WSOP 2010 Thread. Feed your wild side revisited

[TightEnd]

Event #10: $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship



1          394,800
2          243,958
3          152,788
4          110,629
5          86,461
6          68,949
7          55,991
8          46,206
9          38,676
10          38,676
11          32,909
12          32,909
13    Shane Douglas       28,623
14    Pat Pezzin    PokerStars Team Pro    28,623
15    Yuval Bronstein       24,901
16    Edouard Mignot Bonnefous       24,901


chip counts of the top 10 remaining

1      Vladimir Schmelev 921,000
2    Sirious Jamshidi    638,000
3    Michael Mizrachi    544,000
4    Nikolay Evdakov    543,000
5    Steve Billirakis    448,000
6    Joe Cassidy    410,000
7    Men Nguyen    302,000
8    Dan Heimiller    222,000
9    Eric Buchman    142,000
10    Ray Dehkharghani  132,000

Barry Greenstein, Tony G, Daniel Negreanu, Todd Brunson, and Phil Ivey went deep but didn't cash

[Blatch]

Event #10: $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship



1          394,800
2          243,958
3          152,788
4          110,629
5          86,461
6          68,949
7          55,991
8          46,206
9          38,676
10          38,676
11          32,909
12          32,909
13    Shane Douglas       28,623
14    Pat Pezzin    PokerStars Team Pro    28,623
15    Yuval Bronstein       24,901
16    Edouard Mignot Bonnefous       24,901


chip counts of the top 10 remaining

1      Vladimir Schmelev 921,000
2    Sirious Jamshidi    638,000
3    Michael Mizrachi    544,000
4    Nikolay Evdakov    543,000
5    Steve Billirakis    448,000
6    Joe Cassidy    410,000
7    Men Nguyen    302,000
8    Dan Heimiller    222,000
9    Eric Buchman    142,000
10    Ray Dehkharghani  132,000

Barry Greenstein, Tony G, Daniel Negreanu, Todd Brunson, and Phil Ivey went deep but didn't cash

Is the chip leader the guy who called the all in with 10h in the PLHE that Flushy is deep in?

[TightEnd]

In event 11 $1500 NLH

At the end of day one 297 remain from 2,563 starters. 270 paid over $600,000 for first

Top Chip Counts
1    Casey Jarzabek    105,200
2    James Lee    101,900
3    Neil Tyler    97,100
4    Jason Young    90,000
5    Eric Ladny    88,000
6    Blair Hinkle    75,000
7    Minh Nguyen    65,000
8    Jessica Dawley    63,000
9    Neil Channing    50,000
10    Tom Dwan    47,000

[TightEnd]

In Event 12 $1500 Limit

612 began

189 remain

Top Chip Counts
1    Jameson Painter    47,600
2    David Williams    41,800
3    Kengo Ito    40,400
4    Eric Rivkin    37,100
5    David Gee    36,600
6    Ryan Bambrick    35,000
7    Shawn Buchanan    32,000
8    Stephen Murphy    32,000
9    Sorel Mizzi    27,000
10    Jeff Madsen    25,000


63 paid, $190,000 up top

[TightEnd]

From around the presses:

It was less than three hours into day eight of the World Series of Poker, but that didn’t stop the drama.  Tournament directors had a tough decision regarding the $1,500 Pot Limit Holdem event.  Ten levels had just completed, which is generally when tournaments wrap-up and continue the next day, except during the final table.  However, they were down to just 65 players, which was just two before the remaining players made the money.
 
When it was announced they would be ending the tournament for the evening, many of the players disagreed, wondering why they couldn’t just finish knowing if they are going back for the next day and are officially in the money.  Additionally, many questioned how angry the two short stacks, William Smith and Davis Aalvik, would be considering they would most likely have to wait all night just to bust out early the next day. 

However, it wasn’t one of the short stacks that appeared most angry with the ruling.  Professional Todd Terry showed the most anger with the decision.  Terry seemed upset that tournament director Jack Effel made the decision to end the tournament for the night from the telephone in his home.  Terry felt that a majority of the table would have played a few hands to get into the money, but because of “someone sitting at home,” they won’t be doing that.

Luckily, Terry is a regular contributor to the poker forum at TwoPlusTwo.com, and sure enough just before 4:00 am he made a post regarding the situation.  He titled the thread, “Disgraceful Decision by Jack Effel to Stop Play 2 From Money.”  Steaming from the situation he wrote, “This decision shows a blatant disregard for the paying customers of the WSOP. First of all, people want to play tomorrow's event. Additionally, making shortstacks come back to play another day to bubble immediately is just cruel.”

Responses were mixed.  One poster pointed out that “rules are rules” and it doesn’t matter if they are that close to the bubble if it’s agreed upon ahead of time when the tournament will end for the night.  However, rule 101 in the WSOP rulebook reads: Play will end after 10 levels of play for all events that begin at 12 noon. Play will resume the following day at 2:30 p.m. The Tournament Director may modify this schedule for any reason. 

Barry Greenstein posted his response at 2:41 pm today stating that while he would have wanted to play it down if he was in that position, he does understand that the WSOP is trying hard to adhere to a new rule where the WSOP wants to have a 12 hour gap between play, giving players adequate rest. 
Greenstein added, “Jack tried to take the path with the least repercussions, knowing that in some sense only two people would be affected. He didn't bargain that one person left in the field was our very vocal friend Todd Terry!” 

Terry says he still would have liked to see the tournament played down, but that hasn’t affected his play for day two in the tournament.  Terry is in the middle of the pack with just 46 players remaining.  Smith and Aalvik have both been eliminated, but they both did manage to mini-cash.

[TightEnd]

 Phil Hellmuth Jr. started the day with a healthy chip stack in the $1,500 No Limit Holdem Event #8.  With 18 left to go, Hellmuth had both an impressive chip stack and an impressive amount of people railing him in the Amazon room.  Hellmuth, already the all-time leader with 11 WSOP bracelets, would have taken a two bracelet lead over Johnny Chan with a win, but alas, it wasn’t to be.

Hellmuth began ranting in his usual manner not too long after the final two tables began when Max Steinberg won a hand with A♠-7♠, against Hellmuth.  The Hellmuth volcanic eruption began with Hellmuth telling Max how bad he played the hand and how it was stupid for him to be playing it at this point in the tournament as Max stacked a lot of Phil’s chips. Phil eventually said something to the effect that he was still lucky to be in the tournament.  After the hand Hellmuth was well below chip average, so not long after that he pushed all in with Q♦-9♦ only to be called by Scott Vener’s dominating A♣-6♣.  The board was no help to Hellmuth and he was eliminated in 15th place.

[TightEnd]

PokerNews

The first week of the 2010 World Series of Poker is in the books, eight bracelets have been awarded, and the 58,000 square feet of additional playing space in the Rio Convention Center’s Pavillion Room isn’t the only reason the WSOP feels a little emptier this year.

Numbers are down nearly across the board, and although the $50,000 Players’ Championship saw a 22% uptick in entries, it was quite a different event than the one held a year ago. Not only was the format changed from H.O.R.S.E. to an 8-game mix, but the tournament was scheduled at the beginning of the WSOP rather than midway through. Additionally, this year’s Players Championship was one of only three events ESPN is taping for broadcast. Pundits and players alike thought the return of the TV cameras could perhaps draw the 140-150 players the event saw between 2006 and 2008, or perhaps even a number closer to the 201 who bought in to last year’s $40,000 NLHE event. However, even the conservative line set by the media on Day 1 of the $50K came in at 125.

As we took a closer look at the 116 players who entered the $50K in 2010, several themes began to emerge. Here are some of the trends we noticed as we broke down the field.

Young players make a strong showing

Turning the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event into an 8-Game championship brought out a powerful contingent of young players, many of whom play in the highest-stakes NLHE and PLO cash games online. Tom Dwan, Phil Galfond, Cole South, Brian Townsend, David “WhooooKid” Baker, Nick Schulman, Isaac Haxton, Mikael Thuritz, David Benefield, Ashton Griffin, Justin Bonomo, Alexander Kostritsyn and Brian Hastings certainly all fall into this category, and a few of them (Dwan, Galfond, Townsend, Kostritsyn and Bonomo) have played in this event for several years now. A number of players better known for their NLHE and PLO tournament results also turned out, including Jason Mercier, Joe Serock, Scott Seiver, Dario Minieri, Tuan Le, Sorel Mizzi, Daniel “djk123” Kelly, Shawn Buchanan, Marco Johnson, and Mike “SirWatts” Watson. This year, the young cash gamers fared better than the young tourney pros. Baker (6th), Thuritz (8th), Schulman (9th) and Kostritsyn (10th) all made the money.

Some younger players who previously gave the $50K a shot and were missing this year? Matt Hawrilenko, Jon “Pearljammer” Turner, James “mig.com” Mackey, David Williams, Joe “Joe Tall” Bunevith, Brian “tsarrast” Rast and Kirill Gerasimov.

Dude, where’s my patch?

Pros sponsored by or affiliated with a major online poker site comprised 46% of the $50K field this year (53 of 116), a slight uptick from 43% of the field (41 of 95) in 2009. Here’s how they break down by site:

Full Tilt Poker– 36 (up from 30)
PokerStars – 11 (up from 6)
Ultimate Bet - 2
Doyles Room – 2
Titan Poker – 1
Party Poker – 1

Notable $50K no-shows

Ville Wahlbeck, Mike Wattel, Ray Dehkharghani, and John Kabbaj all cashed in this event in 2009 but did not play in 2010. Other notable absences included Johnny Chan, Allen Cunningham, Annie Duke, Mike Sexton, David Grey, John Hennigan, Gabe Kaplan, Jason Gray, Ali Eslami, Frank Kassela, Jani Sointula, Jery Buss, Cory Zeidman, Bruno Fitoussi, Max Pescatori, Andy Black, Fabrice Soulier, Rob Hollink, Jim Bechtel, Rafi Amit, and Brandon Adams.

One woman, 115 men

The number of female players in the $50,000 Players Championship reached a high watermark in 2007 when seven women (Jennifer Harman, Annie Duke, Cyndy Violette, Kristy Gazes, Isabelle Mercier, Jerri Thomas, and Maureen Feduniak) bought in. This year, however, only one woman played — Harman.

It's the Economy, Stupid

The $50,000 Players Championship isn’t the only event that drew a lower-than-anticipated number of entrants. Thus far, the fields in the lower buy-in NLHE events are anywhere from 7 to 27 percent smaller than they were in 2009. There are numerous factors at work here that are contributing to the lower numbers. For one, the U.S. economy is still seriously shaky and recreational players have less disposable income to spend on travel and tournament buy-ins. European pros are feeling the crunch, as well. Across the pond, the Euro is tanking, and the Players Championship probably had a lot more appeal when the Euro was trading at $1.58 than the $1.20 it is today — it’s lowest level in more than four years. There's also the simple fact that many international players are just not here yet, choosing to depart for Las Vegas a bit closer to the Main Event. Finally, there are far more $1,000 and $1,500 buy-in events on the docket this year. While there was only one $1K “Stimulus Special” in 2009, there will be six this summer.

Aside from the $50K, the only events that saw a significant increase in field size were two of the higher buy-in tournaments offered this week — the $5,000 NLHE Shootout and the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw. For all you stats lovers, here’s a more detailed look at the tournament entry numbers through the first ten events:

2010 World Series of Poker tournament entries, Events #1-10

Event #1 – $500 Casino Employees NLHE, 721 players, down 16.7% from 2009 (866 players)

Event #2 - $50,000 Players’ Championship, 116 players, up 22% from 2009 (95 players), down 22% from 2008 **

Event #3 - $1,000 NLHE, 4,345 players, down 27.7% from 2009 (6,012 players)***

Event #4 - $1,500 Omaha 8 or better, 818 players, down 11% from 2009 (918 players)

Event #5 - $1,500 NLHE, 2,092 players, down 25% from 2009 (2,791 players)

Event #6 - $5,000 NLHE Shootout, 358 players, up 27.8% from 2009 (280 players)

Event #7 - $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw, 291 players, up 13.2% from 2009 (257 players)

Event #8 - $1,500 NLHE, 2,341 entries, down 7% from 2009 (2,506 entries)

Event #9 - $1,500 PLHE, 650 entries, up 2.6% from 2009 (633 players)

Event #10 - $10,000 Seven-Card Stud, 150 players, up 5.6% from 2009 (142 players)

[gatso]

Is the chip leader the guy who called the all in with 10h in the PLHE that Flushy is deep in?

no, that was kwaysser

[TightEnd]

Negraneau's view on the live updates

I mean if next year someone wants to send us me over, we'll do our best. k? thx



PokerNews normally does a really good job with everything they do, but what in the world is up with the chip count coverage at the WSOP this year? They have a page for it, but clicking on it would be a complete waste of your time because not only is it rarely updated, it's also nowhere near accurate.
I had friends sweating me in the 10k Stud event, and for most of day 1 they had me listed at 88k... problem is, at no point did I ever have even close to that many chips. My peak was 70k and I ended with about 50k. It's so random that they'd just throw out the number 88k and leave it there all day.
At every break I tweet my chip count as do many of the pros playing in the events. Why don't they have someone following the tweets and updating the chip counts that come directly from the players?

PokerNews has exclusive rights to covering the chip counts this year, and I don't know who's in charge, but if they don't actually cover the events, I don't see how they expect to retain the rights to cover the events next year.

I have heard tons of people complain about this. They have all kinds of live update posts with hands etc, but the majority of people really want to know how their favorites are doing chip wise. They'd be much better off focusing less on covering random hands and spending more time actually tracking chip counts.

The WPT updates are way better and it's not even close. They do live updates too, but they also cover the top 30-40 players that the public likes to follow and update their chip counts regularly.

It's frustrating when I'm at home to try and follow along with what's going on in the tournaments, only to realize that the chip counts posted are beyond unreliable.

Either PokerNews has to go back to the format they used in previous years and actually do their best to give accurate reports on chip counts, or the WSOP will have to go with a new team to cover the chip counts.

It's still early in the WSOP so I don't think it's too late to make some changes, and I really hope they listen. Seriously if ALL they had were just chip counts with zero hand updates, but the chip counts were on point, it would be better than the current coverage by a mile.

[GreekStein]

I've heard a few murmurs about the misreporting of hands too. I know Sam Trickett wasn't happy with PN

[dino1980]

Part of DN's idea is good - the followint twitter for chip counts - but even if you had someone just there for chip counts (or as their primary role) I don't think it'd be possible to keep on top of it until a tournament gets down to say the last 50 players as chip counts fluctuate so quickly. Taking a chip count with the naked eye, as you have to, obviously leads to human error, miscounting that a player has two large deominatiion chips instead of three can skew a chipcount, I imagine people like Snoopy and Dana are pretty good at this having done so many but it takes a few updates to be able to do this proficently and quickly, it also doesn't help that the chip coulurs can be hard to distinguish in some cases. Most tours like the GUKPT and UKIPT are great at getting staff to do chipcounts on breaks and this helps the updates amazingly.

Also the amount of posts on forums you see that are something like, 'PokerNews lists Hellmith as having gained 100,000 chips but no info on the hand,' suggests that many followers also want the details, updates would be pretty bland if it were just a list of numbers.

I like Negreanu and definitely think he's is 'good for poker' it just seems that recently a lot of his ideas - wanting to ban sunglasses for example - are more about what is good for Negreanu not what is good for poker.

[Woodsey]

I've heard a few murmurs about the misreporting of hands too. I know Sam Trickett wasn't happy with PN

I can't think why anyone would give a toss tbh, just focus on the game imo and worry about the important things...........

[Madone]

Flushy M.I.A at that start of the final!!!!

[GreekStein]

I've heard a few murmurs about the misreporting of hands too. I know Sam Trickett wasn't happy with PN

I can't think why anyone would give a toss tbh, just focus on the game imo and worry about the important things...........

pretty short sighted statement.

For players like Sam, who are potentially attractive to sites it's pretty important that hands are being reported correctly.

[AndrewT]

I like Negreanu and definitely think he's is 'good for poker' it just seems that recently a lot of his ideas - wanting to ban sunglasses for example - are more about what is good for Negreanu not what is good for poker.

Well quite - this was the telling quote.

The WPT updates are way better and it's not even close. They do live updates too, but they also cover the top 30-40 players that the public likes to follow and update their chip counts regularly.

ie 'The updaters should just stand and watch the name players (like me) and basically ignore the other 1000 people playing.'