The Bracelets and the Bucks

The 2013 World Series of Poker Europe is underway, kind of appearing suddenly and without too much fanfare amid all of the other tours already up and running all over the globe, not to mention the coming of the November Nine which is now just three weeks away.

I remember in 2008 when the WSOP first announced the whole delayed final table concept less than a month before the start of the Series that summer. One of the instant subplots created by the announcement was the fact that the WSOPE (which only began in 2007) would be playing out before the Main Event concluded, which meant a lot of curiosity about whether or not the WSOP ME final tablists would be turning up in London (where the WSOPE was then held) prior to their final table playing out in November.

After six years’ worth of delayed ME final tables, there doesn’t seem to be that much fuss about the current November Niners and the WSOPE. Nor is there quite as much of the “Are WSOPE Bracelets ‘Real’?” debate happening like there once was, although the conclusion of the first event over the weekend did stir up a few related discussions.

You’ve no doubt heard by now that Jackie Glazier, fresh off of finishing 31st in the WSOP Main Event in July (where she was the last woman eliminated), won the first of eight gold bracelets to be awarded in Paris this week when she took down the €1,100 Ladies Event. Glazier won €21,850 for topping a field of 65 players.

Obviously some want to debate whether non-open tourneys should be regarded as “real” bracelet events. The undersized field of 65 and/or the relatively small first prize can be cause for some also to build similarly-themed arguments.

That first prize of €21,850 is well under what the winner of every other bracelet event during the 2013 WSOP took away. In fact it’s almost five times less what the smallest first prize was this summer (David Chiu’s $145,520 for winning the $2,500 stud event), and that’s not counting the Casino Employees Event. Even there, Chad Holloway won a prize nearly three times as large ($84,915).

A couple of the bracelets won at the 2013 Asia Pacific back in April also featured five-figure first prizes, with Jim Collopy winning AU$69,992 ($1,650 PLO) and Phil Ivey AU$51,840 ($2,200 Mixed Event).

Such comparisons are diverting, but do they add up to a coherent argument about the worth of a WSOP bracelet? Ever since a bracelet came with a $18,346,673 first prize attached, any ideas of a “range” in which first place prizes ought to fall somehow seem less persuasive.

The same might be said for field sizes (which in the case of the “Big One for One Drop” in 2012 was smaller than Event No. 1 at the 2013 WSOPE), the relatively quality of fields, or other of the several distinctions that tend to make every tournament unique.

I’m of the mind that each WSOP bracelet event is different, anyway, and while it’s hard not to equate them on some level to do so always requires momentarily setting aside each event’s uniqueness in favor of indulging in a different kind of scorekeeping.

2013 WSOP, Day 46: Finding a Final Nine

They are down to 68 players now in the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event, having played five more two-hour levels yesterday. That’s 25 levels in the books, or 50 hours’ worth of poker so far for these players, who now represent just over 1% of the starting field of 6,352.

Early in the day yesterday we started hearing that the plan will be to have the players play five more again today, regardless of how many are eliminated. Every year I’ve been at the WSOP (since 2008), they’ve played down to 27 on the penultimate day, then down to nine on the last. Looking back at 2007 -- the last year before the November Nine -- it appears they began the next-to-day with 36 players and thus had a super long one to get down to the final table.

It’s a better plan, really, to go the full five levels today and increase the chances tomorrow won’t be a marathon. Last year at the start of Level 31 there were still 25 players left, but I would not be surprised if they get below that total tonight. In 2012 they’d end up reaching the final nine midway through Level 34 (with nearly 250 more players having entered).

The chip leader going into today is a fellow named Sami Rustom, one of a number of players left that most poker fans (and reporters, too) will not have known about prior to the Main Event. I first started to notice Rustom on Day 3 when I saw him knock out both David Benyamine and Jeff Shulman early in the day. Then later on Day 3 I saw him play a hand in which he raised from early position, got a reraise and another reraise behind, then come back over the top with a five-bet that got the others to fold. As the chips were pushed his way, he then cheekily turned over .

I also remember hearing some table talk from Rustom in which he noted he was more of a cash game player than a tourney guy, and his Hendon Mob page certainly suggests he’s not one to play big buy-in events that often. But he continued to be aggressive throughout the last couple of days and I’m not too surprised to see him at the top of the counts this morning. (He is on the left wearing shades in the pic above, courtesy PokerNews.)

Jackie Glazier made it to Day 6, thanks largely to one big hand yesterday that saw her all in on the turn and needing either to fill a flush or hit one of her two overcards, which she did. She’s the only woman left, with three others having made the top 100 before being eliminated yesterday -- Kima Kimura (who finished 100th), Annette Obrestad (89th), and Beverly Lange (86th).

Fortune was on Glazier’s side in that hand, but earlier in the tourney at the very end of Day 2 she played a memorable hand that I watched and reported in which she folded pocket kings preflop. I wrote about that one here, too, which is a hand I continue to think about the further Glazier gets in the tournament.

Looking up and down the list of the remaining 68, I can say of about a quarter of the remaining players that I definitely knew of them prior to this week -- Ryan Riess (currently in 7th position), Yevgeniy Timoshenko (11th), David Benefield (18th), Noah Schwartz (20th), Jonathan Jaffe (21st), J.C. Tran (28th), Carlos Mortensen (35th), Yann Dion (37th), Mark Newhouse (41st), Jim Collopy (42nd), Bryan Pellegrino (46th), Steve Gee (55th), Vitaly Lunkin (59th), Jaime Kaplan (60th), Rep Porter (61st), and Brett Richey (65th).

There are a few others in there whom I know I’ve covered in tourneys before, and some of the remaining players have become familiar to me over the last couple of days. Mortensen is, of course, the lone remaining WSOP Main Event champion left (he won in 2001) as last year’s winner Greg Merson was eliminated in 167th. Steve Gee finished ninth last year, and so he is gunning for a second straight ME final table, which would obviously be noteworthy.

Not too many other obvious storylines in play yet, though, although like every year, some will certainly emerge as they get closer to then actually reach the final nine. There are a lot of interesting characters left in the field, and the table talk at many of the outer tables was engaging as players appeared to be having a lot of fun.

At one point yesterday I chatted briefly with WSOP Media Director Nolan Dalla who noted how players tend to get quiet up on the two feature tables, especially in the “mothership,” as many likely find it hard to relax in such a setting. But he also agreed that a lot of the players seemed to enjoying themselves and indeed were acting much more relaxed than you’d expect at this stage of the Main Event, something he attributed as perhaps being a consequence of having a higher percentage of players with live poker backgrounds (as opposed to online only), which seemed a good theory to me.

Play picks back up at noon Vegas time today, so again, head over to PokerNews to see who makes it through to tomorrow’s final day of the summer.

2013 WSOP, Day 43: Folding Kings

Day 2c of the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event wasn’t too different from Day 2a/b. More players started and ended the day, and while there were still some interesting hands here and there and a few diverting episodes, the stacks are still deep enough and money bubble far enough away that only the most unusual situations tended to generate special drama.

The WSOP’s reports are showing 1,753 players having survived two days of poker out of the 6,352 who entered. Here’s how the three flights for Days 1 and 2 went as far as how many started and how many survived each day:

Day 1a: 943 started; 584 survived

Day 1b: 1,991 started; 1,296 survived

Day 1c: 3,418 started; 2,306 survived

Day 2a: 584 started; 238 survived

Day 2b: 1,296 started; 562 survived

Day 2c: 2,306 started; 953 survived

The top 648 finishers get paid, meaning the money bubble will not burst until tomorrow’s Day 4, although the tension will certainly increase as the field gets whittled down further during today’s five two-hour levels.

Last year 6,598 played the Main Event and uncannily there were exactly 1,753 to start that Day 3 as well. Of that group 720 made it to Day 3, which if today follows suit similarly that means they will still be around 70 spots off the cash at the end of play this evening.

Probably the most interesting hand I watched yesterday came right at the end of the last level involving Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Chris Tryba, and Jackie Glazier. All had well over average stacks when the hand began (i.e., more than 100,000), and with the blinds in Level 10 still just 600/1,200 they were plenty deep, too.

Here’s the write-up of the hand, which started with a Timoshenko open from the hijack seat, a Tryba three-bet from the cutoff, then a four-bet by Glazier from the button. Timoshenko got out, Tryba raised again, Glazier raised again, then Tryba put out a big stack for yet another reraise and after a lot of thought Glazier pushed her hand face downward to the dealer.

The hand probably took six or seven minutes total. After Glazier finally folded Tryba showed his A-A and Glazier explained she’d had K-K. Tryba had had Glazier covered, which surely factored into her decision to fold. She ended up losing only about a fourth of her stack in the hand, and still would end the night with just over 100,000.

As I mentioned in the report, the table had been especially jovial throughout the day and night, with the personable Tryba in particular having lots of fun engaging others in conversation about many different topics. Thus the contrast was all the more stark when this hand began to play out thanks to the grave seriousness of the back-and-forthing between Tryba and Glazier as they silently kept reraising each other.

The fold was impressive, and made me think a little of the media tourney that started during the dinner break and in which I lasted a couple of hours before falling shy of the final 30 or so. As in the past, the tourney had a fast, turbo-like structure, and when I picked up pocket kings early on there was no question about my shoving all in over a raise and call. The hand also made me think of my K-K-vs.-A-A exit from a tourney at the Rio a couple of summers ago.

Covering the Day 2 flights I’ve already seen players calling off stacks in spots that seemed more obviously bad ones, in particular after the flop when an aggressive opponent pushing on a ragged, non-drawy board seemed likely to have a set and the caller goes down in flames with an overpair. Of course, finding those folds is always easier said than done.

Every summer we hear the cliché repeated that those making it through the big Main Event fields have to be lucky along the way to do so. But it’s also true that no one makes it to Day 7 and the final 27 or to the November Nine without having made some smart decisions along the way as well -- likely many, many times.

Back at it today for Day 3. As always, follow along over at PokerNews.