few others. But it sucks, I won't give two craps about who actually wins the Main Event, and I don't care how long they delay playing out that final table. I just don't know these guys and I won't be buying in to any of the hype that will doubtless just be building day after day, week after week over the next four months. To think that it will be cold and quite possibly snowing outside here in New York City when they finally get together to decide on the 2008 WSOP ME winner, it is just so surreal to me.

And wow, Tiffany Michelle! Final two tables. That is sweet. I don't know her, I've never met her and have no real interest in her, but I have watched her doing the interviews for pokernews in the past and thought she did a fine job. More than that, she seemed like a good person from the very brief exposure I had to her from those videos. So great for her. Tiffany goes down as the last person in the field of 6800+ that I actually "knew", in that I recognized her and am familiar with her as a personality. Woulda been an awesome story if a fairly hot chick like her could last all the way to the final table and be part of the recockulous money-driven cycle of greed that will be the next four months while the Main Event final table is delayed. God how I am not looking forward to that.

Oh right, before I go here is one story I absolutely loved from the sports world. The Tim Donaghy story just won't go away, will it? For some reason that I will never understand, the NBA continues to roll on with seemingly no real hit to its popularity following what to me is the megascandal in the world of sports of my generation, that there was actually an actual NBA ref who was actually fixing games vs. the point spreads over a year or so of NBA action. How sick. Well today's story essentially is that it turns out Donaghy called one particular NBA referee over the 2006-2007 season more than 100 times according to phone records, a span during which he only called his bookie more times, and during which he called no other referee more than a handful of times. Wonder what ole' Timmy Boy and this other ref were talking about, huh? Just unreal. But don't worry, the NBA has repeatedly stated, and reiterated this position again this week after the Donaghy phone records were made public, that Donaghy acted alone in fixing these games. Uh huh. Wtg NBA. These guys cheat worse than I do at the blonkaments!

And yet somehow people continue to go to the games and participate in the whole NBA marketing machine. Some of the very same people bitching endlessly about how anyone could ever play or keep any money at Ultimate Bet or Absolute Poker with all the cheating scandals going on there, will then turn around and continue to place bets on NBA games, which is just about the silliest hypocrisy you will find out there. My approach is that I won't be paying any real attention to the NBA again for a long, long time. How can I? Might as well be watching the WWF on a Saturday morning. Or is it called the WWE nowadays?

OK that's all for today. Skillz is tonight at 9:30pm ET on full tilt, password as always is "skillz". And the game tonight for the Skillz Series is...limit razz. Grrrrroooooooaaaaaannnnnn.

Math Shootout Take II, and All Good Things Come to an End

Yes, I'm sure most of you are already well aware of this but everyone's favorite poker dwarf Iggy did bust from the World Series of Poker Main Event, I guess it was late on Friday, several hours in to Day Four of the world's largest poker tournament. As the title says, all good things must come to an end, and I guess in that sense I am getting over it after a few days to relax. In the spirit of vengeance against the WSOP gods for not spiking Iggy his two-outer or whatever he needed on the river once he was forced to push his last 100k in more or less blind under the gun, I did not take one look at any WSOP updates over the weekend after Iggy busted. Not one. I don't know who busted, I don't know who's alive, I don't know who made the final table or if there even is a final table yet. I don't even know if Hellmuth busted and went crazy on everyone yet. I imagine I will check in for all the updates sometime today, but for now I am mired in the bliss of WSOP ignorance following the elimination of Iggy somewhere just north of 400th place, a finish in the top 7th percentile or so of one of the greatest minefields in the history of tournament poker.

So don't forget, Mondays at the Hoy is back tonight on full tilt, and this will be the second MATH tournament that will feature full tilt's new Shootout format. We're once again going to be playing shorthanded tables to keep the action going and the energy high, and we will for the second straight week play down to winners at each of the full shorthanded tables, and then those winners will meet up at the final table for a balls-out battle royale to see who can be the back-to-back winner that it will take down this week's Hoy title. We had a very respectable 23 runners come out for the first Shootout event last Monday, and I would say that the tournament went over very well and seems to have been quite well received as the shootout structure really seemed to spice things up a bit for all the players. Hopefully this means we can get a nice turnout going again tonight, as a shootout really works better with the more people involved, at least at the relatively low levels of participation that we tend to see outside of the BBT-enabled events. So come on out and play -- you know how much we love first-timers at Mondays at the Hoy as well, so even if you've never played with the group before -- the tournament goes off tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt, the buyin remains at $26, and the password as always is "hammer".

OK I can't take the suspense....I'm going to go and read up on the rest of this weekend' WSOP Main Event action now. See you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt!

MATH Recap, MATH Pimp and an Interesting Cash Hand Question

Howdy pardners! I can honestly say that I'm always happy to be back after a few days away from here at the blog, especially after a weekend full of poker-related degeneracy at the Hammer household. There is just so much to get to, I think I can actually feel the sides of my head swelling every time I try to wrap my brain around all the different topics I have buzzing through my head right now, so I'm resorting to something I almost never do as I write this post: little shorthand notes at the bottom of the text editor to remind me of all the topics I want to get to today. It feels kinda ghey to me, but it gets the job done and that after all is what I'm all about.

So it's been a long time since my last post. I thought I might post while on my vacay, and on the good news front, I did write some or most of about four different posts, which means lots of pokery content on its way here over the next few days. But in the end as I've written about before, a vacation just doesn't seem like a real vacation when I'm still a slave to the blog every day at some point. It was bad enough that I had to do a fair amount of work reading a thick contract we have in preparation for a Monday morning conference call to begin negotiating it with some bastages from one of the big sweatshop New York City law firms. I already know that will mean way-way-too-many sessions of back and forth fighting over a bunch of minutiae that these law firm jagoffs already know is not reasonable, not standard, and not something they're going to end up getting from us in this contract, but they'll be more than happy (insistent, even) to drag these idiotic discussions out for weeks on end, all to eventually give in on them just minutes before our mutual deadline for the negotiations to be completed, probably in exchange for some other more meaningful point that they actually feel is important to get included in our agreement with them. And all the while these law firm clowns will have done their best to have dragged out and extended the time and the difficulty with this negotiation, thereby ensuring that they individually can make their billable hours targets for the year at their law firm, so that they individually can have a better shot at getting a bigger bonus this year, or at making partner in a few years, etc. So what if they hurt their own clients and the deal as a whole by purposely dragging out a week's worth of talks over 20 phone calls and more than a month, creating considerable ill will between the parties that will now have to work closely together for the next several years, generating legal costs to their client several times what they should have been and would have been if this deal were being negotiated in-house on both sides. It's all just to pad their own billable hours with the out-house donkeylawyers, and their complete lack of "just get it done" mentality -- in fact their completely opposite interest to that approach -- makes deals harder for everyone to just sign up and let the business teams of our companies actually do their jobs.

What I just described is the roadmap to my next 30 days of work. Plus those other three full time jobs I am working these days. Good times. Anyways, all this is to say that I had to work enough already as it is over the weekend with this big deal I'm doing, and as a result I just didn't find the time to blog as well. But like I said you will make up for it this week with an overflow of content. As a teaser, I have a couple of BBT review-type of posts coming which I think will have some interesting stuff for those of you who like to read here on a regular basis. I also had my first live home game in several years at my place over the weekend, which was attended by several bloggers, friends, and friends of friends. Profitable, too, but all that too is for a later post this week, other than to say that I had a fuckin great time and really wish I could do this more often. Hey, maybe it's time for us New York bloggers to get a weekly game together? That would be badass. We should be playing weekly $.50 - $1 cash for $100 buyins. I would make the time in the evenings for that, and if I could make the time then anyone could. I say that with confidence.

I would be remiss if I did not also mention that the New York metro area's own SoxLover (you may know him better as Fishiswa) won Saturday night's 28k. That's right -- going right after the KOD himself, on KOD's own stomping ground. This is Sox's first major online tournament score, so I say to you, Sox, "Welcome to the club!". It's still a fairly small club among our group of players who have ever outright won a major mtt on one of the big online poker sites, but the great thing is that it's a club that is constantly growing, never remaining constant. Despite all my serious joking aside, the overall poker skill of the "average" poker blogger is actually increasing, and that is something that makes me very happy to know, to observe from the inside, and in fact to be a part of. Although obviously it's morphed into much more than this, one of the main reasons I ever started the blog was to try to help other people, in my own unique ways, to become better players by highlighting my mistakes, highlighting their mistakes, and fostering discussion on these points that would be helpful to a bunch of players who might stumble upon my site some day. To be someone who others credit with helping their game from time to time is something I always love to hear, and while I'm certainly not saying that SoxLover specifically has ever learned anything from me, to be just a small part of the machine that helps good players become better players in some miniscule way is a role that I relish given the amount of time and effort I typically put into this whole blogging thing.

OK this Monday post has gone on long enough without the requisite self-promotion:



Back from the holiday week it is time for the next Mondays at the Hoy tournament, for the foreseeable future remaining at full tilt poker at 10pm ET, password as always of "hammer". I cannot tell you how psyched I am looking at a week of the Hoy, the Mookie, and Riverchasers, all without the pressure of the scoring system of the BBT looming over a good half the players' minds and influencing everyone's play across the board. Getting together, playing hard, taking some chances without worrying about anything external to the tournament itself, pushing with just that oesd on the flop in the first hour on an allin reraise, that my friends is what the blonkaments are all about, at least in my book, and this will be our first 3-blonkament week on that front in a long time. So come on out and join the festivities tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt!

Now before I forget, since I stopped posting for my vacation with my post from last Monday, I never got to review the results of last week's MATH tournament. As this is kind of old news now I don't plan to spend any real amount of time covering the event. Let's just say that we had 23 runners in the first post-BBT MATH, and the tournament featured surprisingly slow and tight play most of the way through, with only three players busting out in the first hour of the tournament. But for the first time in a long time, there were no "points" to shoot for, no recognition or happiness for finishing in 12th place of 23 players, and no reason to aim for that goal at any point in the event. I have to say, I really liked it. I missed this. BBT dominator Bayne was the third player out once the BBT wasn't there to kick around anymore, and Maudie showed up for her first MATH in a long time as the BBT rolled out of town.

In the end, the top 3 spots paid in last week's MATH tournament, with our very own fluxer coming in third place and capturing $110.40 for his efforts, which included calling every single time I raised before the flop without exception through the entire time at my table. And I do mean every single time. That was fun for me, but eventually I ran my JackAce on a J96 flop into Jordan 66 and my night ended somewhere in the early-middle of the tournament but before fluxer could get his claws onto my chips.

In second place for $165.60 in last week's MATH was lightning36, making his second or third appearance of the year on the Hoy moneyboard but his first in several weeks. I wasn't there to see the end so I can't comment on how it went down, but knowing who the champion was it is probably some luckbox move.

And speaking of the most recent MATH champion, for his second Hoy title in three weeks, was Lucko, who I understand is out in Vegas right now as you read this playing in Day 1d of the WSOP Main Event on Monday. So best of lucko to Lucko, and congratulations to the man who moves up into the top 10 on the 2007 MATH moneyboard with his $276 payout for another first prize:

1. Bayne_s $1175
2. Hoyazo $849
3. Columbo $801
4. VinNay $775
5. cmitch $774
6. Iggy $745
7. NewinNov $677
8. Lucko21 $665
9. Astin $616
10. Tripjax $561
11. Julius Goat $507
12. mtnrider81 $492
13. Chad $485
14. scots_chris $474
15. Fuel55 $458
16. Otis $429
17. Miami Don $402
18. Jordan $382
19. Blinders $379
20. Pirate Wes $372
21. lightning36 $371
22. IslandBum1 $357
23. ChapelncHill $353
24. Zeem $330
25. Mike_Maloney $326
26 oossuuu754 $312
27. leftylu $295
28. Waffles $294
29. Wigginx $288
30. ScottMc $282
31. Fishy McDonk $277
32. Manik79 $252
33. Wippy1313 $248
34. Byron $234
35. RecessRampage $224
36. wwonka69 $216
37. Omega_man_99 $210
38. Pushmonkey72 $208
39. Buddydank $197
40. bartonfa $180
41. 23Skidoo $176
42. Santa Clauss $170
43. Iakaris $162
43. Smokkee $162
45. cemfredmd $156
45. NumbBono $156
47. lester000 $147
48. Heffmike $145
49. brdweb $143
50. DDionysus $137
51. Patchmaster $135
52. InstantTragedy $129
53. Ganton516 $114
54. Fluxer $110
55. Gracie $94
55. Scurvydog $94
57. Shag0103 $84
58. PhinCity $80
58. jeciimd $80
60. maf212 $78
61. Alceste $71
61. dbirider $71
63. Easycure $67
64. Rake Feeder $53

Maybe tonight will be the night that you finally enter the moneyboard! Come out and play and let's find out.

Now in some other, more ranty poker-related news, I was thinking this weekend about where my poker bankroll currently resides. And then a question occurred to me. When the fuck is Neteller going to follow through with its fucking plan and let me go to their website -- as if I should have to do this again, having already registered and received a confirmation for my withdrawal many months ago now -- and re-request my fucking money back from that little segregated "trust" account they claim to have set up to house my funds specifically? They got all this positive press from the announcement back in early June about people being able to get their money back soon, and now here I am going on the middle of July, and still not a fucking peep. Dear Neteller: On behalf of all of us in the poker blogging community, give us our fucking money back and do it NOW!!!

And while I'm on the topic of rant-worthy poker-related moves, did you all out there happen to catch the David Singer interview, and just hear about the whole David Singer incident, at the WSOP Main Event? I originally found it on Pauly's top-notch one-of-a-kind WSOP coverage here, and if you haven't read it I encourage you to do so. Now I'm sure others out there will have different opinions on this issue than I do, but what can I say. I have been out in Vegas during, and have actually played in the Rio in both of, the last two World Series of Poker tournaments. I've heard the announcements, I've seen a million guys' cell phones ringing during WSOP tournaments there. David Singer's complaint essentially comes down to moving allin on Day 1 with just a primary draw -- at a time when he still had 9800 chips so there was no extreme urgency or anything -- and then getting called by (and eventually losing to) a guy with top pair whose cell phone buzzed during the hand. The player took a quick look at his phone, pushed one button (obviously silencing or diverting the call since he was playing at the poker table at the time), and then that was it. David Singer, who was eliminated on the hand with his, if I may say it, idiotic move for Day 1 of the WSOP with just 8 outs working for him, now contends that since this player "touched" his phone at all during a live hand, that his hand must be dead, and therefore the player must fold to David Singer's allin push with just a primary draw. And again, the guy did not answer his phone. He wasn't texting with anybody. His phone buzzed, he pushed a button to silence it so he could keep playing his hand. Now Singer wants his hand to have been declared dead. In a particularly brilliant suggestion, Singer has asked for the overall director of the WSOP at Harrah's to either refund his $10,000 buyin, or preferably, to simply allow Singer to play again on one of the Main Event's other later Day 1's. So now he wants to get two entries into the WSOP Main Event? I love it. All because a guy didn't answer his cell phone when it rang. Imagine what Singer would be entitled to if the guy actually did answer that phone then! Maybe a lifetime exemption from having to buy in to the Main Event ever again in his lifetime? Maybe a refund of his buyin, plus the cash that was set to be awarded to the bottom 10 cashers in this year's tournament? What a fucknut. And as is often the case with some of these superwusses in the poker world, I truly hope that the most shit that David Singer gets for this loser move is from his own colleagues, the poker tournament pros and grinders who are out there with him every week trying to find their way to, or find their way back, to a major poker championship. Personally I find it laughable what Singer is complaining about, and as always pokernews did a great job covering the event, and Tiffany Michelle kicked some serious ass in getting the story in the interview with him.

OK now that the public service announcements are done for the day, check out this screenshot I've been wanting to share with you for some time, but I've just been waiting for the right moment. I think now is finally that right time:



Go click on that link and make sure you take in what I'm showing you here. These are my stats on poker tracker, for the lifetime that I have used the product, which is about 3 months and around 10,000 hands of cash game play at 9 different levels overall. You can see there, I have been dealt pocket Aces precisely 30 times.

And I have won with them all 30 times.

Yep, you read that right. I have been dealt AA in cash games since I got my poker tracker 30 times, and I've gone on to win that hand all 30 times. 30 for 30 with pocket Aces. 30 for effin 30 guys. Forget having 'em cracked for a minute. I haven't even folded without going to showdown because I found 5 raise-callers preflop and then the flop came down TJQ all-soooted or anything. I've won the hand every single time I've found pocket Aces since I've started using poker tracker, and if you read here then you know that's going on 3 months now.

And don't get me wrong, I am fully aware that the mere act of posting this graphic here will immediately mean the certain death of this streak in my cash play. I relish that too. Bring it. I'm like Cal Ripken at this point. It's gone on so long over so many pocket Aces hands that every time I see 'em at this point, it's like "Is this the time my streak comes to an end?" "Is today Jimmy Shaker day?" It's become too much. So I know the poker gods will not let this brazen posting go unrewarded. So the least you can do is enjoy it for now, while the beatiful streak is alive and kicking at 30, knowing that no matter how horrible of a streak any of you are going on right now with your big cards -- remember for example that streak I had of AA losing to KK allin preflop, just to remind you of how low it's been for me as detailed right here on the blog -- that it can and will, eventually turn itself around. And don't get me wrong, I am playing those AA hands just right, all of them, and I haven't sucked out once in those 30 hands when I've won. I'm raising and reraising preflop and taking many of them down without a fight as a result, which is fine. But take a look at my average pot won with the Aces: over $83. $83. Over 20 big bets at 400 nl, and over 40 big bets at 200 nl, and even more BBs at the lower limits reserved for blogger games. It averages out to nearly 11 big bets per hand. 11 big bets moved to my stack every time I get pocket Aces dealt to me, and I've won 30 out of 30 times so far. Read that n weep, Aces Man!

Hey I heard a few rumblings this weekend about some fucking fun-sounding cash games at the donkey parlor known as the MGM poker room out in Vegas including some of my personal favorites Chad, Lucko, Fuel and superstoner, who got all together to donk it up at the 1-2 tables over the weekend while the guys are in town waiting for their respective WSOP Main Event performances to begin. I know that Chad and Lucko utterly killed the games, each requiring extra chip racks just to cash out of there in one trip, but more than that, I just think how much I would have loved, loved to have been out there to see that game. Sheeeeit, forget seeing the game. I wish I could have been playing in that game. Talk about a loose aggro donkfest for the ages with that crowd. Do any of them even know how to fold before the flop (or in some cases, on the flop)? Dam does that sound fun. My homegame this weekend was a blast -- see a later post this week on the topic -- but I don't know that it can hold a candle to that much aggrodonkery all congregating at the same low-stakes live cash table at the same time. Kudos to all you guys who are in the Main Event and best of luck to you all, and really to anyone who lives in Vegas or who has their life set up so they can get out there a few times a year without too much trouble. You are all better men (and women) than I am, and I salute you.

Before I go today and resume this little thing I like to call my job, I wanted to post about the biggest cash hand I was involved in since my last post, which actually occurred sometime on Thursday or Friday night when I logged in for a little cash game action on full tilt for a relatively short session during some down time at the beach. There were a couple of haters bloggers on the rail who actually saw this hand go down live, so to those of you who were there I ask respectfully that you do not give away what you know about the hand, though I don't mind if you comment without giving away any knowledge you have. But I'm going to present to you the story of this cash hand, which occurred at the 1-2 6-max nlh tables on full tilt, and I would like you to rate for me the play of the three players involved, from who played this hand the best to who played it the worst.

So here's the setup. As I mentioned this is 1-2 nlh, 6-max table on full tilt. You are observing the table when you see the following hand go down. The blinds of $1 and $2 are posted, and then utg puts in a standard pot-raise to $7. Utg+1 responds by reraising to $24. the cutoff in the next seat decides to call the $24 reraise cold. The button and the blinds all fold, and action is to the utg player, who has to call $17 into a pot that already contains $58. He mulls for a few seconds and then makes the call as well, so we see a flop three-handed with $75 in the pot.

The flop comes down 876 with two diamonds. The utg player leads out for $66 into the $75 pot. Utg+1 thinks for a few seconds and then moves allin over the top for his last $150.

The cutoff instantly pushes allin himself, for a total of about $180, once again bringing the action back to the utg player who has now led out and been raised and seen that raise called behind him on both streets. He is facing an allin call of his last $105 or so into the pot, which now contains $471. Once again utg mulls for a short time, and then he pushes the rest of his stack in as well, so the three players flip up their cards. This is what it looked like:



In the above graph, the utg player was the guy in the middle with the sooted JackAce, and utg+1 had the pocket Aces. The cutoff had pocket 5s.

Now my question for you is, what do you think of how this hand was played by all three players? Who do you think played it the best, and who played it the worst in your view? What would you change with how each of these guys played out the hand?

One other bonus question: check out that screenshot above again, and try to estimate what you think the likely odds for each of the three players was of winning the hand in a showdown since everyone was already allin at this point in the hand. When you have your estimates, if you want to see the actual odds for each hand, click here to see how close you were.

Anyways I am really interested in everyone's opinions on this hand in particular, and I suspect there will be some varied opinions of at least one or two of the players' strategies with the hand. I can also tell you how it ended up if anyone is interested after we discuss it a bit here first.

OK so I'm going to end this here for today. Once again I am thrilled to be back at the blog after a few much-needed days away (from this job, anyways), and as promised I will have lots more pokery content coming for you later in the week as well just like I have gotten used to spewing out daily for the past couple of years. Until then, best of luck and I'll see you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt!