Eight Years, Eight Hands: Looking Back Through the 2007-2014 Main Events

Readying here for the Fourth of July tomorrow, and for the start of World Series of Poker Main Event on Sunday. Hard to believe the whole sucker has almost played out again already.

Thinking about the Main Event inspired me to rummage around a little through the last eight years’ worth of live reporting from the WSOP on PokerNews -- a pretty cool, easy-to-navigate archive. From each of the eight years I chose a single hand from either the final table or close to it and presented all of them in a compilation over in the PokerNews Strategy section.

Some of the hands were more consequential than others, but each featured some interesting, even fascinating decisions made by the players involved, thus inspiring the title of the compilation “The Second-Guessing Game: Key Decisions from WSOP Main Events (2007-2014).”

Part 1 covers the following hands:

2007 - The elimination of Philip Hilm in ninth place by Jerry Yang in just the 15th hand of the final table. Recall how Yang began that final table in seventh while Hilm was in first.

2008 - A huge hand early on from the final table between Dennis Phillips (with A-K) and Ivan Demidov (with A-Q) that suddenly sent start-of-final-table chip leader Phillips down to ninth of nine.

2009 - The wild Billy Kopp-Darvin Moon hand with 12 players left that saw both flop flushes and Kopp suddenly ousted in 12th.

2010 - The dramatic hand in which Jonathan Duhamel knocked out Matt Affleck in 15th, cracking Affleck’s aces after they were all in on the turn and Duhamel filled a straight on the river.

Part 2 then carried things forward with these hands:

2011 - Kind of a cool hand from heads-up between Martin Staszko and Pius Heinz in which both were bluffing away without a pair and Staszko finally pushed Heinz off his hand.

2012 - Andras Koroknai’s huge six-bet shove with K-Q-offsuit, called by Greg Merson called who held A-K-suited to knock Koroknai out in sixth.

2013 - J.C. Tran’s fold with six players left to Jay Farber’s four-bet in a blind-versus-blind hand. Tran had A-Q while Farber had pocket sixes.

2014 - Mark Newhouse’s elimination hand in which he battled to the river versus William Tonking, finally pushing his last chips in with pocket tens on a 2-4-J-4-J board, and Tonking found a call with pocket queens.

Remember those hands? Click over to relive ‘em and/or think about some of the strategy followed in each.

Slow Response

The ending of the United States-Portugal match was remarkable, no question, with an improbable race up the field over the last half-minute of action culminating in that crossing pass from Cristiano Ronaldo to Silvestre Varela who headed in the tying goal on what was essentially the last play of the match.

It was almost disorienting, actually, as I think the delayed reaction of U.S. fans shown afterwards seemed to attest. So tightly wound up for a stress-releasing celebration, the initial reaction was disbelief, as though the their eyes deceived them.

Then came the weird, also slow-to-occur acceptance of the result, with a draw -- itself a foreign concept to fans of the “big three” North American sports -- only adding further to that confused, unsatisfied feeling.

The game well exemplified the rapid reversal of emotions that will happen in poker when an all-in player goes from winning to losing on fifth street. The now famous clip of Carter Gill’s bust from last summer’s WSOP Main Event provides a ready example:

I had actually been thinking of this clip just yesterday after watching Frank Op de Woerd at this year’s WSOP interviewing Gill -- and bringing it up.

I had a chance to talk to Gill as well back in the spring at the LAPT Chile -- friendly, engaging guy who was happy to talk about anything, including that unfortunate hand. “I still think about that a lot, actually,” he’d said to me almost wistfully, although some significant tourney success during the intervening months -- including a victory at the LAPT Grand Final last year -- had done a lot to soften the sting.

The ending of the match was similar in that there had to be at least a 93% chance of victory for the U.S. before that final mad dash by Portugal (if not greater). Also, that seemingly-imminent victory had been unexpected -- just like David Paredes’s call of Gill’s all-in on the turn seemed like a pleasant surprise to Gill. Gill’s slowness to react and leave his seat following the unlucky river was likewise mirrored by the stunned feeling following the Portugal equalizer.

But the ending was different in a couple of ways. The result was a tie, not a loss and elimination. And while the U.S. might have outplayed Portugal prior to those final frenzied seconds, there was nothing lucky about Ronaldo’s pass, Varela’s finish, and the Americans’ slow response to both.

Still didn’t make it any easier to believe at the time.

Fading Rich

I’m a little bit in awe of my friend and colleague Rich Ryan for having the cojones to make and publicize his “10 Poker Predictions” at the start of each year over at PokerNews.

His list for 2014 includes a few provocative prognostications. He thinks four Russians will win WSOP bracelets this year, for example, which seems like a total that would be over the betting line.

Rich did correctly call for the Canadians to break through in 2013, however, boldly guessing they’d get at least eight WSOP wins (they won 10, plus two more by Daniel Negreanu at the WSOP APAC and WSOPE). In fact Rich somehow got eight of his 10 predictions for 2013 correct, which seems way over the line I would’ve set for correct picks in his list a year ago.

One other prediction Rich offers for 2014 is to say that “a ‘well-known’ pro will win the WSOP Main Event.” He then usefully narrows the definition of “a ‘well-known pro” down to just the top 100 players in the current Global Poker Index plus the top 50 players on the all-time money list, guessing that with overlap he’s probably narrowed himself down to about 125 players altogether.

I think I’ll take the field versus Rich on this one.

Looking back at the GPI rankings as of July 1, 2013, not one of the eventual November Nine from last year’s Main Event was anywhere near the top 100 on the list. The only one of the group who even appeared in the Top 300 at that time was Amir Lehavot in 273rd.

Meanwhile, I believe J.C. Tran was already inside the top 50 on the All-Time Money List for tourney earnings when he made last year’s Main Event final table, sitting just inside the top 40 before snaring another $2.1 million-plus for his fifth-place finish. But none of the other ME final tablists was close.

To be fair to Rich, he does classify this prediction as a “shot” and indeed I think it is probably more than 10-to-1 against he gets it right. Being less ballsy than he, though, I’ll go out on a short limb and make one prediction for 2014 here that he misses this one.

More Stories to Share

Have a busy week coming up here, one which will involve me getting out of the house, to the airport, and down to Florida for a quick trip to the World Poker Tour bestbet Jacksonville Fall Scramble that begins on Thursday. That’s a $3,500 buy-in event with a $500K guarantee that’ll probably bring out a decent-sized crowd.

Today I wanted to direct your attention to a few new items over on the Learn.PokerNews site where we are starting to involve more contributors and have a greater variety of content.

Josh Cahlik has been penning some interesting pieces lately, including “A Beginner’s Guide to Selling Tournament Action” (a good initial primer) and one called “Play and Learn: Exploiting a Tight Image” which details some of what he experienced during his deep run in that Casino Employees Event last summer.

I found myself thinking further about Ryan Riess’s post-WSOP Main Event comment about being “the best player in the world” and decided I had more to say about it after posting some thoughts here last week. In something called “On the Champ Saying He’s ‘the Best Player in the World’,” I talked about how it maybe isn’t such a bad thing for the WSOP ME winner to be emphasizing how skill played a role in his win, especially when considering how the tournament -- and poker in general -- plays to the larger, mainstream audience.

Finally, I most wanted to draw your attention to a piece provided today by Zachary Elwood, author of Reading Poker Tells. He offered some sound “Poker Tell Advice for Beginning Poker Players” that highlights the need to worry more about your own tells (and trying to minimize them) as opposed to searching your opponents for tells.

Elwood, you might know, was called on by Amir Lehavot during his preparations for the November Nine, something Elwood wrote about on his blog last week. As part of that work, he also did a lot of study of other players at the WSOP Main Event final table, and today offered a lengthy breakdown of some of his ideas regarding fourth-place finisher Sylvain Loosli, if you’re curious.

The Learn site has gotten me thinking a lot lately about my own learning of the game, including the sorts of content I loved reading and listening to and watching as my interest and knowledge grew.

For a lot of us those days are long gone, or at least the newness of the game has receded into the past. But the learning obviously has not, and I think that is a big reason why the game continues to interest me. The stories players tell about their experiences remain interesting, too, and always seem to contain something not only new and entertaining, but instructive, too.

That was always the most fun way to learn anything, I think... via stories in which some lesson or idea was conveyed in an pleasurable way.

The Post-Main Event Study Continues

A little bit pokered out here so am going to try to keep this end-of-week post on the short side. Still following with interest a lot of the post-Main Event discussion continuing to circle about.

The strategy debates are especially interesting, and I think part of what makes the WSOP Main Event fun to watch. Who played the best? Who was the least impressive? Who was the most lucky cardwise? Who was least?

The evidence with which to form such opinions is fairly comprehensive, although not entirely so. After all, we know what some of the players had on all of the hands, but not all of them.

Speaking of, I had a chance today to go back over my post from a couple of days ago -- “2013 WSOP Main Event Final Table Hole Cards (Complete)” -- and fill a couple of gaps here and there, meaning right now it’s as complete a record as it gets with regard to players’ hole cards as they were shown during the broadcasts on ESPN and ESPN2. (And in some cases, there might have been errors even there, as the showing of the cards wasn’t always perfectly executed.)

Spectators of other sports engage in debates, too, but in poker just about everyone who does so is usually also a player. There’s an interesting overlap, then, in the experiences of players and spectators, which makes can the post-game stuff even more involving.

That’s not to say most who opine about how the players performed at this year’s WSOP Main Event have ever experienced anything close to the pressure and uniqueness of that particular experience. But most have faced analogous challenges at the tables and thus can address the decision-making with a least some empathy and even understanding than is necessarily the case when, say, a non-football player comments on a football game.

I find watching the WSOP Main Event final table educational, much more so than is the case with the edited, packaged shows leading up to the November Nine, although those, too, can occasionally provide some momentary insights. I also find these post-Main Event discussions enlightening, too.

In fact it doesn’t matter too much how knowledgeable about poker the discussants are, really, because even those debates can reveal certain things about how players think about the game. A particular exchange may not explain much at all about what the players themselves were up to in a given hand, but it still communicates something about how those engaging in the discussion view certain situations and decisions.

Maybe it’s the academic in me, relishing the questions and further inquiry and not being bothered by a lack of definitive conclusions about the “text” presented to us by the WSOP Main Event final table. Here’s to the continued annotations upon it!

(Groovy final table pic above by Joe Giron for PokerNews.)

What the Winner Said

I might have mentioned here before how I’d covered new World Series of Poker Main Event champion Ryan Riess in a couple of WSOP Circuit events during the 2012-13 season.

He had a big score early in the season at an event I did not cover, the WSOP-C Horseshoe Hammond Main Event in October 2012 where he won nearly $240,000 for finishing runner-up. He then traveled to many subsequent WSOP-C stops, earning a number of small cashes leading up to the WSOP this summer.

I believe it was at the Harrah’s Cherokee stop where I first began to notice him, mainly because he’d come over to chat with Rich and myself during breaks a couple of times. He struck me as a friendly guy and from what I could tell a decent player -- i.e., at a table full of non-pros in that Cherokee ME, he was stood out as perhaps a little more comfortable and seasoned as a player.

Thus when the WSOP Main Event reached its fifth day or so during the summer and I saw Riess still among the field, I wasn’t too surprised having known a little of him before. I also wasn’t surprised when he made it to Day 7, then battled with a short stack before finally accumulating some chips to take to the final table.

I watched the coverage this week and like everyone else saw that ESPN profile in which Riess spoke of himself as being the best player among the final nine. And of course I saw the short interview with Kara Scott after his win in which Riess responded to her question about his confidence going in by proclaiming “I just think I’m the best player in the world.”

Was kind of funny to hear, especially since I’d already formulated that image of Riess that didn’t really fit with such boastfulness. Of course, my image of him was based on incredibly slight information, and thinking back I found myself tempted to reinterpret his giving us updates on his chip counts at Cherokee. Sure, he was friendly and likable, but was he also self-promoting some, too? (Not that there is anything wrong with that.)

I also followed what struck me as a kind of crazed reaction on Twitter to Riess’s bold self-assessment, something Rich wrote a little about in his “Five Thoughts” piece this week. The forums -- where every new WSOP Main Event winner is necessarily a loser until proven innocent -- have likewise predictably taken the statement and run wildly with it.

Riess appeared on Fox News yesterday morning and did well fielding some artless questions from Shepard Smith who was more nitwit than wit during the short segment. Smith asked Riess about the statement, in fact, and Riess explained a little how it hadn’t been an off-the-cuff remark, but an idea he’d been articulating for several months.

“Yeah, I said that before this tournament started,” replied Riess. “I started saying it in March and I was practicing for this tournament and it worked out. I proved myself.”

Shepard continued with jokes about putting it all on black and so on. Shepard even had a heads-up game queued on his monitor to play with Riess, but he screwed that up to add a little more awkwardness to it all. Finally Shepard signed off with a cynical-sounding “Congratulations on your big money and on being the greatest player in the history of the world,” and a smiling Riess thanked him.

The last player to win a WSOP Main Event and then afterwards even entertain the subject of being the “best player in the world” was Jamie Gold, of course, who even before he won the Main Event back in 2006 was appearing on CardPlayer’s The Circuit podcast as the chip leader talking excitedly about how great he was. I remember Gold telling Scott Huff and Joe Sebok how he had accumulated so many chips that he -- all by himself -- was making the tournament go faster than it was supposed to, thus causing tournament staff great consternation as they tried to adjust the schedule to handle it all. (Anyone else remember that?)

Then Gold won and afterwards continued with similar statements about his greatness on an appearance on Rounders, the Poker Show (precursor to the Two Plus Two Pokercast) and elsewhere.

One of the active stories at the time of Gold’s win was the whole “ambassador of poker” mantle given to the WSOP Main Event winner, with the Moneymaker-Raymer-Hachem triumvirate having established a lot of expectation in that regard. Gold, meanwhile, was talking during the WSOP Main Event about how he wasn’t interested in serving such a role, something I wrote about here way back in 2006 the day after he won in a post called “Assessing the Gold Standard.”

Then came the legal squabbles and other ugliness regarding his deal with Crispin Leyser and other missteps, with Gold more or less removing himself from consideration as an “ambassador” in the eyes of many, deservedly or not. In truth I always thought Gold really did give at least some effort toward promoting the game in those couple of years after his win, not that he had to. See this post about Gold, “Starting Again,” I wrote during the 2008 WSOP for more on that thought.

Don’t really see Riess as following Gold’s path, though. The whole “poker ambassador” thing has changed a lot over these last several years -- the change starting, really, with Gold’s win -- and I don’t think the poker community looks to the WSOP Main Event winner as having as much of an obligation in that regard as once was the case.

So I’m not really thinking too much about Riess being a representative of the game going forward. Nor am I bothered that much at all by a poker player exuding confidence, particularly after having experienced some success at the tables. As I more less tend to do with all of those who win the WSOP Main Event, I’m pulling for Riess to handle it all as well as he can going forward, and I’m pulling for poker to do well, too, although I don’t necessarily think those two things are that closely related so much anymore.

Meanwhile, kind of funny to think about Riess doing a Muhammad Ali after his win, yea? I mean he’s given us all something to talk about, that’s for sure.

2013 WSOP Main Event Final Table Hole Cards (Complete)

“We had a technical error,” explained Lon McEachern somewhere around 2:30 a.m. my time, Tuesday morning, as the final table of the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event continued six-handed.

McEachern was explaining how on the previous hand -- one on which a short-stacked Amir Lehavot had shoved all in and gotten no callers -- the graphics showing players’ cards afterwards had incorrectly displayed what Lehavot and Sylvain Loosli (who folded the big blind) had (Hand #150). McEachern paused a moment, then added one last comment regarding the error before moving on.

“For those keeping logs at home.”

Ha. What kind of maniac does something like that? Keep logs of poker hands off of a television show. Nuts!

Not going to preface this with too much more other than to say after making a similar post last year chronicling all of the hole cards from the marathon 2012 WSOP Main Event final table, I hadn’t really intended to do so again but somehow here we are.

As those who watched the show know, ESPN displayed hole cards after each hand of the players who were still involved, which this year always meant only two players’ hands were shown.

They missed a few more hands this time than they did last year, both because of the occasional “technical error” and a few instances of not getting back to a hand quickly enough after a commercial break or simply not picking up the hole cards. In those cases you’ll see below an “X” representing cards that were not shown.

Like last year, I’m following the hand numbering from PokerNews’ live reporting. The winner of the hand is listed first. And of course, any mistakes in the transcribing here are all mine.

2013 WSOP MAIN EVENT FINAL TABLE: DAY ONE

Level 35
1. Lehavot 7h 5h, Benefield Kh 4d
2. McLaughlin Ah Ad, Tran Ks 7s
3. Benefield Ac 6c, Loosli 9s 2s
4. Tran Qd X, Brummelhuis Js 4d
5. Newhouse Qs Qc, McLaughlin Ks Kc
6. Riess Ah Jc, Tran As 2h
7. Lehavot Ks Kh, Newhouse Ah Qc
8. McLaughlin 5s 5h, Newhouse Qh 10d
9. Farber Kh Qs, Tran As 9d
10. Riess 8s 8h, McLaughlin 7d 7c
11. Tran Js 10d, Farber 7h 6c
12. Benefield Ks 9s, Loosli Kd Jh
13. Brummelhuis As Ac, Benefield 10h 10d

Level 36
14. Benefield Ah Ks, Riess Ad Qh
15. Tran 10c 9c, Riess Qc 10h
16. Lehavot Ac 3c, Brummelhuis As 10h
17. Farber Ad Kd, McLaughlin 9c 2c
18. Loosli Ah 8c, Tran Jh 10s
19. Tran Kd 7d, McLaughlin Ad 9c
20. Loosli Ah Ks, Farber Jh 3h
21. McLaughlin Ah 10d, Loosli Ks 10d
22. Loosli Ah Ks, Lehavot Ad 2d
23. McLaughlin 7h 7d, Newhouse 6h 5c
24. Benefield Ah Qd, Lehavot 6h 6d
25. Farber Ks Kh, Tran Jc 10d
26. Tran Ks Qh, McLaughlin Ac Qc
27. Farber Ah Qh, Tran Ac 2h
28. Loosli Jh Jc, Benefield 4d 3h
29. McLaughlin Ks Jh, Lehavot Ah Kc
30. Lehavot Qs Jd, Loosli 9h 6s
31. Tran Ad Qh, McLaughlin Ah 10d
32. Loosli As Ad, Newhouse Jd 9h
33. Tran Ah 10d, Riess Ks 5h
34. Tran Kc Jc, Lehavot 10c 7d
35. Riess Ah Qc, McLaughlin Ks 10s
*36. Riess As Kh, Newhouse 9s 9c
37. Farber Ac Qs, Benefield 6s X
*38. Farber Ac Kd, Benefield Ks 2s
39. Loosli X X, Farber X X
40. Brummelhuis Ad 7c, Tran Qh 6c
41. Lehavot Kd Kc, Loosli 8c 7h
42. Farber 9h 8h, Lehavot 8c 2s
43. Lehavot Qs Qd, Brummelhuis Ac 3d
44. Riess Ah Qc, Tran Ad Qd (split pot)
45. Riess Ac Ks, McLaughlin Ah 10c
46. Riess As Jd, Loosli Qh Js
47. Riess 4s 4h, Brummelhuis Qh Jh
48. Tran Ah 8d, Riess 10h 4d
49. Farber 9d 8h, Lehavot 5h 4h
50. Lehavot 9c 7d, McLaughlin Qs 7h
51. McLaughlin Ks 2c, Tran Qh 2h
52. Farber X X, McLaughlin X X
53. Brummelhuis 9h 9d, Riess Ad Qd
54. Loosli Kh Qh, Tran Qs 5c
*55. Riess Ac Ah, Brummelhuis 9d 9c
56. Loosli Ks Kh, Tran Kc 10s
57. Farber As 5h, McLaughlin Kc 5d
58. Loosli 6s 6c, McLaughlin Kc Js
59. McLaughlin Ac Qd, Riess Ad Jc

Level 37
60. Lehavot As Kd, Loosli Ac 5d
61. Tran Jd 4d, Riess Qh 6d
62. Riess Kh 10h, Loosli 6s 5h
63. Riess X X, McLaughlin X X
64. McLaughlin 10c 6c, Lehavot Ah 9s
65. Loosli X X, Farber Jd 9c
66. Tran Jd 5c, Loosli Kc 7h
67. Riess Ac Kc, Farber 9d 8c
68. Riess 10s 10d, Tran As 4d
69. Farber Qs Jh, McLaughlin Ac Kc
70. Loosli As Js, McLaughlin 4h 4s
71. Tran Qs Jd, McLaughlin 10d 6s
72. Lehavot Ah 7h, Tran Qd 10s
73. Loosli Kh Kc, Tran Ah 5c
74. McLaughlin Ac 10h, Lehavot 7h 6s
75. Lehavot 5h 3h, McLaughlin X X
76. McLaughlin As 3h, Tran Qh 10d
77. McLaughlin 8d 7h, Riess 4s 4h
78. Farber Ad 5d, Lehavot 7d 7c
79. Loosli Kc Qh, Farber Kd Qd
80. Loosli 3s 3h, McLaughlin Ah Kd
81. Farber Qc Jc, McLaughlin X X
82. Lehavot Ah 5s, Tran 8h 4h
83. Lehavot Ah Ad, Farber 8h 6c
84. Tran Kh 2s, Loosli Qc 5c
85. Riess Jd 2h, Loosli Qh 5h
86. Riess As Ad, Lehavot Ah 8c
87. Farber Ad Qd, Lehavot Kd Jc
88. Farber 4h 4c, Tran 10c 3s
89. Loosli Kh 10d, Farber 5c 4h
90. McLaughlin Ac Qd, Loosli 7h 4c
91. Riess Ks 6s, Loosli Kd Js
92. McLaughlin 10s 7s, Lehavot 4c 2s
93. McLaughlin X X, Lehavot Qd 4h
94. Riess Ah 7s, Tran Jd 9s
95. Tran Kd 3c, Lehavot Qc 10s
96. Lehavot Qh Js, Loosli Kc 8d
97. Riess Ac 10s, Lehavot 6d 2d
98. Farber Kd Jd, Tran Qs Js
99. McLaughlin 3d 3h, Lehavot 9c 2c
100. Riess 3h 3c, Farber Kh 10s
101. McLaughlin Kd 6d, Loosli As 5c
102. Lehavot Js 10d, Loosli As 5c
103. Farber 9h 7s, Riess 7h 4h
104. Riess Ac Qs, Loosli 10d 9h
105. Farber 10s 10h, Loosli Kh 2h
106. Farber 4s 4c, Tran Kd Js
107. Farber 6s 6d, Tran Ac Qd

Level 38
108. Tran Ah Kh, Loosli Qs 5d
109. Tran Kd Jh, Farber 6d 6c
110. Tran Kh Qc, Loosli 9s 9c
111. Lehavot Kh 5c, McLaughlin Jd 9h
112. Loosli Ad 2d, Tran Ac 6s
113. McLaughlin Ah Kh, Tran Ad 7s
114. McLaughlin Ac 4d, Loosli Jc 9d
115. Loosli Ac Qs, McLaughlin Ah 4h
116. Riess Jh Jd, McLaughlin 10c 9c
117. Lehavot Qs 9h, McLaughlin 3c 2s
118. Lehavot 8d 8c, Riess Kd Jc
119. Riess 3s 3d, Farber 8c 5s
120. Loosli Ks 7d, Farber 8s 2s
121. McLaughlin Ad 9c, Riess Ks Jc
122. Farber 5c 4c, Lehavot 7d 2s
123. Tran Ad Jh, McLaughlin Js 8h
124. McLaughlin Jd 8h, Tran Jc 3h
125. Riess As 10d, Farber Qd Js
126. Farber Kd Kh, Tran Ah 6h
127. McLaughlin Ac Kd, Riess As 10d
128. Lehavot As 3d, Riess Jd 4h
129. Lehavot Kc 8s, McLaughlin 7c 6d
130. Loosli Qs Qd, Farber Ac 7c
131. McLaughlin Ah Jc, Farber 4s 3d
132. Tran Ac 5d, Loosli Ks 8c
133. Loosli Kd Kc, Farber Ah 4h
134. Riess 5d 4h, Lehavot Jc 8s
135. McLaughlin X X, Lehavot 10s 5d
136. Tran Ad 3d, McLaughlin Qs 10s
137. McLaughlin Qh Js, Loosli 10d 4c
138. McLaughlin Ad Jc, Loosli 10d 9c
139. McLaughlin Qh Jh, Riess 8c 8s
140. Farber Qd 8d, Lehavot Qc 10h
141. McLaughlin 9s 7s, Loosli 8h 6h
142. Tran Js 7h, McLaughlin Qs 3h
143. Lehavot Ac Qh, Farber Kc 7d
144. Tran Qd Jd, Loosli X X
145. Riess Qc 6c, Loosli 10h 2c
146. Loosli Kd 3d, Lehavot 10d 8c
147. Loosli As 9c, McLaughlin 9s 4h
148. McLaughlin 5h 4h, Tran 10d 9h
149. Farber X X, Tran Qc Js
150. Lehavot X X, Loosli X X
151. Riess Ks 10d, Farber Ac 2c
152. McLaughlin Ad 4d, Lehavot Qh 7s
153. McLaughlin X X, Lehavot 8c 7h
154. Tran Kd 8d, McLaughlin 4d 2h
155. Farber As 10d, McLaughlin 9d 8h
156. McLaughlin Ks Qc, Loosli 9c 7d
*157. Farber As Ah, McLaughlin Ks Kc
158. Riess Ac 8s, Lehavot Kc 7s
159. Lehavot Ks Qs, Farber Kc 4c
160. Riess Qs X, Farber 7s 4s
*161. Farber Ks Qh, Tran Ah 7s
162. Lehavot X X, Riess X X
163. Farber Ks Jh, Lehavot Qs 5c
164. Lehavot Js Jd, Riess Ac 6s
165. Riess Jc X, Loosli 3h 2d
166. Riess Kd 5s, Loosli 10s 4d

Level 39
167. Farber Ac 9d, Lehavot Jh 9h
168. Farber 9d 4c, Lehavot Qh 2c
169. Loosli Js 4c, Farber 8s 5s
*170. Riess Ac 10h, Loosli Qh 7c
*171. Riess 10c 10d, Lehavot 7s 7d

2013 WSOP MAIN EVENT FINAL TABLE: DAY TWO

172. Riess Kd Qd, Farber 9d 3s
173. Farber Ac Qd, Riess 10c 2h
174. Riess Kh 10s, Farber As 8d
175. Farber Kd 5s, Riess 10s 7h
176. Riess Kd Jh, Farber 5h 2s
177. Farber Kh Qs, Riess 10c 6c
178. Riess Js 3h, Farber Kh 9c
179. Farber Kc 9h, Riess Jc 3h
180. Farber Kd 7c, Riess Qh 4s
181. Farber 9d 6d, Riess 9c 2h
182. Riess Js Jd, Farber 10h 9d
183. Farber Qs 3h, Riess 7h 3c
184. Riess 6s 4c, Farber Qh 2s
185. Riess Qd Qc, Farber Ad 8s
186. Farber Ad 9h, Riess Kh Qs
187. Riess 7s 6d, Farber Qc 3s
188. Riess Kh 9h, Farber 7c 2d
189. Farber 6s 3c, Riess Jh 7d
190. Riess 7h 4s, Farber Jc 5s
191. Riess Ah Ks, Farber 7c 4c
192. Farber Ah Qd, Riess 5s 2c
193. Riess 7s 6c, Farber Jh 7c
194. Farber Ah 7h, Riess Ks 6h
195. Farber 6d 5h, Riess Qh 7s
196. Riess Ah 3s, Farber 10c 8h
197. Farber As 2c, Riess Qh 3c
198. Riess X X, Farber X X
199. Riess 5s 2h, Farber Jd 4c
200. Riess 6c 5d, Farber Kd 6s
201. Farber Qc 10h, Riess 7s 6c
202. Riess 4h 4d, Farber Qd 3d
203. Riess Kd 2d, Karber Ks 2c
204. Riess Jh Jc, Farber Ac 4h
205. Farber Kh 10c, Riess Qc 8c
206. Farber Ad 3h, Riess Qs 10c
207. Riess Kc 6h, Farber Ks 8d
208. Farber 9c 2d, Riess Ks 6s
209. Riess 10c 5h, Farber 9s 8s
210. Farber As 7d, Riess Qd 6c
211. Riess 9d 8d, Farber 4d 2h
212. Riess Kd 6c, Farber 9h 3s
213. Riess Qh Jd, Farber 8s 3h
214. Riess 10d 8s, Farber 10c 8c
215. Riess 7s 3d, Farber Js 10s
216. Farber Ac Jd, Riess Ks 2d
217. Farber 5h 4d, Riess Kh 8h
218. Farber Ks Kh, Riess Jc 2d
219. Riess Kd 3h, Farber Jd 9d
220. Riess Ac Jd, Farber 5s 5h
221. Riess 8d 2d, Farber Jc 9h
222. Farber 10c 4c, Riess 6c 2h
223. Riess 3d 2d, Farber X X
224. Riess Ad Qs, Farber Kd 2s
225. Riess Ac 6d, Farber 9s 9h
226. Riess 10h 9d, Farber Js 5s
227. Riess Qs Qh, Farber 9d 2s
228. Riess 5c 3s, Farber Qs 5d
229. Farber Jc 10s, Riess Ks 10h

Level 40
230. Farber Kc Jd, Riess 9c 6c
231. Riess 4h 3h, Farber Ad 8c
232. Farber 4c 3c, Riess Qd 2c
233. Farber 7d 4d, Riess Kd Qs
234. Farber 9c 7c, Riess Qs Jc
235. Farber 3s 3h, Riess 4c 2c
236. Farber X X, Riess X X
237. Riess Ah 7s, Farber 8c 4h
238. Riess 8h 2h, Farber 9h 8d
239. Farber Qc 7c, Riess 9h 7h
240. Farber Ah 5c, Riess 9d 8d
241. Riess Ah 10d, Farber 6c 3s
242. Riess 8s 3s, Farber Qh 8c
243. Riess Qs 10c, Farber 8h 5c
244. Farber 5d 4d, Riess 6s 3d
245. Riess 8c 7d, Farber 10h 2c
246. Riess Ah 8d, Farber Jc 10d
247. Riess Kc Qs, Farber 6c 5d
248. Riess Js Jh, Farber Kc Jc
249. Riess 10d 5c, Farber 5h 3h
250. Farber Ac 9d, Riess 10h 3h
251. Farber Qs 6c, Riess 8s 7h
252. Riess As 3s, Farber 7h 2c
253. Farber Ah 10h, Riess 9h 5d
254. Riess 10d 9d, Farber Qh Jd
255. Riess Ks 9s, Farber 4s 3c
256. Riess Kh 7c, Farber 8c 4h
257. Riess Kh 5c, Farber 8s 5h
258. Farber Ac Kc, Riess 9h 7s
259. Farber Jd 9s, Riess Qs 4c
260. Riess Kd 7c, Farber 7d 4s
*261. Riess Ah Kh, Farber Qs 5s

*indicates elimination hand

2013 WSOP Main Event: November Nine Becomes Tuesday Two

Watched with interest last night the playing down of the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event from nine players to the final two. Was interesting to see how the night went, with Ryan Riess accumulating early to lead, then Jay Farber building up to grab the top spot after knocking Marc-Etienne McLaughlin out in that aces-versus-kings hand, then the two big stacks gobble up the lesser ones to set up tonight’s finale.

J.C. Tran began in front and Amir Lehavot had the lead briefly early on, too, but for the most part there wasn’t a lot of craziness at the top of the leaderboard as the night wore on. Overall the play appeared quite solid, too, if a little conservative at times, with both Farber and Riess playing well and appearing plenty deserving to be facing one another for the bracelet tonight.

McLaughlin seemed to be struggling with some bad fortune even before that last cooler that knocked him out in sixth. Tran also didn’t seem to pick up too many decent starters which made it hard for him to gain momentum before he went out fifth.

This is the third year they’ve shown the entire final table this way on ESPN’s networks. The presentation hasn’t changed much from year-to-year. I still like Lon McEachern and Norman Chad, the latter cracking me up a few times last night including when he noted how “at the Last Supper -- which was a tough final table -- nobody was wearing sunglasses.”

Antonio Esfandiari does a nice job, too, with the explanations of the action and his reads, and in my opinion has figured out a way to be clear to a wide audience while also avoiding dumbing down the analysis. Kara Scott’s exit interviews and the other segments profiling players all worked well, too.

Meanwhile the less said about the break segments with Phil Hellmuth the better. The very first comment he made saw him failing to recall a player’s name, misremembering the order of hands, and referring a player going all in for “eight million dollars” on a hand when he shoved for 7.3 million... chips.

The “One Billion Hands” stuff during those segments was kind of hastily introduced as well and thus didn’t get presented very clearly. Didn’t help that during the first segment the hand discussed saw Hellmuth insisting a call was correct when the data being shown suggested otherwise, thus leaving everyone uncertain what any of it was supposed to mean. (By the way, for a more thorough and interesting discussion of the OBH stuff, check out Episode 52 of the Thinking Poker Podcast with OBH guru Dave Thornton.)

Most disappointing last night, though, was the panda pratfall on the main stage not being shown on ESPN. It was 1:30 a.m. here on the east coast, and those of us following Twitter saw everyone there in the Penn & Teller Theater suddenly begin firing off excited messages about the person in the big panda suit (there to support Farber) rush the stage and fall face first before being escorted away. Nolan Dalla wrote more about this hilarious break in the action on his blog today.

But for some reason ESPN -- showing everything on a 15-minute delay -- saw fit to excise that bit of goofiness while letting Hellmuth fall on his face repeatedly!

Wrote a little more about last night’s action over on Learn.PokerNews today, including a bit of strategy talk if you’re curious -- see "The Panda and the Beast: Farber and Riess Remain in 2013 WSOP Main Event." Meanwhile I’ll be up again tonight to ride this sucker to its conclusion.

On Not Predicting the November Nine

Am more or less locked in now to follow the action from Las Vegas as the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event final table finally gets going this evening. I’ll again be watching from home, which these days works out especially well thanks to the start-to-finish “virtually live” coverage right there on the teevee via the ESPN networks.

Got myself prepared for tonight’s action in part by writing a “Final Table Viewing Guide” over on Learn.PokerNews, inspired in part by some questions I’d seen getting passed around regarding when and where to view the final table and other logistical considerations. I ended up including a variety of info in that guide about how things will go tonight, if you’re curious to click through.

I didn’t say anything about who would win tonight, although I did end by sharing those odds the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino are putting out via their sports book. In fact I pointed out how given the nature of poker tournaments, betting on anyone to win is necessarily a gamble since chance obviously will be playing a role in affecting the outcome.

As many have noted before, the WSOP and ESPN have together succeeded in making the “November Nine” resemble in numerous ways a sporting event, with the idea furthered even more currently with the live coverage, play-by-play and color commentary, graphics and stats, player interviews, and even a big crowd to cut to occasionally for reactions.

However, as I wrote my little preview and read through some others over the last couple of days, I was reminded of a big difference between the WSOP Main Event final table and, say, baseball’s World Series or the Super Bowl or the Final Four -- namely, the fact that when previewing the event most commentators generally steer clear of offering unambiguous predictions about what might happen.

Think about how most “Super Bowl preview” columns or shows are necessarily punctuated with predictions from the writers or panelists. It would seem almost strange not to have a final score attached or at least some language addressing fairly directly who the favorites are and who are the underdogs. Indeed, the discussion of just about any upcoming NFL game often begins with a premise provided by the current point spread, with the commentators positioning their own arguments about the game accordingly.

Now I know some who are writing about or discussing the November Nine are also pointing out how the big stacks -- chip leader J.C. Tran in particular -- have an edge while the shorties -- Michiel Brummelhuis, Mark Newhouse, and David Benefield -- are obviously “dogs” heading into play tonight.

And others are bringing up how players like Amir Lehavot (who has won a bracelet before and is a tough customer in online cash games), Marc-Etienne McLaughlin (who has made two previous deep runs in the Main Event, finishing 30th and 86th), and Ryan Riess (who has a track record of success on the WSOP-C over the last year and impressed many with his play this summer) are decent candidates to win, too.

I might as well mention Sylvain Loosli (perhaps a relative wild card though an obviously solid player) and Jay Farber (the one true non-pro of the bunch) as players no one is ruling out, either, or at least no one who has some idea regarding the vagaries of tourney poker.

But when it comes to outright predictions, most remain tentative, only willing to make such couched within the usual qualifiers. If you think about it, a person with enough familiarity with tournament poker and/or these players to make a prediction would also necessarily know that such predictions are folly and thus cannot be made with confidence.

Making predictions on sports -- or betting on games -- adds a great deal of enjoyment to watching them. I feel like with poker (speaking of it strictly as a spectator “sport”), such predictions or bets don’t really have the same effect, as the chance element is so much more obvious to us than is the case with other sports.

What I mean to say is that while luck obviously matters in baseball, football, basketball, and all other sports, we aren’t as inhibited by it when it comes to proclaiming what we think will happen in a given game or season. But with poker -- and especially for those of us who have played the game and are thus well acquainted with how conspicuous luck can be -- we can’t be so sure.

Hard Candy, Talking Bananas, Moby Dick, and the WSOP

Happy Halloween, all.

Had to make a quick run to the grocery store this afternoon to pick up candy for the trick-or-treaters, and unfortunately the shelves were nearly bare. Normally I am careful about buying candy that I like, anticipating the possibility that we won’t have enough visitors to deplete the supply. It’s a simple, clear cut, long-term EV strategy.

But this time I was stuck picking up a lot of suckers, hard candy, and sour-flavored varieties -- in other words, less chocolate -- so now I’m hoping we have more kids come around than usual so I can unload it all. But darkness is already starting to fall and there’s a big bowl full of the stuff sitting by the door.

The problem was in the planning, it’s clear. Kind of makes me think a little bit about a hand from Day 7 of the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event which I remembered from the summer and watched again on ESPN a couple of nights ago. It was the one that saw the Argentinian Fabian Ortiz get knocked out in 17th place, with J.C. Tran the one claiming the last of his stack.

Ortiz was a player I hadn’t necessarily known too much about this summer, but then I saw him again not too long after the WSOP when in Lima, Peru at the Latin American Poker Tour Main Event that took place there a couple of weeks later. In fact, I’d end up following him a bit while covering that event for the PokerStars blog, including writing a post in which I found myself making an elaborate reference Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. If you’re curious about how something like that happened, follow and read.

Ortiz is a good player and had a solid run to make it to 17th, although his bustout hand wasn’t necessarily his finest moment. Down to just 15 big blinds or so, he chose to make a small early-position raise with A-Q and got called by Tran playing from the big blind. Then the hand became one of those one-thing-led-to-another type situations that saw Ortiz making a suspect-looking shove all in on the river in an effort to win without having connected with the board, and Tran correctly reading the play to call him with second pair.

Aaron Hendrix wrote about the Ortiz hand and one other from Day 7 in a post today on Learn.PokerNews, breaking down it all more thoroughly while showing how the hand demonstrated a potential consequence of not thinking ahead with one’s play. Click and read if you’re curious.

Okay... during the time I’ve been writing we’ve had a few more callers, including a cowboy, a few princesses, and one large talking banana. I don’t want to be overconfident, but I might be able to get rid of all of this candy before we’re through.

Of course, I could just go all in with the next visitor, after which it would necessarily be lights out at chez Shamus.

No Need for Introductions

Listened in on the brief conference call today conducted by ESPN concerning next week’s WSOP Main Event final table. The call featured ESPN VP of Original Programming and Production Jamie Horowitz, commentators Lon McEachern and Norman Chad, and producer Dan Gotti of Poker PROductions fielding questions from what turned out to be just a small handful of reporters.

The call only lasted a little over 20 minutes, and really there wasn’t much in the way of news to come from it aside from a confirmation of the fact that the programs next week will again feature all Main Event final table hands shown on just a 15-minute delay. The procedure for showing hole cards will be the same as employed last year, with cards only shown after the hands conclude and only those players still involved at hand’s end having their cards revealed.

On Monday, November 4, the show will begin at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET on ESPN2, which means cards are going in the air at 4:45 p.m. local time. They’ll play down from nine players to three and stop, then the last three players will return on Tuesday, November 5 with play resuming at 5:45 p.m. local time and the show getting underway at 6 p.m. Pacific/9 p.m. Eastern on ESPN. Antonio Esfandiari will be providing analysis to assist McEachern and Chad, and Phil Hellmuth will be involved again, too, it sounds like.

That was about it, news-wise. There was some fun at the end of the call as reference was made to Chad’s WSOP final table from a year ago -- an event I had a chance to help cover -- as well as McEachern’s WSOP Circuit final table this week (he finished fourth in a WSOP-C prelim at Harveys Lake Tahoe).

“We’ve been trying to school the audience for years that it’s a game of skill,” complained Chad, joking that McEachern making a WSOP-C final table offered serious counter-evidence to that argument.

Earlier McEachern did make an interesting point about the effect of having a delayed final table and the whole “November Nine” format, something I’d been aware of but hadn’t thought too much about before.

He was responding to a question about players perhaps lacking personality and thus not being especially entertaining to watch. McEachern didn’t directly address that judgment, but did say that “a bonus” that has come from the delayed final table format is that it does, in fact, create conditions for the nine players to get to know one another during the intervening months, which can lead to more openness and interaction at the tables.

“The November Nine concept allows the players to spend a lot more time together,” said McEachern, noting how several who made it to the WSOP Europe in France were seen dining out or sight-seeing with each other. “So they get to know each other better, and I think that will help, as it were, ‘break the ice’ as we get to the final table.”

The shared experience of making the WSOP Main Event final table likely encourages a kind of bond, which in turn increases the chances that these guys are connecting during the nearly four-month delay. And while that may or may not translate into more table talk or entertaining-to-watch poker, I get what McEachern is saying.

For those of us for whom the poker will provide enough to keep us engaged, we aren’t worried so much about the players entertaining us in other ways. After all, if it goes nearly 400 hands like last year, it’s only reasonable to anticipate some down time.

World Series Time

Sitting down to watch Game 1 of the World Series tonight between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Boston Red Sox. Was joking a little last week about how baseball really doesn’t capture my attention so much anymore until the postseason rolls around, and with the playoffs now extending deeper into October the Series is probably the only time when I’ll sit down and watch every game, or at least most of every game.

If this year’s Series goes the full seven games it will be ending on Halloween, which means it will be over and done with when that other World Series -- the World Series of Poker -- finally cranks back up with the “November Nine” starting on Monday, November 4.

Thanks to the way ESPN now presents its coverage of the Main Event, most who watch probably think of the WSOP as only the Main Event. That is to say, there must be a decent number of casual viewers who are aware of the WSOP having a big tournament every year in which a world champion is crowned, but aren’t necessarily aware or concerned about all of the preliminary events, never mind what’s happening at WSOP Europe, WSOP Asia Pacific, or even all the other tours and tourneys filling up the calendar from January to December.

Interestingly enough, though, I feel like the actual final table of the WSOP Main Event has kind of receded relatively speaking when it comes to its imprint on the broader cultural memory. In fact, when I compare baseball’s World Series to the WSOP Main Event, it almost seems like for poker its the long lead-up -- the “regular season” or early playoff rounds, we might say -- that gets at least as much attention and/or review, ultimately, as does the final table.

Think about how often we saw the WSOP ME final table rerun on ESPN from 2003-2005, that seemingly incessant loop of showings that we all basically memorized by the time the next year rolled around. Then think about how little the 2006-2012 final tables have been shown -- or watched, I should probably say.

I watched every hand of the 2012 WSOP Main Event final table last year -- all 399 of them -- focusing on it quite closely when it was all playing out. But while I was aware of later edited showings of it on ESPN that followed, I never really paid that much attention to them nor was I that aware of others discussing those broadcasts or even hands in that much detail in the months that followed.

It’s certainly the case that the “almost live” coverage of the WSOP ME final tables is lessening interest in the later reruns, but even so, it feels like the “highlights” from Greg Merson’s win a year ago have already faded almost entirely.

Anyhow, what happens between the Cards and Red Sox over the next week will certainly be relived over and again until next spring, and I suppose that once the WSOP ME plays out November 4-5 we’ll spend at least a week or two talking to each other about that, too. But after that I wonder if we’ll think about it much at all, already having moved on to something else.

Heaps of Hands

Sort of curious about this new site called One Billion Hands that just went live about a week or so ago.

The site appears to be devoted to providing some interesting statistical analysis of hold’em hands, producing some street-by-street commentary by comparing individual hands to the numbers crunched from a database of more than 1,000,000,000 hands (hence the site’s name).

So far there are just a few posts on the site dealing with some hands featured on the 2013 WSOP Main Event broadcasts currently airing on ESPN.

There's one post about that Day 6 hand in which Carlos Mortensen folded his pocket kings (which I brought up yesterday). There’s another one about a three-way hand with eventual November Niner Jay Farber in which all three players were dealt premium starters, a hand that saw the short stack (Phil Mader) eliminated while Chris Lindh avoided losing too much with his pocket queens after Farber flopped top pair with A-K. And the latest post concerns that weird hand in which Bruno Kawauti folded a flush on the turn when the board paired.

If you click through you’ll see how in each post just about every action is considered in the context of the huge database of hands as a way to provide some ideas about the relative worth of players’ decisions.

One thought that struck me right away was the fact that the database wasn’t comprised of hands played by players late in the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. According to the site, the exact source of the hands cannot be revealed, although they all came from the year 2011 and most assuredly were from online games of various limits (micro, low, medium, and high).

Thus in that Farber-Lindh-Mader hand in which the players had A-K, Q-Q, and A-Q-suited (respectively), the Q & A’s about what players usually do with such hands might apply more to cash games or other contexts than to deep in the Main Event when some players will be more ready (perhaps) to fold queens with a king on board or even fold a flush when the likelihood of being behind is very slim.

Anyway, that was just an initial thought I had while skimming these initial posts, which are all kind of intriguing in the way they come up with estimates of how much players saved or gained thanks to their decisions. It reminds me a little of the graphs and tables over on Advanced NFL Stats, a site I sometimes like to peruse and compare the findings there to impressions I formed after having watched the games.

I’m curious to see some more hands on the site, as well as more commentary either from readers or on the site itself regarding what ideas the large database of hands might provide regarding various strategic thinking.

Let me know if you happen to visit One Billion Hands and have any opinions.

The Poker Shot Clock (Again)

I think I’m turning into a night blogger.

Long ago -- back when I worked a full-time job every weekday -- I’d get up an hour or two early each day to write here. Then writing became the full-time job, although I’d usually still post here during the morning hours or at least by noon. Now I’m finding my days are too full of other obligations for me to get over here until the late afternoon or evening.

I don’t suppose it matters too greatly as time here on the internet tends to be reduced down to a kind of perpetual present, anyway, with nothing much seeming to matter except for what is happening right now or perhaps only just recently happened, in which case right now is filled up with everyone repeating to each other what just was.

Speaking of time and the seeming lack thereof, I was skimming through Two Plus Two a couple of days ago and saw how a thread started almost exactly one year ago titled “Should there be a ‘shot clock’ in live tournaments?” had gotten bumped to the front page once again in response to some of the WSOP Main Event coverage currently being shown on ESPN.

One of the posters embedded a hand from Day 4 involving Yevginiy Timoshenko and Adam Friedman in which Timoshenko took a long time (about two minutes, we’re told) to make a decision, during which time Norman Chad brought up the shot clock idea.

Last week I watched some of the broadcast and saw another hand from Day 6, kind of a memorable one involving Carlos Mortensen and Jorn Walthaus in which Mortensen folded on the river after having the clock called on him.

I say the hand was memorable because Jay “WhoJedi” Newnum was there taking photos for BLUFF, and he snapped a very cool picture of Mortensen tossing away his hand that revealed he was folding pocket kings (see left, click to enlarge). For more about that hand, check out this Betfair piece I wrote a while back describing the situation.

Both of those hands happened at the feature table, and as it happened both saw players not involved in the hands being the ones to call the clock.

I know there are some who are very much in favor of having some sort of shot clock in poker, but to me the current system almost always seems to be satisfactory with only occasional exceptions. It reminds me a lot of the current situation in Major League Baseball, perhaps because with the playoffs underway I’ve been paying a little more attention to baseball than I normally do.

In fact just today I was listening to the latest B.S. Report with Bill Simmons in which he had Bob Costas as a guest and among the topics they covered was the one about baseball games being too long and often unnecessarily drawn out by batters stepping out frequently and pitchers taking more and more time between pitches.

There, too, people will sometime argue in favor of a “shot clock” (or the equivalent). While I’m mostly a purist when it comes to baseball (including still being anti-DH), I could imagine something like that being put in place without too much of an intrusion. I don’t think I’d like to see the same become the norm in poker, though, not because I’m a purist but just because I think it would change the game too radically.

Anyhow, thanks for your patience today as I took most of the day before posting. And I appreciate no one calling the clock on me.

Lehavot’s Leveraging

One of this year’s November Nine, Amir Lehavot (currently second in chips), yesterday announced that he was selling pieces of himself to interested buyers. He tweeted the news, linking to a Two Plus Two thread he’d begun outlining the details of his offer.

In the thread-starter Lehavot makes reference to past results (mostly online) and to the fact that going into the Main Event he had 80% of his action. Of that, he’s now offering up 30% (overall) while keeping 50%.

The price Lehavot is setting on shares he’s deriving from the value of his current stack as determined by the Independent Chip Model (ICM) such as is often used when negotiating final table chops. Subtracting the ninth-place money he and each of the other final tablists have already been given ($733,224) and then comparing his current stack to the remaining prize money still up for grabs, this makes his stack of 29.7 million chips “worth” $2,924,822 according to ICM.

Thus the price for 1% of Lehavot for potential buyers is $29,248, nearly three times the Main Event buy-in.

Lehavot will need to finish third or better in order for investors to make any profit at all. To finish third would mean earning a $3,727,023 payday for Lehavot. Take away the $733,224 he’s already gotten, that adds up to $2,993,799; thus, every 1% purchased for $29,248 would get back $29,938, or just a little less than $700.

If Lehavot finishes fourth, that will only yield $20,588 per 1% (a loss of more than $8K), and so on down to a ninth-place finish which would mean investors get zero return. If he finishes second, 1% would be worth $44,399 (about $15K profit), and if he wins, 1% would be worth $76,263 (about $47K).

From Lehavot’s perspective, if he were to sell all 30% he’s offering, that puts another $877,440 in his pocket before he plays a hand in November, which added to the ninth-place money is a little better than the total prize for finishing sixth.

While most responding in the thread are critical of the deal, a few are not. Meanwhile, responses to Lehavot’s original tweet are mostly characterizing it a less than attractive offer for buyers (“it’s only a good deal if your name is Amir Lehavot,” says one).

I think I belong to that latter, skeptical group when it comes to assessing the merits of Lehavot’s offer. But setting the actual deal aside, it seems to me that the whole idea of a November Niner selling pieces of himself at the delayed Main Event final table must be creating a headache for the WSOP.

The issue of deal making at the WSOP has always been complicated. Unlike on the European Poker Tour where everything is done out in the open -- such as was exemplified with a little bit of extra drama at the recent EPT Barcelona Main Event final table -- the WSOP doesn’t acknowledge or help broker deals. There have even been suggestions here and there that the WSOP doesn’t allow deals at all, although that isn’t really the case.

Back in 2010 in a $1,500 limit hold’em shootout event there was a notable instance of a player -- Yueqi Zhu -- being disqualified at the start of the tourney’s second round after having made a deal heads-up with his short-stacked opponent in the previous round to ensure he would advance. At the start of the next day Zhu was disqualified, with WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel at the time announcing “there is no deal making at the World Series of Poker.”

In truth, Zhu’s case wasn’t simply “deal making” but an instance of a player essentially giving up his chips to Zhu at the end of their match, an action considered as having violated the WSOP’s rule about “Ethical Play” which states “Poker is an individual game. Soft play will result in penalties that may include forfeiture of chips and/or disqualification. Chip dumping will result in disqualification.”

The WSOP has no specific rules (that I know of) forbidding final table deal making in the traditional sense, although like I say they don’t help players make the deals nor do they recognize them when it comes to payouts and tax documents. (Thus does Lehavot also add a note to his offer about needing SSNs from investors to handle potential tax issues later on.)

I have to guess the WSOP isn’t crazy about Lehavot selling shares of himself this way -- i.e., so publicly -- and thus foregrounding the whole idea of final table deal making. What would happen if all nine of the players were to make similar offers? What if they started buying pieces of each other? Or what if all nine arrived at a more traditional arrangement to flatten out the payouts prior to the start of play in November?

Four-plus months of down time obviously gives us lots of time to imagine such scenarios. Gives the players a lot of time to ponder them, too.

Hellmuth and the Hoi Polloi

Haven’t really been watching the WSOP broadcasts on ESPN that closely this summer. The Main Event coverage has been on for the last couple of weeks. I know this is becoming kind of an annual refrain from me, but with every passing year I’ve moved further and further from wanting to spend a couple of hours on a weeknight watching the WSOP ME.

There are a few reasons for my edging away from being a regular viewer, one of which I was writing about last Friday -- namely, playing less poker (I believe) makes one less enthused to watch others play. With the WSOP ME, of course, I have a particular, personal reason to be a little less inspired to watch after having been there all summer reporting on the sucker. Sort of thing cuts into the suspense more than a little, although it’s still kind of fun occasionally to tune in and search backgrounds for familiar faces.

I did happen to catch part of the first hour the other night, however, which found ESPN showing more from Day 3. Much of that hour was devoted to featuring Phil Hellmuth nursing a short stack, then finally getting eliminated.

At one point we see Hellmuth play a hand versus Dennis Reyes. Both are sitting with below average stacks, and when they get to the turn on a nine-high board Reyes shoves with pocket jacks. Hellmuth -- with king-high and a flush draw -- takes a big bite of his sandwich, offers a short speech, then folds. Then he continues to talk to Reyes through a mouthful of food, delivering the usual low estimate of his opponent’s ability while chompingly championing his own.

That’s when the show cuts to a one-minute long segment labeled “Side Action” in which Hellmuth and last year’s Main Event runner-up Jesse Sylvia are shown playing in a low stakes no-limit hold’em game over in the poker room on the other side of the Rio.

Watching this segment caused me to remember having witnessed some discussion of this little idea last month. It was Day 6, I think, well after both Hellmuth and Sylvia had been eliminated from the ME. I recall overhearing folks in the Amazon Room talking about getting Hellmuth down into the poker room, including making sure it would be cool to shoot video there.

I didn’t realize then that Sylvia was going to be recruited to appear in the segment as well. Anyhow, I know I’m not surprising anyone to report it having been somewhat plotted out ahead of time. In other words, I doubt anyone watching the segment would actually think Hellmuth and Sylvia had randomly decided to play in the game and the cameras just happened to be there to catch it.

As shown in the segment, Hellmuth and Sylvia take a couple of seats at a $1/$3 NLHE table and appear to have fun playing with those who are gathered there. While we can’t really follow any hands, the pair are apparently losing. Eventually Hellmuth orders some Dom Pérignon for the table, then after saying “you guys are a little bit too tough for us” wishes everyone luck and they depart.

It looked like those involved enjoyed the visit, which I’m going to guess probably didn’t last more than an orbit or two. I suppose it might seem a little patronizing -- the high rollers stooping to join the hoi polloi -- though I can imagine worse. Hard not to roll the eyes a little, though, when watching Hellmuth play-acting as the life-of-the-party, lovable loser in the $1/$3 game since that character contrasts so markedly with the sniping, unfriendly self he typically appears as when playing “real” poker.

(Yeah, I know... “the hoi polloi” is redundant. But it makes a weird phrase sound even weirder to omit the article.)

Fled Is That Tourney:----Do I Wake or Sleep?

Utterly swamped at the moment with various assignments, and thus without a lot of time for posting here today, I’m afraid. Indeed, after enjoying a day or two of rest upon my return home from the WSOP, I have been just about as busy during the days since as I was while there.

In fact, it looks like I am going to have a few different trips coming up over the next several weeks, including a return voyage to LAPT Lima a few days from now.

I’ll surely be sharing details about all of those trips here as they come up. All of the many different tours are ramping back up now that the WSOP has finished for the summer, and so suddenly after weeks of focusing on Las Vegas the game goes global once again as events play out all over.

I am still occasionally dreaming about watching and reporting hands. Usually we’re talking mundane stuff -- like most hands in poker tournaments, or like most dreams often go -- although occasionally weird, panicky moments will arise in which something strange happens in the hand or with the reporting, and I’ll wake up glad none of it was real.

As a sports fan, I’m realizing I’m kind of glad still to have poker first and foremost on the agenda here during this relative down time for sports. Am waiting on the NFL to start, still my favorite sport to watch and follow. Basketball will also occupy my attention once it comes back around later in the year, too, but baseball simply doesn’t work for me anymore, with the multitude of scandals having seriously damaged the game beyond a point where this fan cares to go.

The whole A-Rod saga has become a kind of emblem for the sport, bringing together all of the problems related to high salaries, PED use and abuse, and absurd attempts to self-legislate into a single pathetic package.

That’s not to say poker doesn’t have its share of problems, too. But for the most part the game tends to provide plenty of entertainment for those who play and watch. Can’t say I was overly moved by ESPN’s presentation of the WSOP Asia Pacific final table earlier in the week, but that’s probably more a consequence of my being a little overfed with poker of late than the presentation of Daniel Negreanu’s victory not being compelling.

Anyhow, back next week with more and like I say I’ll be talking further about the LAPT Lima trip and subsequent adventures soon.

Meanwhile, for those with an interest in hearing people talk about reporting on poker tournaments, check out the latest episode of the Thinking Poker podcast on which Gareth Chantler comes on to talk about his upcoming trip to cover UKIPT Galway for the Full Tilt Poker blog. There is also some interesting talk about that unique situation from the WSOP Main Event involving David “Doc” Sands you might have heard about, namely a strange hand Sands played that has evoked the issue of “the ethics of accepting an unsolicited chip dump” (to employ the Thinking Poker guys’ phrasing).

While you do, I’ll see if I can’t get a little more rest before these trips come up. And if I can keep these poker-related dreams from returning me to consciousness.

Post-WSOP Number Crunching (Re: Canada, Women)

As the World Series of Poker Main Event drew to a close, the WSOP published some statistics regarding the 62 events of this year’s series, including various information regarding the demographics of those who participated. The report informs us that there were 79,471 total entries for the 62 events this year, then goes on to share further data regarding the age, nationality, and sex of the players.

The information about entries by country pretty much follows what has been the case for the last several years at the WSOP with the U.S. providing most of the entries (57,040 this time), Canada a distant second (4,118), and the U.K., Russia, and France rounding out the top five.

This year there was extra attention given to the performance of Canadian players thanks to the fact that 10 of the bracelet winners (out of the 61 preliminary events) were identified as being from Canada. That was a huge jump from the three bracelets Canada won in 2012. Indeed, since players from Canada managed to claim four bracelets during the first week of the Series, people were paying extra attention the results of Canadians throughout the Series. Some even made some seriously bad puns about the phenomenon.

Looking strictly at percentages, 71.8% of the entrants were from the U.S. while 5.2% were from Canada. Players from the U.S. won about 65.5% of the bracelets this summer, which comes close to matching the participation percentage. Meanwhile Canadians won 16.4% of the prelims, which is more than three times the participation percentage.

As Canadians kept collecting bracelets this summer, I remember hearing a few people speculate about whether or these winners were actually Canadian or if they just happened to be American players in Canada who had moved north of the border in order to be able to play online. Such has absolutely been the case with regard to recent WCOOP and SCOOP results at PokerStars, something I mentioned last fall when noticing how Canada was performing especially well in last year’s WCOOP.

Leafing through the 10 winners’ bios, though, shows that with these particular players none appears to fall into the category of the exiled American online player.

Event No. 3 winner Charles Sylvestre was born in Montreal and still lives there. Event No. 6 champ Benny Chen is from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island where he manages a restaurant. Michael Malm, winner of Event No. 8, is a marketing specialist from Coquilam, Ontario.

Levi Berger, who won Event No. 11, is originally from Ottawa although is a citizen of both the U.S. and Canada. It sounds like he definitely played a lot online (in the U.S.) prior to Black Friday, though I don’t believe the 22-year-old moved back to Canada afterwards in order to continue to play.

Mark Radoja, winner of Event No. 16, is from Guelph, Ontario, the site of a thriving poker scene and also where Gavin Smith grew up. Calen McNeil, who won Event No. 20, like Chen is a restaurant owner in Victoria (in fact he owns three there). Event No. 28 winner Jason Duval is a 23-year-old student who was born in Quebec where he currently goes to school at Laval University.

Justin Oliver won Event No. 38. He’s a 37-year-old jeweler who was born in Toronto and still lives there. Dan Idema, Event No. 39 winner and brother of Two Plus Two Pokercast co-host Adam Schwartz, is from Vancouver. And Kristen Bicknell, who won the Ladies event (Event No. 51), was born in St. Catharines, Ontario and still resides there.

Speaking of women who played at the WSOP, the report also notes stats regarding their participation this summer, sharing how of the total entries 75,447 (94.94%) were men and 4,024 (5.06%) were women. Of course it should be noted that 954 of those entries by women came in the Ladies event, so after doing a little additional subtracting and dividing, the participation of women in open events this summer was right at 3.9% (3,070 out of 78,517 entries).

There were 298 women in the Main Event this year, which represented 4.69% of the total field of 6,352. That’s a big jump from last year, when 211 of the 6,598 entries were women (almost 3.2%). Women notably won two open events this year, both large-field no-limit hold’em events with Dana Castaneda winning Event No. 54 ($1,000 NLHE) and Loni Harwood winning Event No. 60 ($1,500 NLHE).

The WSOP also reports how men earned 7,462 of the cashes at the 2013 WSOP while women earned 343 of them. I’m not completely sure about these figures since the “total cashers” being listed is 8,454, which is more than the total of men and women cashers. In any case, when comparing those two totals, women have almost 4.4% of the cashes, which would roughly jibe with the overall participation total, although again we should probably consider how women earned all 117 of the cashes in the Ladies event (which I assume is being included here).

All of which is to say, I think the percentage of women cashing in events when compared to the percentage of women who participated isn’t really all that out of whack. Even the percentage of women bracelet winners in all of the preliminary events except the Ladies event (two of 60, or 3.33%) is pretty much in line with the overall participation of women in those events.

On the other hand, the Canadians’ percentage of wins this summer is remarkable when compared to their participation. Dunno what the overall percentage of cashes by Canadians turned out to be, although that would be an interesting stat to see.

The Place of Patches

Was reading through a few WSOP-related pieces yesterday including some concerning the Main Event and final table, and I found myself thinking briefly about how online poker sponsorships have receded considerably from being part of the story of the WSOP.

I suppose it was looking at pics of the November Nine and how inconspicuous, really, the patching of the last nine players seemed to be that got me thinking about how little we’ve been paying attention to the subject, especially when compared to the pre-Black Friday era.

Of the final nine, Mark Newhouse had an Ivey Poker patch (recently acquired, I believe), Sylvain Loosli had the Winamax logo on the front of his hoody, J.C. Tran had one for PokerAce.tv, and Jay Farber was wearing a couple of 888 patches on that last day. Meanwhile I don’t believe the other five players were sporting any logos, although I imagine by November all nine will probably have some sort of sponsorship.

I remember doing a quick circuit of the tables during Day 2 of Event No. 59, the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw event that concluded just before the Main Event got started. There were about 75 players left at the time and during my tour of the tables I consciously looked for patches just to get an estimation of how many I saw. I even jotted down the sponsors, although I didn’t keep track of the list.

I saw about a dozen patches overall, although not all of them were poker-related. In other words, there was an average of about one patch per six-handed table in the 2-7 tournament, although as I think about it the average was probably skewed a bit high thanks to fact that that particular event had attracted a number of well-known players.

For example, Tom Schneider had his LoudMouth Poker patch and matching crazy cap and shorts; he’d go out shy of the cash in this event after winning two bracelets earlier in the Series. Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi (who’d finish 16th) had three or four of them, I recall, including one for the Mizrachi Dealer Academy and another for the Turlock Poker Room in Turlock, California. Team PokerStars Pros Naoya Kihara and Daniel Negreanu were still in, too, and of course they were both patched up. Kihara would squeak into the money to finish 28th while Negreanu went on to finish runner-up.

Eventual winner Eli Elezra had a patch advertising a site called Attack Poker, one with which I’m not too familiar but which sponsored a few players here and there during the 2013 WSOP, including Black Friday indictee Chad Elie, the payment processor who only recently was released from prison and who Attack Poker signed and put into the Main Event. (By the way, for more news regarding Elie and his ongoing legal battles, see Haley Hintze’s latest articles for Flushdraw.)

Like I say, though, all of these patches and sponsorships were well off most folks’ radar for much of the Series and the Main Event. The only time I remember sponsorship even becoming a topic of conversation was on the final day (Day 7). Jackie Glazier had gone out in 31st the day before as the highest-finishing woman in this year’s Main Event, and throughout her run had been wearing an Ivey Poker patch as one of that site’s many signed pros. The next day, however, 888 poker had signed Glazier and thus she had on their logo when doing an interview with Kara Scott for the later ESPN telecast.

If you pick up Dr. Pauly’s Lost Vegas (covering the WSOP from 2005 to 2008) or even watch the BET RAISE FOLD documentary which I was discussing some on Monday, you see how prominent the idea of a sponsorship once was in poker, something almost akin to getting called up to the big leagues in baseball in the way it provided concrete financial assurance as well as a kind of symbolic stamp of approval for one’s talents (deserved or otherwise).

In some cases and with a few sites it is still obviously a big deal to get sponsored, but it is hardly a goal for most tournament players at present. Still, it was kind of interesting to see a few players during that next-to-last-day of the Main Event (when they played down from 68 to 27) be handed patches as they’d picked up a small bonus for having gotten that far. And to remember how much more prevalent such a scene was not that long ago.

The Turn Changed Nothing

At one point a couple of weeks ago I was helping cover a pot-limit Omaha event at the World Series of Poker with my friend and colleague Rich. A hand arose in which a player was all in before the flop and at risk, and someone commenting on the hand amused us greatly with his narration as the hand played out before us.

Not to get too caught up in specifics, the grins began with the commentator uttered the phrase “the turn changed nothing” when in fact the turn card had given the at-risk player a flush draw with one card to come. Rather than changing nothing, the turn had greatly improved his chances, giving him nine more outs to survive.

To make a short story even shorter, we laughed afterwards about the phrase being misused, then I began repurposing it in various ways.

“The turn changed nothing,” I’d say, then, adopting the character of a not-so-savvy player and/or observer, I’d add: “I’m still a moron.”

I suppose in just about every work environment there will develop a special language between workers used both to describe their assigned tasks and perhaps to comment on them, too, sometimes sarcastically. Thus did we start to employ the phrase “the turn changed nothing” as a kind of shorthand for anything worthy of criticism or that struck us as at all funny.

You know, a little emblem of absurdity, added to the catalogue. Every workplace has got ’em.

I realize what I’m describing might not make much sense out of context, and now that I’m back home and in an environment where I doubt I’ll ever encounter a spot where I might say “the turn changed nothing” I’m starting to think of the phrase a little differently.

In truth, in hold’em or Omaha the turn always changes something, except in those rare instances when a player is already drawing dead after the flop, in which case you could say nothing changes with the turn or the the river, at least as far as the outcome of the hand is concerned. I think that was part of the reason why the phrase seemed so funny to us, namely, because it so rarely applies.

Of course, even in those situations when the flop utterly decides who is going to win a hand, the turn card still brings a hand one step closer to its conclusion, even if only as a formality. When players are drawing dead on the flop, the dealer still deals a turn and a river as though running out a grounder even after being thrown out at first. Although the cards don’t affect the outcome, they are somehow needful nonetheless.

Last night I was talking to someone about my summer in Vegas who at one point began asking me if it had been a worthwhile, positive experience. At first I wanted to answer jokingly, to laugh at the idea of self-reflection and dismissively characterize the whole time as having “changed nothing.”

But in fact it was a positive experience, and entirely worthwhile. And besides, it’s never true that what we do changes nothing, even if it seems otherwise.