Poker Hall of Fame: Carlos Mortensen and Todd Brunson Make 52

Saw yesterday how Carlos Mortensen and Todd Brunson had been elected as the 51st and 52nd members of the Poker Hall of Fame. Now’s the time for the World Series of Poker to create a commemorative deck of cards featuring pictures of all 52 members.

If I’d had a vote I certainly would’ve given support to Mortensen’s candidacy, though there were other nominees I’d have probably chosen this year ahead of the younger Brunson (though he’s certainly deserving).

Mortensen is a WSOP Main Event champion (2001), and I tend to have a bit of a prejudice in favor of that select group when it comes to the PHOF. With three WPT titles, nearly $12 million in career tourney earnings, and a near-miss to make a second WSOP Main Event final table in 2013 (when he finished 10th), he was a shoo-in. That’s not even counting the highly advanced chip stacking skills that further distinguish the Spaniard (originally from Ecuador).

Todd Brunson has won a lot in tournaments as well (nearly $4.3 million, including a WSOP bracelet in 2005), although he’s much better known as a high-stakes cash game player. His notable heads-up battles with Andy Beal -- including a $13.5 million win over two days (as chronicled in Michael Craig’s The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King), then another belated reprise versus Beal in early 2015 which Brunson is said to have won another $5 million -- are legend-making and probably enough to earn him serious PHOF consideration.

I’m going to guess he got a lot of support from the living Poker Hall of Famers, and perhaps not quite as much from the media who voted. Speaking of living PHOFers, he joins his dad, Doyle Brunson, as a PHOF member, which has to be fairly unusual as far as hall of fames go, generally speaking.

The only other father-son combo I can think of in any sports hall of fame would be Bobby and Brett Hull, even if Ken Griffey, Sr. and Jr. spring to mind (Jr. got in this year, Sr. isn’t a HOFer).

In any case, congrats to both. And if the WSOP is reading, feel free to steal that special WSOP PHOF deck idea!

Image: WSOP.com.

The Hall Picks Up Another Pair

Results from this year’s Poker Hall of Fame voting were announced today, with John Juanda and Jennifer Harman the newest two members named.

I’ve written here before about how I had the privilege of being involved with the PHOF voting for a few years. I was one of the “poker media” picked to vote alongside the living Hall of Famers (always tend to want scare quotes around those two words, for a variety of reasons). We were all given 10 names (finalists) from which we could pick up to three to whom we doled out our allotment of 10 total points, then the top two points-getters would make it through.

I’ll point out again that having a PHOF vote only meant being able to pick from the 10 names the panel was given. I never could suggest nominees myself, although I believe the living PHOF members were able to do just that (which is how Brian “Sailor” Roberts got on the ballot, I believe).

That said, during the years I voted (2010-2013), I was essentially okay with the individuals who made it through to be named PHOFers. While I sometimes gave points to players who didn’t ultimately get inducted, I didn’t disagree too greatly with what the final results were.

Back in early September when this year’s finalists were announced, I guessed Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott would get picked with either Carlos Mortensen or Juanda getting the other spot. Was mainly just trying to predict what the current voters would do, and not suggesting who I thought should get in out of the 10 nominees.

I don’t disagree with either Juanda or Harman getting in, although Mortensen is certainly one that seems like he should get the nod sooner than later. In fact if I were to predict again I’d say next year it will probably be Mortensen and Phil Ivey, as Ivey turns 40 in February and so cannot be denied one of the two spots, unless they manage to change the process around somehow between now and then.

Which I suppose could happen, given some of the clamor that appears to have resulted from this year’s vote. It’s necessarily always going to be a flawed process, ultimately unsatisfactory to some if not the majority of those who care a lick about it.

For more on the topic, including some discussion of the lack of non-Americans in the PHOF, see Chris Tessaro's piece over at All In titled “Did the Poker Hall of Fame Pick the Right Inductees?”

(EDIT [added 10/29/15]: Yesterday European Poker Tour founder John Duthie added another op-ed regarding problems with the current nomination/voting process and the glaring lack of non-Americans in the Hall over at PokerNews -- check it out.)

2015 Poker Hall of Fame Nominees Announced

The 10 finalists for this year’s Poker Hall of Fame have been announced, prompting a few in the poker world to spend a little effort once again thinking about what the PHOF represents and perhaps to debate once more about the challenge of trying to measure the worthiness of an individual to be recognized as a PHOFer.

There are currently 48 inductees, with Daniel Negreanu and Jack McClelland being the most recent to be awarded the honor last year. I believe something like 23 or so of those in the PHOF are still living. That group gets to vote on the 10 nominees along with an appointed group of poker media, with two nominees at most able to get the nod.

For several years I had the opportunity to vote for the Poker Hall of Fame and so have a bit of familiarity with the process. The 10 names are given to the voters, chosen by a group of folks at the WSOP from those submitted online. They aren’t the 10 most-nominated by the public, but rather the ones whom those doing the selecting think deserve to be finalists.

From there the “Blue Ribbon” committee of PHOFers and media have 10 points they are allowed to distributed among one, two, or three nominees. The points are then tallied, and the two getting the most are elected.

As I say, I had the privilege of voting for a few years there, and in fact if I hadn’t missed an email sent to an old, dormant account, I might still be part of the group voting. I didn’t mind losing my spot, however, for a couple of reasons. For one, I think any committee is benefited by changing members occasionally, if only to assure bringing in different views and perspectives. Secondly, people come and go a lot when it comes to the so-called “poker media,” which would also be a reason to revisit who is being included in that half of the group of voters.

I was also told at the time the WSOP was interested in getting more European media represented as voters, which I also thought was a good thing. In any case, it’s clear from the 10 names presented to voters this year that the WSOP is pushing to try to get some non-Americans voted in to the PHOF.

This year’s nominees are Chris Bjorin, David Chiu, Bruno Fitoussi, Jennifer Harman, John Juanda, Carlos Mortensen, Max Pescatori, Terry Rogers, Matt Savage, and Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott.

Bjorin’s a Swede, Fitoussi is French, Pescatori is Italian, and Mortensen was born in Ecuador and grew up in Spain. The two deceased nominees Rogers (Ireland) and Ulliott (England) are also non-U.S. Chiu was born in China and Juanda in Indonesia, though both are American. Meanwhile Harman and first-time nominee Matt Savage are both U.S. natives.

The idea of inviting the public to nominate 10 individuals for the PHOF and then have a committee vote to select inductees from that list began in 2009. Just for fun, here’s a rundown of who the finalists were for the six years prior to this one. The asterisks denote those inducted, and clicking the year gets you to a post written here about the PHOF class/winners from each:

2009: Tom Dwan, Barry Greenstein, Dan Harrington, Phil Ivey, Tom McEvoy, Daniel Negreanu, Men Nguyen, Scotty Nguyen, Erik Seidel, Mike Sexton*

2010: Chris Ferguson, Barry Greenstein, Jennifer Harman, Dan Harrington*, Phil Ivey, Linda Johnson, Tom McEvoy, Daniel Negreanu, Scotty Nguyen, Erik Seidel*

2011: Annie Duke, Barry Greenstein*, Jennifer Harman, Linda Johnson*, John Juanda, Marcel Luske, Jack McClelland, Tom McEvoy, Scotty Nguyen, Huckleberry Seed

2012: Chris Bjorin, David Chiu, Eric Drache*, Thor Hansen, George Hardie, Jennifer Harman, John Juanda, Tom McEvoy, Scotty Nguyen, Brian “Sailor” Roberts*

2013: Chris Bjorin, Humberto Brenes, David Chiu, Thor Hansen, Jennifer Harman, Mike Matusow, Tom McEvoy*, Carlos Mortensen, Scotty Nguyen*, Huckleberry Seed

2014: Chris Bjorin, Humberto Brenes, Bruno Fitoussi, Ted Forrest, Jennifer Harman, Bob Hooks, Mike Matusow, Jack McClelland*, Daniel Negreanu*, Huckleberry Seed

In 2009, Sexton was the only inductee. The voting process was different then, but a stipulation requiring a nominee to get at least 75% “yes” votes (like the MLB Hall of Fame) made it hard for more than one to get in that year (and in fact almost made it so no one could get in).

Also noteworthy from 2009 was how Tom Dwan -- then just 23 years old -- got picked by the public, and then was removed from the ballot by the WSOP.

In 2011 the so-called “Chip Reese Rule” was added, meaning no one under 40 years old could be nominated. That’s why Ivey and Negreanu were on the ballots before that date, and Negreanu only showed up again last year after turning 40. Ivey turns 40 next February, will be on the ballot next year, and will be inducted, no doubt.

Also, in 2012 Brian “Sailor” Roberts was not picked by the public to go on the ballot, but was a “write-in” nominee submitted by a PHOFer (I believe).

Gonna guess Ulliott, who passed away in April, gets in this year, with either Mortensen or Juanda nabbing the other spot. Who would you vote for, and who do you think gets in?

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.

Who Would You Select Among the 2013 Poker Hall of Fame Nominees?

In a rush today and so just thought I’d post a quick one noting the announcement of the 10 finalists for this year’s Poker Hall of Fame. I’ve had the honor in the past of being one of those called upon to vote in this process, and as I look at the finalists for this year I’m again thinking about how difficult a task it will be when it comes to deciding between them.

As you’ve probably read elsewhere, the following players all made this year's list of finalists: Chris Björin, Humberto Brenes, David Chiu, Thor Hansen, Jennifer Harman, Mike Matusow, Tom McEvoy, Carlos Mortensen, Scotty Nguyen, and Huck Seed.

Of those, McEvoy and Nguyen have both been nominees for each of the past five years -- indeed for every year since they instituted this new process by which fans were able to nominate candidates over at WSOP.com and then the panel of living Hall of Famers and poker media then vote on finalists culled from those who were nominated. Harman has also been nominated each of the last four years.

Meanwhile four of this year’s nominees are back for a second go-round, with Björin, Chiu, and Hansen on the ballot for a second consecutive year while Seed is on for a second time after being a finalist once before in 2011. The other three candidates this year are all first-time nominees -- Brenes, Matusow, and Mortensen.

Matusow won his fourth WSOP bracelet this past summer and has the unique distinction of also having made a couple of WSOP Main Event final tables (in 2001 and 2005). Mortensen of course won the WSOP ME back in 2001 and very nearly made another final table this year before being ousted in 10th.

Brenes, meanwhile, might surprise some as a nominee, but I knew his nomination was a distinct possibility after learning about a groundswell of support for him when at LAPT Peru a couple of months ago, something I noted in one of my reports from Lima for the PokerStars blog. Brenes’s standing in that part of the world as an important ambassador of the game is not unlike that of Hansen in Norway where Hansen is viewed as the “Norwegian Godfather of Poker.”

Interestingly, six of the 10 nominees were born outside of the U.S. (Björin, Brenes, Chiu, Hansen, Mortensen, and Nguyen). Four won WSOP Main Event titles (McEvoy, Seed, Nguyen, Mortensen). And all 10 have won at least two WSOP bracelets.

Gotta think McEvoy, Nguyen, and Harman will have an edge when it comes to the voting, given their having been on ballots for several years running by this point, but like I say those voting will have a tough decision to make. Only two at most will be voted in to join the other 44 already inducted in the Poker Hall of Fame.

Say you could only pick two of these candidates... how would you cast your vote?

2013 WSOP, Postlude: Unfinished Business

I am home again after a thankfully uneventful voyage back across the continent yesterday. Got to sleep around 11 last night and didn’t wake until just a couple of hours ago.

I admit the first few minutes of consciousness this morning were filled with confused thoughts regarding my whereabouts and duties for the day. I wasn’t completely sure at first that I wasn’t still in my room in Vegas, and that I didn’t have another day’s worth of reporting ahead of me.

“Am I really done?” I asked myself. Couldn’t help it.

In 2008 I was first recruited to go out to Las Vegas to help cover the WSOP for PokerNews. I’d signed on in the spring, then a couple of weeks later the announcement came regarding the whole “November Nine” idea. I remember then being disappointed I wouldn’t be there to see the Main Event final table finish and a winner emerge, and as I wrote here at the time, I thought delaying the final table four months was mostly a lousy idea, even if I understood some of the potential benefits of doing so.

Like most, I’ve more or less come around to accepting the delayed final table now. Do anything six years running and it’s hard not for folks to get used to it. As I was saying last week about the Rio having become the WSOP’s new home, what was once novel became custom, and now what was custom has edged over into a kind of tradition.

Thus for those of us who are in Las Vegas every July for the Main Event’s play down to nine, we’ve come to accept the moment when the 10th-place finisher gets eliminated as a kind of climax of the summer. For reporters, that’s the moment when the “end” of the story can finally be chronicled, even if the last tournament of the Series hasn’t really concluded. There’s always some more to do after that last hand plays out, but soon the WSOP fades from view as other business comes to occupy us.

I’ve actually never gone back out for the final table, having always followed it from home. I had a desire to do so those first couple of years, but that’s waned over time. It would still be fun to witness the spectacle in person once, I think, but having seen and experienced so much else at the WSOP over the years, I don’t feel so much like I’m missing out on something I absolutely need to see.

That said, each year when I have come home from the WSOP and finally woken up in my own bed again every mid-July, I do so with a sense of incompleteness. Part of that feeling stems from the Main Event being artificially paused as it is, but there are other factors, too, that increase the sense of work left undone.

I’ve written here before about tournament reporting and how in the end no matter how comprehensive one is -- or a team of reporters are -- there’s always so much left unsaid. Even doing the hand-for-hand reporting as we did that last day leaves out a lot. All of the bets and raises and folds and cards are there, but as anyone who’s ever played a hand of poker knows, there’s a lot more happening every single hand than can be seen and passed along.

I was chatting with Mickey after all was over early Monday morning (around 3:30 a.m.), and he was still thinking about the night and wanting to go back over everything to make sure all was finished. So was I.

Mickey likes to be as accurate and exact as possible, his famously precise chip counts being just one example of this trait. During the short break before the start of the 10-handed final table night before last, he took on the task of counting Carlos Mortensen’s creatively stacked chips and I wasn’t the only one taking a picture of him doing so. His work ethic has inspired many of us over the years, but I think a lot of us also share his same wish to be as complete as possible with what we do.

There happens to be a construction company based in Las Vegas the name of which coincides with mine. One sees the name around here and there, and in fact on a few occasions when introduced to Vegas-based folks I’ve had them react by mentioning the company. It’s not the only time I’ve experienced such coincidences with my name.

For the last several years, those going to the WSOP have been seeing a building going up near the Rio on Twain Avenue. Construction on Wyndham Vacation Resorts Desert Blue (a 19-story, 281-unit timeshare) began about five years ago and was originally scheduled to be completed by 2010. But they’d only really gotten started on the project when construction was shutdown. Some recession-related reason, I think.

So the building has been standing there within view of the parking lot for years now, and the fact that my name has been emblazoned on a large banner attached to the side of the edifice has inspired a long-running gag. “When are you going to finish your building?” I’m asked, and I usually respond that I’ve been so busy at the Rio I haven’t been able to find the time.

After something like three years of no movement on the project, construction finally resumed a couple of months ago, and so this summer some have commented to me about perhaps my building being completed sometime soon.

The last few times people mentioned the building and my name hanging on it, I’ve responded by saying that by now it had evolved into a kind of symbol to me. For weeks I’d park my car and walk into work, and every time I did I’d glance over to see this large, conspicuous reminder of the many unfinished projects in my life.

In his piece about Doyle Brunson last week, Brad “Otis” Willis touched on the problem of getting older and this feeling that increases with each year that we aren’t accomplishing what we should. “I look at what I’ve done and know it’s not enough,” writes Brad. “I look at what I’m doing and know it’s not enough.” I’m probably not the only one who reads such lines and thinks “I know what you mean.”

And so another summer in Vegas ends, and once again things still aren’t finished. There was so much more to write about this summer than I was able to do here on the blog. There always is. In fact, I still intend to write one last post here about Carlos Mortensen’s amazing run that also ended with him not quite finishing what he set out to do.

I’ll get to that eventually. But I’ll post this today as a kind of final postlude to the summer’s reporting, realizing again that this sense of incompleteness is just something I have to accept, just as we never really get to finish all that we set out to do.

2013 WSOP, Day 48: The Last 633 Hands of the Summer

It’s over. The last hands of the summer have been played. Just nine players remain of the 6,352 who started the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event, and now they’ll wait another four months to play again.

There were a number of instances during yesterday’s Day 7 of the Main Event that I found myself thinking back to last year and making comparisons, with the memories probably being most vivid near the very end of the night once the field had been whittled down to 10 players and they’d reassembled around the not-quite-final final table to play down to nine.

Before that, I’d thought of how many of those who led with 27 players left last year weren’t able to survive to the end of the day. As I mentioned yesterday, just two of the top nine in the counts were still in the tournament at night’s end of Day 7 last year.

This time, just three of the top nine made it -- J.C. Tran (started fourth, ended first), Jay Farber (started eighth, ended fourth), Sylvain Loosli (started second, ended sixth). Meanwhile, David Benefield began yesterday 27th of 27 players, and he’s still in the tourney in ninth position.

The precipitous drop of Anton Morgenstern from the big start-of-day chip lead to a 20th-place finish reminded me of what happened with Daniel Strelitz last year who began second in chips and went out quickly in 24th. I was assigned to the secondary feature table yesterday and since Morgenstern was on the main feature table I didn’t really follow his day very closely, although looking back it appears two big hands versus Mark Newhouse led most directly to his fall.

One was a big preflop all-in versus Newhouse in which the latter had A-Q and Morgenstern pocket eights (Feature Table, Hand #81). Then just a little over an orbit later Newhouse doubled again through Morgenstern after flopping deuces full on an A-A-2 board while the German held an ace for trips, and they got it all in on the turn and Newhouse’s hand held (Feature Table, Hand #90).

Actually that latter hand was kind of like the one that saw Greg Merson knock out 2012’s start-of-day-7 leader Marc-Andre Ladouceur in 13th place, with Merson flopping an underfull while Ladouceur had trips, although in that hand all of the chips were in before the flop.

Once they’d gotten to 10 players thoughts went back to last year’s crazily dramatic finish that saw the two remaining women -- Elisabeth Hille and Gaelle Baumann -- go out in 11th and then 10th, respectively. This time it was Carlos Mortensen kind of surprisingly slipping during 10-handed play to become the short stack, then getting bounced by Tran.

Last year they played 15 hands once they’d gotten to the 10-handed table; this year they played 21. That picture above is one I snapped during that stretch (click it to enlarge).

Like in 2012, many were disappointed by the finish. The story of a former champion getting back to a final table would have obviously been a good one going forward (Mortensen won the Main Event in 2001). But I think that disappointment was mitigated somewhat by the fact that so many strong, well known players did make it -- with leader Tran the foremost among them -- and folks are already looking forward a little more to the finish this year than was the case last July.

Tran has won two bracelets before at the WSOP, and back in 2008 I happened to have covered his first win for PokerNews in a $1,500 NLHE event. Looking back at that coverage I’m recalling how we did hand-for-hand reporting from the final table, which is something PN brought back again this summer for the NLHE and PLO events.

Yesterday we actually did hand-for-hand throughout the day as the tourney played down from 27 to nine, and adding up the tally it looks like we reported on 633 hands of poker all told. Was very interesting to notice how the secondary table was moving so much slower than the other two from the start. In fact, we only saw 30 hands during the first two-hour level at the secondary table, while there were 48 played at the main feature table and 55 at the outer one.

Things picked up a little at the secondary table thereafter, but the rate of hands per level continued to lag behind. The slower pace at the features tables in part was due to ESPN’s shooting them more intensely than the outer one, but the players were really the main factor at the secondary table as several of them took a lot of time to make decisions at all stages of hands played there.

I liked how the coverage played out yesterday and hope it was interesting to follow for those with an interest in doing so. I have a few more thoughts to share about Day 7 and about these last four weeks, but I’ll save those for a postlude tomorrow as I need to start packing and ready to fly home today. I will say, though, that working with the PokerNews folks was again a rewarding experience, with the teamwork and mutual support from everyone involved making these 15-hour days or whatever they add up to be much less arduous and more fun than one might expect.

The Main Event isn’t over, but the story of the summer nonetheless ended with an exciting final chapter yesterday. Let me fly another 1,900 miles and think another 24 hours, and we’ll see what more I can say about that story tomorrow.

2013 WSOP, Day 47: The November Nine Is Nigh

Another intense day yesterday at the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event as the field quickly reduced from 68 starters to just 27 in four two-hour levels. In fact, play proceeded so quickly that the decision was made to stop a level early last night rather than play out the scheduled five.

The last four eliminations came within the space of just a few minutes right at the end of Level 29 last night, and in fact if they had not gotten to 27 by the end of that level, I think play might not have been stopped.

But 27 becomes a convenient point to pause proceedings because there is a scheduled redraw to place players in seats around the last three tables. And as I mentioned yesterday, ever since 2008 they’ve been playing down from 27 to the final nine on the last day of the summer, so it kind of follows tradition to do so again. (EDIT [11:30 a.m.]: Jess Welman reminds me that once a couple of years ago they did return for the final day of the summer with 23 left.)

One of those four last-minute eliminations provided what was the most dramatic hand I watched yesterday, the one that saw Sylvain Loosli eliminate Danard Petit in 30th place. Here’s the hand report, which describes how the pair got all of Petit’s chips in on the turn with Petit holding an overpair with his pocket aces and Loosli having a lesser pair of jacks and an inside straight draw with his Q-J.

Even before the river card came, several who were watching were remembering to each other the Matt Affleck-Jonathan Duhamel hand from 2010 in which Duhamel busted Affleck in 15th by filling a straight on the river to crack Affleck’s aces. Sure enough, that’s what happened in the Loosli-Petit hand, and while I resisted making any puns on Loosli’s name, I did allude to the Duhamel-Affleck hand in the write-up.

Last year there were 246 more players playing the Main Event and so an extra 7.38 million chips in play, and with the same structure in place they made it about halfway through Level 34 before Gaelle Baumann was eliminated in 10th place and play ended. Play will begin at the start of Level 30 tonight.

The current chip leader, Anton Morgenstern, accumulated a ton of chips during the last couple of levels yesterday and seems one obvious choice among the final 27 to make the final table. That said, last year neither the chip leader going into Day 7 (Marc-Andre Ladouceur) nor the player in second position (Daniel Strelitz) made the final nine. In fact, only two of the top nine going into the last day of play made it, with Steve Gee coming all of the way back from 22nd of 27 to get there.

Somewhat amazingly, Gee is back again to play Day 7 this year, in 23rd place this time with 27 left, and so provides a primary storyline for today. J.C. Tran returns to a big stack, and will surely get a lot of attention. So will Carlos Mortensen, who likewise has above average chips and looks to earn a second WSOP Main Event title after having won back in 2001.

I’m not going to try to predict how long the day will go, although I keep remembering how many times in the past we’ve begun a Day 7 thinking it would last until dawn and we end up finishing around midnight. Stacks are deep, but the blinds and antes will get big fast today and I think some players find playing so many long days of poker in a row to be fatiguing enough to encourage them to play faster here at the end.

We’ll see. Follow along at PokerNews to find out how it all goes.

Counting 'em Down . . .

Took me awhile to find these, so I thought I’d share ’em here -- the consolidated chip counts heading into Day 3 of the 2006 WSOP Main Event. 1159 players remain (out of 8773). Click on the image to see the entire list as a Word document -- it prints out on 11 pages. Or click here to view or download an Excel version of the list (24 pages).

Scanning the list, there aren’t that many recognizable names. Near the top there’s Daniel Negreanu in 6th place with a whopping 331,000 chips, Allen Cunningham in 69th with 172,900, and Ted Forrest in 160th with 130,900. Four former Main Event bracelet winners remain alive: 2005 winner Joe Hachem (216th, 114,100), 2001 winner Carlos Mortensen (429th, 77,600), 1983 winner Tom McEvoy (612th, 60,500), and 2000 winner Chris “Jesus” Ferguson (671st, 55,200). Other notables left include David Pham (223rd, 112,300), Josh Arieh (359th, 85,600), Cyndy Violette (413th, 79,000), Surinder Sunar (433rd, 77,300), Hoyt Corkins (528th, 67,900), Annie Duke (540th, 67,000), Freddy Deeb (572nd, 64,500), Kathy Liebert (743rd, 48,500), Phil Ivey (1032nd, 23,400), Tex Barch (1079th, 19,800), and Layne Flack (1084th, 19,500). Unless I’m missing somebody, the rest are names most of us probably don’t immediately recognize. Of course, that’ll be changing soon for a select few of these. You can count on it.