Traveling Domestic

Made it back to the farm in decent shape on Saturday. Took the quick one from Malta to Munich, then only the most aggressive armrest bully I’ve ever faced in airline travel battle made the long flight back from Germany to the states less than ideal.

Was very glad to get home to the farm and be with Vera Valmore and our four-legged friends. I hated being away that long, and am not crazy about picking up again right away for another trip this week. But I’ll being staying put for a while after that.

I did follow the start of the World Series of Poker Main Event final table last night for a short while, although to be honest I didn’t want to spend my brief time at home between poker trips watching still more poker, so I only dipped in briefly to keep tabs on who was still in the sucker.

Today I’m heading back out to Atlantic City where I’ll be on hand to help cover the first PokerStars Festival, the newly-named tournament series that along with the PokerStars Championships will be replacing the regional tours starting next year. I’m actually writing from the airport, and since it is Halloween there are people wandering about dressed like Oompa Loompas among other things (see above).

It’s also the first time PokerStars has hosted a tournament in the United States since pre-Black Friday -- like just before Black Friday as the last North American Poker Tour event ended at the Mohegan Sun on April 14, 2011.

Am looking forward to this one both for the sake of curiosity and to be able to reunite with a lot of friends and colleagues, some of whom I haven’t seen in a while. Was realizing getting ready for the trip that I haven’t covered a tournament inside the U.S. or taken a domestic flight in about two years -- other than as a first leg of a trip out of the country, that is. Meanwhile I’ve gone on more than a dozen trips since then all over Central and South America and Europe.

No passport needed, then. Or adapters. Weird. Am I able to check a bag for free or what?

Talk more tomorrow from the Boardwalk.

Women and the WSOP

As I said I would do on Friday, over the weekend I ended up following the NAPT Mohegan Sun online, reading along to find yesterday afternoon that Vanessa Selbst had won the sucker, besting the field of 716 to take it down. (That there final table photo was taken by the great Joe Giron, by the way, who was there helping cover the event for the PokerStars blog.)

With that win, the Deuces Cracked instructor and Yale law school student earned $750,000, moving her career tourney earnings over the $1.65 million mark.

It sounded like the tournament played out in a similar fashion to the way the 2008 WSOP $1,500 pot-limit Omaha event did that Selbst won. There Selbst also built a big stack early on, then led the tourney almost wire-to-wire, using her chips and aggressive play to keep opponents from gaining any momentum against her.

I helped cover that PLO event for PokerNews in 2008, and it was probably the most exciting one I saw that summer. Some might recall that tourney (Event No. 19) was the one in which Jamie Pickering began ordering drinks for himself and the rail as soon as they had reached heads up, then started raising pot without looking at his hole cards, helping create a wild scene. Here’s a HBP post that discusses some of the craziness: “Reporting from the Eye of the Hurricane.”

I covered several PLO events that summer, and began noticing how women tended not to show up for those tournaments. The PLO event that Selbst won had 759 entrants, and I recall there being perhaps no more than a dozen women in the starting field total, if that. With 100 players left, Selbst had a huge chip lead, at which time I believe there were only two women left -- Allyn Jaffrey Shulman (who finished 41st) and Kathy Liebert (72nd). (EDIT [added 4 p.m. ET]: I should have also remembered here that the BwOP finished 86th in this one, as described in her recap of the event here.)

As Selbst won yesterday, a few of us on Twitter began discussing what her victory perhaps might signify in terms of women and poker. Like some of the other NAPT events, the Mohegan Sun Main Event will get an airing on ESPN in a few weeks (on May 10th, according to the schedule), so Selbst will get quite a bit more publicity for this one than she did for the 2008 WSOP win which was not televised.

As folks were tweeting comments back and forth, it was noted that Selbst was the last woman to win an open bracelet event at the WSOP. That’s when a question occurred to me. Who was the last woman to win an open no-limit hold’em event at the WSOP? Besides Annette Obrestad, that is, who won the 2007 WSOP Europe Main Event.

I posed the question, and pretty soon it became clear that perhaps I had asked a trick question. Had a woman ever won a NLHE bracelet at the WSOP that wasn’t in the Ladies, Seniors, Casino Employees, or Mixed Doubles events?

I could be wrong, but the answer seems to be no. Looks like a total of 12 women have won WSOP bracelets in open events. (Again, not including Obrestad’s 2007 WSOPE win here.) Jennifer Harman is the only one to have done it twice. Here’s the (unofficial) list:

Vera Richmond (1982, $1,000 A-5 Draw)
Barbara Enright (1996, $2,500 Pot-Limit HE)
Linda Johnson (1997, $1,500 Razz)
Maria Stern (1997, $1,500 Seven-Card Stud)
Jerri Thomas (2000, $1,500 Seven-Card Stud)
Jennifer Harman (2000, $5000, NL 2-7; 2002, $5,000 Limit HE)
Nani Dollison (2001, $2,000 Limit HE)
Cyndy Violette (2004, $2,000 Seven-Card Stud/8)
Kathy Liebert (2004, $1,500 Limit HE Shootout)
Annie Duke (2004, $1,500 Omaha/8)
Katja Thater (2007, $1,500 Razz)
Vanessa Selbst (2008, $1,500 PLO)

Enright’s win in a PLHE event looks to be the closest thing here. Enright has two more bracelets (in ladies-only events) plus that 5th place in the WSOP Main Event -- the best ever by a woman -- in 1995. Nani Dollison also has two more bracelets in ladies-only events.

One other interesting bit of WSOP trivia: The year Maria Stern won her bracelet in the $1,500 Seven-Card Stud event (1997), her husband, Max, also won two bracelets, including one in Seven-Card Stud/8.

Who will be the first woman to win a WSOP bracelet in an NLHE event in Vegas? Will it happen this year? Favorites would have to include Selbst, Obrestad, Liebert, and Vanessa Rousso, I’d think, though I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else breaks through to be the first.

Field at NAPT Mohegan Sun Rises to 716

The latest stop of the North American Poker Tour kicked off yesterday at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut. From what I understand, the Mohegan Sun is a huge place. Supposed to be the second-largest casino in the country, actually, in terms of square-footage. First opened mid-1990s.

Several of my buds are there covering the sucker, and I’m following their reports online over at PokerNews and on the PokerStars blog. Am checking out Andrew Feldman’s reports at the ESPN Poker Club, too -- here’s his Day 1 wrap. By the way, that cool photo from the event is by Joe Giron of the PS crew, with whom I worked at the NAPT Venetian event.

Looks like they ended up drawing 716 players to the $4,700+$300 Main Event, including some of the Full Tilt pros who were not at the NAPT Venetian event, such as Tom “durrrr” Dwan (who didn’t make it through the first day of play) and Phil Ivey (who did). David Williams leads the 450 or so who made it through to today’s second day of play. Vanessa Selbst also accumulated a big stack yesterday, ending the day in second position behind Williams.

The wildest hand I saw reported yesterday was over on the Stars blog, a hand that occurred right near the end of the day. Faraz “The Toilet” Jaka -- a final tablist in the NAPT Venetian High Roller event and who has been on a rampage for the last year or more -- called an opponent’s all-in bet on the river with the board showing , risking half of his stack. His opponent showed -- Jaka had correctly guessed he’d missed a draw.

What did Jaka have? . No shinola. The hand report comes near the top of the page here, if you’re curious.

Seems like 716 is a solid number of entrants for this second American stop on the NAPT. Over a third of those -- 273 -- won their seats via satellites on PokerStars, showing again how much online satellites can help build fields. Feldman reports that the Mohegan Sun tourney manager told him they had planned for just 600 to come. But once they had reached that figure, players kept coming. And coming. Meaning some last-minute scrambling was required.

You can read Feldman’s explanation of how that went down in his report, including what it was Allen “Chainsaw” Kessler was complaining about over Twitter regarding the seating.

Overall, though, it sounds like that first day went off fairly well and with a $3.2 million-plus prize pool looks to be another major event on the professional circuit.

No other NAPT stops have been announced as yet, although I would expect we’ll hear something soon along those lines. I’ll be interested, partly because I’m hoping perhaps to get a chance to cover one or more of ’em down the line.

Speaking of, I found out yesterday that I will be returning to the WSOP this summer to help cover the Series for PokerNews. Will be my third time, and I am definitely excited to be going back. Details to come!

Meanwhile, check those links above for more reports from the NAPT Mohegan Sun.