Travel Report: 2016 PCA, Day 1: Super High Rolling

Completed a first full day of reporting from the 2016 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure yesterday, where the focus was just about entirely on the $100,000 Super High Roller event that took up just a few tables in the front right-hand corner of the huge poker room (a.k.a. Convention Center) at the Atlantis Resort.

We were stationed in the exact opposite corner of the room -- actually, to be more accurate, just outside of the room in a back area usually reserved for the EPT Live (or, here, PCA Live) folks and the television crew shooting for the edited shows that come later. We were repositioned for this first day mainly because the set for the live streaming and TV shows was still being constructed.

I share the detail of where we were sitting just to point out that we were traversing the entire room each time we walked from our laptops to the SHR event and back, and thus necessarily saw how all of the other side events were getting impressive turnouts as the entire room managed to fill up with activity. In past years the PCA would start a little more slowly, but it looks like more players have arrived early this time around.

That may be due in part to the dozen events on the schedule for Day 1. But I’m also thinking the LAPT Bahamas event that begins today might have gotten a few extras out early this time. This will be the second year the LAPT has put on such an event at the PCA, one that serves as a “Main Event” for the tour as well as a $2,200 buy-in “preliminary” event as far as the entire PCA schedule goes. Will be curious to see if the turnout on Thursday matches or exceeds the 736 entries they had at LAPT Bahamas a year ago.

Like I say, though, the Super High Roller had everyone’s attention, and most of the usual suspects were out to participate in that one. That is Fedor Holz up above (courtesy Neil Stoddart and the PokerStars blog), just a few days removed from winning $3.4 million-plus in that $200K SHR in Manila, and a couple of weeks on from winning a $100K WPT Alpha8 and almost $1.6 million in Las Vegas.

Bill Perkins bought in three times, busting all three, and he intends to come back to try a fourth entry at the start of Day 2 before late reg closes. 2015 WSOP Main Event champion Joe McKeehen took part and did well all day, ending with a top five stack. Businessman Talal Shakerchi finished with the chip lead, with Kathy Lehne (also of the business world) in third position. Lehne took runner-up in that WPT Alpha8 in St. Kitts I covered in December 2014. (She also final-tabled the WPT Alpha8 at the Bellagio in December, taking sixth.)

While the focus was often on the hands, the table talk was equally interesting -- even more so, in some cases. Daniel Negreanu got into an extended monologue about Phil Hellmuth at one point that was obviously entertaining the table quite a bit, including a reference to Donald Trump and some of the parallels between the Poker Brat and the Donald. (You can probably imagine what they are.)

The SHRs are always interesting tournaments to be around. You get a mix of elite pros and the amateurs who are nonetheless serious and usually competitive. There’s always a relaxed feel, suggesting in a strange way a negative correlation between the size of the buy-in and the amount of stress felt by the players.

Gonna move off the SHR today as my beat now becomes that LAPT Bahamas event over the next three days. Might have to wander over there to the SHR once in a while, though, just to see who makes it through to Friday’s final table.

Meanwhile you can wander over to the PokerStars blog today for coverage of the Super High Roller, LAPT Bahamas, other side events, and more.

Photo: courtesy Neil Stoddart/PokerStars blog.

2015 WSOP November Nine, Day 3: Kudos to Joe Cool

Don’t have a heckuva lot to add to last night’s finale at the 2015 World Series of Poker Main Event where Joe McKeehen took care of things with little difficulty. Definitely enjoyed the show last night, although I’ll admit I was a little confused by ESPN’s “What to Look For” tips once they got to heads-up (wink).

Tomorrow I’ll share some nerdy stuff regarding the hands shown during the three nights’ worth of shows, but for today I just wanted to share one quick thought.

I was frankly pulling for McKeehen to win even back in July when Daniel Negreanu was still among those left in the sucker. It goes back to that WSOP Circuit event I covered in early 2013 in which McKeehen similarly entered the final day with the big chip lead and cruised to victory without much resistance, at the time the biggest cash for the Philadelphian.

From that event (at Caesars Atlantic City) I remembered a few things about McKeehen. One was the fact that he had an iPad at the table and was following our coverage, occasionally interacting with us as he reacted to some of the hands being reported. I remember getting the sense that he enjoyed especially whenever we’d include table talk or other details that went beyond the cards (in other words, the stuff I, too, tend to find more interesting a lot of the time).

I also recall how he arrived early for the last day, the first of the 19 players still left in the event to show up. As we didn’t have a photographer for the tournament, I got him to pose for a quick iPhone photo for us to use in the blog. He also did kind of a mock-muscle pose in his winner’s photo, I’m remembering, which produced some grins.

The main thing, though, that I remember about the tournament was how McKeehen seemed not just in control and especially cool at the table, but also how amiable he was with players who were clearly less confident and/or experienced. It wasn’t anything extraordinary, but it was something positive about the guy I ended up taking away from the event.

Watching three-handed last night -- and also some the night before -- you could occasionally see McKeehen being similarly friendly with Blumenfield sitting on his left, and really with everyone. Those exchanges reminded me of how I’d first encountered McKeehen, and like I say made me glad to see him do well this summer and then take it all down this week.

Saw just a few truly dumb responses over Twitter last night to McKeehen’s win and his short post-tourney interview (including a burst of bitter, embarrassingly unfunny heckling from the mostly dormant Wicked Chops Poker account). When asked about being poker’s “ambassador,” McKeehen very reasonably responded “we’ll see,” which to me went right along with his matter-of-fact demeanor and playing style.

All of which is to say I was glad to see McKeehen win, thought Josh Beckley and Blumenfield were pretty likable, too, and on the whole was both entertained, enthused, and even encouraged by the WSOP’s finale.

2015 WSOP November Nine, Day 2: McKeehen’s Still On Top

Watched every hand again last night as the 2015 World Series of Poker Main Event final table played down from six players to three, with Joe McKeehen remaining in a dominant position going into three-handed play for tonight’s finish.

It’s reminding me once again of that WSOP Circuit final table from a couple of years ago that I’ve mentioned before, the one at Caesars Atlantic City I helped cover where McKeehen entered the final day with a big lead and never seemed to be challenged much at all on his way to the win.

Kind of remarkable, really, to think how easily things have gone for McKeehen at the final table thus far. Not only has he avoided making any bad decisions, he’s barely even taken that many risks at all even with decent hands in good spots. Both his opponents’ styles and the cards have dictated that result somewhat, but the overall impression has been that it’s hard to imagine how things could have gone much differently for McKeehen up to this point.

Easily the most interesting hand last night was the one that came relatively late when they were four-handed and Josh Beckley managed to three-bet and then fold pocket jacks to a reraise from the chip leader. We knew when watching that McKeehen had four-bet with pocket queens, which helped raise the eyebrows a little further when we saw Beckley avoid getting hooked by his two hooks.

The hand reminded me of one from the 2006 WSOP Main Event final table, something I brought up in another “what would you do?”-type PokerNews article today. I’m referring to a hand in which Richard Lee reraised all in with pocket jacks versus Jamie Gold’s queens and was knocked out in sixth.

Even though the two hands were similar, it’s funny to go back and think about how crazily different the play was at the ’06 final table -- where, it should be said, most of those there were amateurs, with Allen Cunningham being the exception. In fact in the hand Gold limped in with his queens, something that is hard to imagine happening today. So, too, have the 3x-and-above opening raises at that final table become a thing of the distant past.

Will be there ’til the end again tonight. While it’s hard to envision McKeehen in trouble, it sure would be interesting to watch should either Beckley or Neil Blumenfield manage to get in a position where they can present him some difficulty to complicate the conclusion.

2015 WSOP November Nine, Day 1: Having Fun Filling the Pauses

Sat up until 2 a.m. here last night until Pierre Neuville was eliminated in seventh and play was paused at the 2015 World Series of Poker Main Event final table. The 72-year-old lasted 72 hands, as it happened. At least he didn’t go out with seven-deuce.

I was a little surprised at how tightly Neuville played for much of the night. Having seen him take chances and be bold in other tournaments before -- including online -- I knew he liked to play against the old-man image and mix things up. He and I talked about that very idea back in August, in fact, when I had a chance to interview him at EPT Barcelona.

But alas last night seemed to go in a different direction for the Belgian. Neuville was shown making some tight folds, then got a bit unlucky in a couple of spots including his last hand, although by then he was so short a double-up wouldn’t have helped him a lot, anyway.

Meanwhile the other older player, Neil Blumenfield (aged 61), made me think of Jerry Yang early on when he three-bet with Q-8-offsuit. He did well for himself to maintain a competitive stack all night, although leader Joe McKeehen -- now with over 91 million chips or nearly three times that of the chase pack that includes Ofer Zvi Stern and Blumenfield -- is going to be hard to catch.

Speaking of Stern, his lengthy tanking quickly became the foremost topic of conversation last night.

“Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….vi Stern. #November9,” tweeted Joe Stapleton. “Get it Ofer with,” was Remko Rinkema’s take. Meanwhile my constructive contributions included “At this rate, they won’t finish before Tanksgiving” and “Did I just hear a commercial saying if you have an erection lasting longer than four hands to call your physician?”

I saw Kevmath tweet something this morning about the action begin on Stern for something like 55 minutes or so out of the five-plus hours it took to play those 72 hands. All of the commercial breaks during the first two-and-a-half hours (during prime time) also helped lengthen things considerably.

Regarding the Stern commentary (pun intended) on Twitter last night, let me also shout out to D.J. MacKinnon and Jess Welman for a couple of Global Poker League-inspired thoughts. “Wonder how much more exciting this final table would be with a huge cube around it,” speculated MacKinnon, who then offered a laugh-out-loud artist's rendering as a follow-up. “You know what would make this final table so much better?” Jess then asked. “If everyone was standing up.”

That’s my cat, Sweetie, up above, by the way, mesmerized by another hand involving Stern.

Now, of course, the “shot clock” talk has begun again, although as has been the case when that has come up before, I can’t really get behind the idea. Players playing slowly is part of the game, and if other players have a problem they can call the clock to try to speed things up. Obviously Stern doesn’t have to play that way, but just as obviously he has every right to do so.

Phil Hellmuth tweeted something about him receiving a warning at one point, although it might have been the Stern warning (pun intended) was not for his slow pace of play. (Can’t really trust Hellmuth always to know what he’s tweeting about.) Will be curious to see if Stern is influenced at all into speeding up after no doubt getting feedback on what happened last night.

Have to say, though, I enjoyed the show last night, even with the sluggish pace. In part it was because I like watching how well McKeehen has been pushing around others by pushing his chips. But mostly it was because of the tweets, which were a fun way to fill all those pauses.

Short-Handed, Short-Stacked, and Short-Changed

Have a postscript to share regarding yesterday’s discussion of the last part of Day 7 of the World Series of Poker Main Event (and ESPN’s coverage of it). Has to do with the short-handed play and a problem faced by some of the short stacks -- I’ll keep it short.

The episodes this week showed them play down from 15 players to nine, with Daniel Negreanu dramatically lasting as far as 11th place. While watching I was reminded of the significant faux pas made by the WSOP not to go to hand-for-hand play immediately after George McDonald’s knockout in 12th place. This issue wasn’t brought up at all on ESPN. It might have been, because it involved a mistake in judgment that affected who of the final 11 ultimately were able to make it to the final table.

After McDonald’s ouster, there were two short-handed tables, with the feature table being the shorter one with just five players. That’s where leader Joe McKeehen sat with a monstrous stack that dwarfed those of the other four players, including Negreanu.

In fact, for much of the sequence that followed, McKeehen was in first while the others were 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th in the counts. He also was opening practically every hand and keeping the pressure on constantly (as he should have). Too bad for the short stacks, for sure, but that’s the luck of the seat draw and subsequent table-balancing.

What wasn’t fair, though, was the fact that at the five-handed table they were playing nearly twice as fast as at the outer six-handed table. Over the next hour-and-a-half, they played 48 hands at the feature table (with McKeehen winning 26 of them), while they only played 26 hands at the six-handed table.

Not incidentally, when McKeehen had the button, Negreanu was in the big blind, and we saw several hands in the coverage involving those two. Looking back through the live updates again, Negreanu was in the big blind 10 times during the non-H4H portion when there were 11 left. Meanwhile Patrick Chan -- who became the short stack on the outer table after Neil Blumenfield doubled up soon after McDonald’s ouster -- was in the big blind exactly five times during the same hour-and-a-half.

The WSOP finally decided to go to hand-for-hand once they reached the next level break, well after the many criticisms for not doing so had been fired over Twitter and across other social media. It then only took four hands more for Negreanu’s bust to come (in one last button-versus-big blind hand with McKeehen).

There were some strange pay jumps in play here, too, you might recall. Here’s how the top 11 spots of the WSOP Main Event pay:

1st: $7,683,346
2nd: $4,470,896
3rd: $3,398,298
4th: $2,615,361
5th: $1,911,423
6th: $1,426,283
7th: $1,203,293
8th: $1,097,056
9th: $1,001,020
10th: $756,897
11th: $526,778

This payout schedule also represented something that might have been done otherwise, and once it was announced during the early part of the Main Event many suggested problems with it and possible corrections.

Notice how the jumps between 11th and 10th ($230,119) and 10th and 9th ($244,123) are both much greater than the ones between 9th-8th, 8th-7th, and 7th-6th. Not that anyone is going to be less than cautious with 11 players in the WSOP Main Event, but those big jumps could obviously encourage players to play less quickly, especially if they saw short stacks at the other table being threatened by the chip leader.

The fact that the WSOP did finally exercise their judgment and go to hand-for-hand some 90 minutes after they should have shows they could have done it as soon as they got to 11 players. As I wrote about here back in July, the fact that they didn’t represented a serious mistake, one made more conspicuous (if not more significant) by the fact that Negreanu was among the players directly affected.

The Serena Stunner

Was working this afternoon with the U.S. Open playing on the teevee, pretty much the way it has gone for the last 10 days or so after my return from Barcelona.

Tennis probably ranks fourth or fifth on my list of favorite sports to watch (with the NFL and NBA up top). As with golf, it is really only the majors that encourage me to tune in when it comes to tennis. I’ll happily leave the set on all day and night during the two weeks of Wimbledon, the French, and the U.S. Open. (Not so much during the Australian, because of the time difference.)

My viewing goes back and forth between passive awareness of how matches are progressing and concluding and active following of every point near the ends of sets or matches.

Today I can’t say I even really paid much attention at all to Flavia Panetta’s quick handling of the No. 2 seed Simona Halep in the day’s first match. I’d seen several of Halep’s matches leading up to today’s, and considering her high seed I’d guessed she was going to be a finalist, so the 6-1 6-3 result was kind of eyebrow-raising.

Then came Serena Williams’s match with Roberta Vinci. I looked up for a while before it began to hear the commentators talk about “David versus Goliath” and speculate how quickly the match would be completed, none thinking for a moment that Williams could possibly lose to the unseeded Italian.

The first set was over in a flash, won by Williams 6-2, and I’d moved fully into passive mode as they moved through the second set. Saw Vinci -- who at age 32 is older than the average player although a year younger than Williams -- was up a break, then watched as she managed to hold on to win that one 6-4, and suddenly I was setting work aside to see what was going to happen next.

The third set was a strange one, with Williams breaking Vinci early to go up 2-0 and seemingly in position to cruise into yet another major final. But Vinci broke back right away and seeing her rallying herself and the New York crowd it suddenly became obvious she wasn’t going to be an easy out. Soon she was up a break, and after Williams missed an opportunity to break back (having a couple of break points to do so), it was all crazily pointing to one of those huge, impossible-to-have-foreseen upsets.

The last game was almost an anticlimax, with Vinci clinching the set 6-4 to stop Williams’s run at the grand slam. Stunningly. The Italian’s post-match interview was terrific. “Today is my day, sorry guys!” she said, and it was impossible not to grin in response.

Maybe it shouldn’t have been such a surprise. After all, Vinci’s name literally means “win.”

Afterwards the commentators tried to find examples from other sports with which to compare the magnitude of the upset, with the usuals (Villanova over Georgetown, Douglas over Tyson, etc.) being highlighted.

From poker I was harkening back to Hal Fowler defeating Bobby Hoff heads-up at the 1979 WSOP as a closer analogue than Moneymaker over Farha. This evening I saw Pamela Maldonado make what was probably an even better comparison over Twitter, bringing up Joe McKeehen’s knockout of Daniel Negreanu two spots shy of the November Nine back in July and noting McKeehen’s similarly sympathetic-while-competitive response afterwards.

The favorite-underdog dynamic makes poker an exciting game, since in every hand the dog still has a chance. In sports, too, it adds a layer of interest as we watch to find out how what happens compares to what was thought would happen. And there, too, do the favorites -- even the greatest ones -- sometimes fall.

WSOP “Play Down” Day: The Might-Have-Beens Begin

Well, that was exciting.

Everyone’s still reeling from Daniel Negreanu’s suspense-filled near-miss of the World Series of Poker Main Event final table, incredibly matching his best-ever finish from 2001 after getting knocked out in 11th.

The “Twitter rail” was tremendous last night, with Negreanu’s agent, Brian Balsbaugh, tweeting every hand Negreanu played and even every street at times, right up through the fateful knockout hand when Joe McKeehen spiked a needed card on the river. See the sequence at left, which I’ve turned upside down from earliest to latest to recreate the tension (click pic to embiggen).

After winning the first couple of hands yesterday to boost his stack well above average, Negreanu slipped back soon thereafter and was more or less just outside of or squarely within the danger zone most of the night as they played down from 27 to 11. Just before dinner he survived an all-in versus chip leader McKeehen that produced a lot of drama, but later on couldn’t fade his opponent’s many outs... and he was out.

There’s a lot worth discussing regarding what happened last night as well as what’s to come in November. I like McKeehen, whom I mentioned on Monday I first encountered when covering his victory in the WSOP Circuit Main Event at Caesars Atlantic City in early 2013.

From that tournament I recall he also experienced some run good near the end of the penultimate day, picking up pocket aces a couple of times to earn knockouts and carry a big lead to the final day. I remember him clearly being a solid tournament player, seemingly comfortable in every situation and especially well-suited to play with the lead (I don’t recall him being challenged much at all at that final table).

I also recall McKeehen being very social at the table and even supportive of others, including some obvious amateurs who made it relatively deep in the event. I’m not talking about Negreanu-level good will -- no one has that -- but enough for me to have banked it as one of my impressions of the guy at the time, and to make it nice to have seen him win the sucker. With more than twice the chips of his nearest challenger (the Israeli, Zvi Stern) heading into the final table, McKeehen is certainly a big favorite, and again I wouldn’t mind seeing him get there at the end.

Pierre Neuville (in fourth position) making it to the final table is another very cool story. The amiable Belgian is 72 years old -- the oldest November Niner ever -- and last night I enjoyed chatting with my Dad who also happens to be 72. Here’s hoping the hashtag “#NeuvemberNine” picks up again as the final table nears.

Meanwhile the 61-year-old Neil Blumfield (in third) also significantly skews the average age of this year’s ME final table. Max Steinberg (in fifth) is the only bracelet-winner of the bunch, and is a fun, talented player to watch. The others -- Thomas Cannuli (sixth), Joshua Beckley (seventh), Patrick Chan (eighth), and Federico Butteroni (ninth) -- we’ll get to know eventually, too.

My thoughts this morning, though, were mostly taken up with two takeaways from last night. One was the lamentable lack of any live stream for what was easily the most exciting night of the summer at the Rio. If you were on Twitter, you saw the frequent references by many to the fact that because of the ESPN contractual obligations our game’s “Super Bowl” must be necessarily experienced piecemeal when it is happening live -- via updates and other “coverage” such as Balsbaugh and others were providing -- and then only in an edited, spaced-out form months later.

It’s bad, and like others I wish it weren’t so. But clearly there was nothing the WSOP could do about that last night. The other focus of my thoughts, though, concerns something the WSOP did have control over.

After George McDonald got his queens cracked by Stern’s 10-8-suited to go out in 12th, they were six-handed at the outer table and five-handed at the feature. At the latter were seated McKeehen and four short stacks, Negreanu among them. A huge pay jump had arrived as well, as the next player out in 11th would earn $526,778 while the 10th-place finisher was due $756,897 -- a more than $230K jump which oddly was greater than the jumps from 9th to 8th, 8th to 7th, and 7th to 6th.

From that point forward, reading the updates on WSOP.com makes it glaringly apparent the pace of play at the feature table was much, much faster than on the outer table, with several hands being reported for the former in each post versus just a couple per post in reports from the latter.

With one less player and with players generally acting more quickly, the main feature table was blitzing along while the outer table inched slowly from hand to hand. If I’m counting correctly, by the time they reached the next break they had played 48 hands on the feature table and just 26 on the outer table.

After about an hour-and-a-half of this, with the start of a new level tournament officials finally decided to have the tournament played hand-for-hand. This was something I’d anticipated they’d do as soon as they’d gotten to 11 players, as I mentioned at the end of a PokerNews article yesterday titled “From 27 to 9: How Might the New Payouts Affect Play on Day 7 of the WSOP Main Event?”

In that article I talk about how the pace of play differed between the last few tables on “play down” day at the WSOP ME over the last couple of years. With such a huge pay difference, it seemed to me a trivial decision to go to hand-for-hand at 11 this year, but somehow they didn’t.

For a decent part of that sequence, McKeehen was the overwhelming chip leader and the other four players at his table were 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th in the counts. McKeehen hammered away at them throughout, and they had to play nearly twice the hands as those at the feature table did during the same 90 minutes. A quick skim through those 48 hands shows McKeehen predictably involved in the great majority of them, and winning 26.

It only took four more hands before Negreanu’s bust at the start of the new level. The fact that they did at last go hand-for-hand shows they could have done it earlier. And they should have, because not doing so introduced unfairness into what was the most crucial period of the tournament up to that point.

Those are the thoughts I’m mulling over this morning. I suppose I’ll eventually get around to thinking about what might have been had Negreanu made it. But for now I’m distracted by this other “might have been” having to do with the decision not to go hand-for-hand immediately after McDonald’s knockout.

Stories Upon Stories at the WSOP

Yesterday was definitely an interesting day to rail the World Series of Poker Main Event, which I find I’m doing mostly by shuttling between WSOP.com (for live updates and counts), the poker news sites (for spontaneous features), and Twitter (for reactions and discussion).

Lots of interesting stories emerging regarding the players who remain. As the day wore on, I found myself continually seizing on one particular plotline as “the” story of Day 5, then having that one be soon replaced by another and so on right up until the end of play.

Start-of-day chip leader Joe McKeehen spent a good portion of the afternoon on top of the counts, and he finished up with 3.66 million -- above the average (about 2.79 milly) and good for a spot inside the top 20 with 69 players left from the starting field of 6,420. McKeehen intrigues me mostly because I helped cover his win in a WSOP Circuit event in Atlantic City in March 2013, a tournament in which he conspicuously distinguished himself as a talented player and dominated at the close.

Brian Hastings ascent up the counts then led to thoughts about his complicated place in the poker world at present (see “The Battle of Hastings”). He finished the night at 4.74 million and in 10th position, and thus will continue to earn attention going forward, thanks also to his having won two bracelets already this summer which allows him to challenge for the lead in that strangely-calculated WSOP Player of the Year race.

Then it was Anton Morgenstern leaping to the fore, the player who entered Day 7 of the 2013 WSOP Main Event in first position with 27 left only to be ousted in 20th place. It wasn’t exactly a blow-up two years ago for the young German -- he experienced some bad fortune in two big hands against Mark Newhouse -- but still, it was a remarkable turn of events.

I still like to rib my friend Stephen Bartley for his tongue-in-cheek-but-still PokerStars blog post he published during Day 6 declaring “Why Anton Morgenstern will (probably) win the main event.” After leading for a short while yesterday, Morgenstern ended today with 4.2 million (17th of 69). See “Anton Morgenstern Getting the Second Chance of Lifetime” on PokerNews to read what Morgenstern is saying about his return trip to the latter stages of the ME.

Speaking of the PokerStars blog, the deep run of Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu will continue to keep them occupied over there as it has throughout the Main Event thus far. He has 3.62 million (in 22nd place) and chances are the closer he gets to the final table the more likely his story will be eclipsing everything else.

Then at another break the not-so-familiar name of Bruce Peery appeared in the top slot, with a tweet by Chris Moneymaker quickly helping everyone learn why he might be of interest to WSOP Main Event fans and historians. “Sick sweat at @WSOP #MainEvent,” wrote Moneymaker, “as best friend from 2003 and guy who lost half my action leading with 145 left.”

As Eric Raskin wrote about in his oral history The Moneymaker Effect (2014) as well as in the preview Grantland article “When We Held Kings,” Peery was the fellow who told Moneymaker not to aim for fourth place and a cash prize of $8,000 in that final PokerStars satellite back in ’03 but to try to win one of the three Main Event packages, ensuring his friend he’d give him $5,000 and take half his action. Alas for Peery, he backed out of the deal and thus missed out on being able to claim half of Moneymaker’s $2.5 million score.

Tim Fiorvanti jumped on that story yesterday for BLUFF, talking to Peery to get more details which Tim shared in “Moneymaker Legend Grows as Bruce Peery Takes WSOP Main Event Lead.” Peery will begin today in 35th position with 2.4 million.

But finally it was Pierre Neuville’s story that ultimately pushed past all of these, just as his chip count managed to exceed everyone, too, by night’s end. The 72-year-old finished with 7.105 million to lead all and grab away the Day 5 headlines.

We’ve all gotten to know Neuville over the years as the very amiable Belgian who earned a reputation as the “Serial PokerStars Qualifier” after winning seats in 23 straight EPT events online. He only took up poker seriously after retiring from a lengthy career in business, I believe, and has earned nearly $2.2 million in live tourney cashes (plus a lot online, too) over the last eight years or so including a two runner-up finishes in EPT Main Events and another second-place in a WSOP bracelet event.

If you don’t know Neuville, check out this interview Remko Rinkema did with him at EPT Deauville earlier this year to hear him explain how “poker makes me younger every year”:

Impossible not to pull for Neuville, and his story -- just like his chip stack -- will take precedence when they get going again today. But with all of these other stories -- and players -- still in the mix, the overall narrative should continue to take some interesting turns.