To the Victor Go the Spoils

These last two weekends I’ve been away at the World Series of Poker Circuit stops, helping report on the Main Events (at Foxwoods and at Harrah’s Cherokee) for PokerNews. Thus was I mostly distracted from all of the happenings down under at the World Series of Poker Asia Pacific which came to a close on Monday.

We did call up the live stream right at the end of the WSOP APAC Main Event on Monday, seeing Daniel Negreanu finally finish off Daniel Marton to win the title. Kind of uncanny to think of Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth winning the last two non-Vegas WSOP Main Events, although the fact that they did kind of highlights how different those MEs are from the one that plays out at the Rio each summer. So far -- and likely for the foreseeable future -- WSOP Main Events in Europe, Australia, or elsewhere are necessarily going to feature smaller fields and more “name” pros.

I wrote a little last week about “Bracelets and Rings” and the whole debate over trying to discover ways to compare and relate the achievements of those who win WSOP events, wherever they happen to take place.

While at the WSOP-C Main Event at Harrah’s Cherokee, we couldn’t help but make note of the fact that the prize pool there ($1.284 million) exceeded that of each of the first four bracelet events at WSOP APAC. And how the winner John Bowman took away a first prize ($250,380) that was more than what any of those bracelet winners had won, in fact nearly five times what Ivey got for his victory in the $2,200 (AUD) mixed event.

The debate over bracelets -- as well as the WSOP POY race, in which the WSOP APAC results count -- gets amplified a little thanks to Ivey and Negreanu having each succeeded in bringing another one out of Australia. Negreanu picked up his fifth bracelet, and first since 2008. It was also his first no-limit hold’em bracelet, incidentally.

Negreanu’s also already pretty mindful of the POY race, tweeting out a link to the standings yesterday. Greg Mueller tweeted congrats to Negreanu in response, but added “Its kind of blown [sic] being 400 points behind before event #1 at rio.”

Meanwhile Ivey’s racing Hellmuth now, his nine still well behind the Poker Brat’s 13. Kind of weirdly, none of Ivey’s bracelets have come in hold’em events. By the way, F-Train has provided an interesting breakdown of Ivey’s WSOP performances over the years for Flushdraw.

As a fan of tournament poker and someone who at times likes to follow the big tourneys as though they were sporting events, I can’t help but be a little intrigued by the various ways of marking achievements -- bracelets, rings, points, etc. The players are clearly motivated by such extra rewards, too. Bracelets and rings possess some tangible value, while POY points may or may not have any at all. (I’m not even sure the WSOP POY wins anything anymore.)

I’m reminded of a funny exchange at the final table of the WSOP-C Main Event at Harrah’s Cherokee. It came at a point when Kory Kilpatrick and Hugh Henderson were both battling with short stacks while Weaver was leading with more than twice the chips of anyone else.

Kilpatrick asked Weaver what he was going to do with the first-prize money, and Weaver said he’d put it in the bank. Then Henderson asked if he was at least going to buy something nice first, and Weaver said he wasn’t interested in doing so.

“No,” he said, “I just want the ring or the bracelet... whatever they have here.”

That led to some more funny banter, including Kilpatrick and Henderson saying they’d gladly let Weaver have the ring if they could have the money. But that wasn’t really Weaver’s point, I don’t think. He wasn’t saying he only wanted the jewelry and wasn’t interested in the cash, just that he wasn’t eager to spend whatever money he might win on material goods.

It was one of several humorous moments at that final table, some of which frankly stemmed from the not-always-perfect communication happening between the elder Weaver and the others. It kind of highlighted, though, all of the different reasons why people play the tournaments, and how the various rewards more or less figure into everyone’s thinking, although not uniformly so.

No, just as money has different significance to each individual, so, too, do other spoils like rings or bracelets or points or even the intangible benefits of challenging oneself and competing with others all signify differently, depending on the person.

2010 WSOP, Day 20: Which Event Is This?

Was in the Amazon Room yesterday, parked in a very full Media Box from early afternoon ’til a little after 3 a.m. helping cover Day 2 of Event No. 28, the $2,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event. Was one of those days that goes on and on and ends up feeling like at least a couple of days.

Actually the way the day played out, it really did feel like two distinct sessions, pre- and post-dinner.

Before the break, it was just we reporters and our one event, so to speak. It often happens that one gets so involved in the particular event one is covering, the rest of the Series gets shut out of one’s awareness. Yeah, there’s other stuff going on here, but I have to get another round of counts right now. And who’s the guy in the gray hoodie in Seat 1 over at Table 374?

That’s how it was until dinner, during which time our event played down from 102 players to 53, with the cash bubble bursting just a couple of minutes before the break (at 54).

Then we came back and it seemed like the whole WSOP was happening right in our laps. There were six different events happening yesterday at the Rio, and so tables were being used everywhere, with at least four of those events sharing space there in the Amazon. Seemed like we heard that question “Which event is this?” over and over again yesterday as people wandered to and fro amid all of the action.

As our event played down to the final 12 players who will come back today, the final table for Event No. 27, the $1,500 stud/8 event, began and ended right in front of us, meaning that table and an often sizable rail stood in between where we sat and the tables where the PLO event was happening.

Not a huge problem, really, and in fact we had it better than our colleagues sitting beside us in the Media Box (FerricRamsium and Change100) who were covering Day 2 of Event No. 29, the $10,000 LHE Championship. They had both the stud/8 event and our tourney in between them and their action.

All the tourneys playing out in such close physical proximity did mean a lot of noise and other distractions, of course. Especially while Karina Jett enjoyed her chip lead at the stud/8 final table, since she attracted a large number of friends, fans, and family to root her on. She eventually finished fourth, another near-miss for women in open-bracelet events this summer.

Greg Mueller was among those who came around to watch Jett, and at one point we chatted with Mueller about the recently completed WSOP Tournament of Champions voting. Having one a couple of bracelets last summer, Mueller was eligible for the WSOP TOC.

About a month ago I wrote a post “Checking in on the 2010 WSOP Tournament of Champions Voting” in which I observed there hadn’t been much change at all in the top 50 over the first couple of months of voting. Nor was there much movement during the last weeks of voting either, it seems, as the 20 players who got voted in were the exact same top 20 vote-getters listed on April 16. You can see the full list of TOC participants here.

Mueller expressed some surprise to us that in the end it only took a little over 5,000 votes for Antonio Esfandiari to sneak into the top 20 and land a spot. He said if he’d have known that’s all it would take, he might have campaigned a bit more and tried harder to win a seat himself, then play the million-dollar freeroll for a charity.

Like I say, the stud/8 event ended before we were done -- kind of anticlimactically, really, as there didn’t seem to be anyone left to support the winner, David Warga, by the time he won the sucker. Quite a contrast from the ladies event final table (as I was mentioning a few posts back), where all nine players seemed to have significant rooting sections in attendance.

In the PLO, we had T.J. Cloutier and Chau Giang battling for the chip lead with 40 to go, but both suffered swift collapses to drop out well short of the final table (Cloutier in 38th and Giang in 20th).

Of our final 12, Joe Serock is probably the best known. I covered him at a final table last summer, the one in which he finished runner-up to Brock Parker. (Wrote quite a bit here about that one.) I remember on the bio sheet Serock filled out for that final table how he responded to the question about other interests and hobbies. “I just play poker,” was his answer. I wonder if he wrote anything different last night when filling out the sheet for today.

Tommy Le, (Nam's brother), is also among the final 12 players, which as might be expected in a PLO event include a lot of non-U.S. representation, with players from France, Germany, England, Bulgaria, and Canada among them.

Will be another busy day at the WSOP today, with six events going on once again. We’ll be honed in on our final table, though, and so I’m guessing won’t be as conscious of the other goings-on as we were yesterday. Of course, you don’t have to be as narrow in your focus, as you can follow all the events over at PokerNews’ live reporting.

2009 WSOP, Day 32: A Long Flight

“It’s like flying to Australia every day. Only when you get there you’re at the Rio. Again.”

Said Tom Schneider to me during one of the breaks at yesterday’s Day 2 of Event No. 50, the $1,500 Limit Hold’em Shootout. Schneider, like a lot of pros, has played in numerous events at this summer’s World Series of Poker, somewhere around 15 or more. Which means he’s spent just about every day sitting in a seat in either the Amazon, Brasilia, or Miranda rooms handling chips, cards, and the mental and physical challenges that come with trying to win a poker tournament that generally requires a person to survive three consecutive 12-14 hour days of play if he or she hopes to win the sucker.

There’s an upside, obviously. The chance to win a big bag of cabbage is nice, of course. As is the fact that, well, one is playing games all day.

But four-plus weeks of anything (to this degree) can make the line between “play” and “work” more than a little fuzzy.

Schneider’s analogy seemed to characterize my own experience helping cover the WSOP for PokerNews as well. The days are long, sometimes arduous. I’m sitting a lot, too, although unlike the players I’m often up and around, moving through the tables in search of hands, chip counts, or other material to pass along. Can’t sleep, of course. Can’t even mentally check out for a few minutes, really.

And when you get to the end, you’re at the Rio. Again.

Yesterday I reported on the eight eight-handed matches that constituted the second round of the Shootout, with the winners moving on to today’s final table. Schneider came close in his match, gamely battling back after the dinner break to make heads up against Greg Mueller.

Theirs was probably the toughest table of the second round, including Brock Parker and Juha Helppi as well. Schneider was WSOP Player of the Year in 2007, when he won two bracelets. Mueller won his first bracelet a few days ago in the $10,000 World Championship Limit Hold’em (Event No. 33). Parker has won two bracelets this summer, one in an LHE event. And Helppi has $2.4 million in tourney winnings, including a couple of near-misses at WSOP bracelets. The other four at their table weren’t slim pickings, either. Easily the highest concentration of tough players in the room, I’d estimate.

Too bad both Mueller and Schneider couldn’t have made today’s final. Their heads-up match went back and forth for awhile before Mueller won. Indeed, several of those who won their matches yesterday had been low in chips at some point during the day -- most often during heads up -- before coming back to win. Such is limit hold’em, where having even just a couple of big bets left means you still have a legitimate chance. If you can catch a hand, that is. Schneider appeared to have hit such a hand late during his match yesterday when he flopped a set of treys, only to have Mueller chase down a flush on the end. Most definitely one of those “so it goes hands” (S.I.G.H.).

I’ll be back over to help cover today’s final table. Hasn’t been too much turbulence covering this Limit Shootout event, though the days/nights have been long, for sure. Am hoping we’ll make it to the main stage, where covering final tables is marginally less strenuous than on the secondary feature table or on one of the outer tables. Not quite the difference between first class and coach, but enough to make the flight a little more pleasant. We may be over there. David Williams is at our final table, which improves our chances. As does the fact that we’re the only final table being played today (although that doesn’t always guarantee we’ll be on the main stage).

In any event, I know I’ll be somewhere in the Amazon (after two days in the Brasilia), and so might get a chance during a break to wander over and see what’s happening in the $50K H.O.R.S.E., where Gus Hansen is leading with 53 players left. Hop over to PokerNews’ live reporting page and I’ll see you there.