The Return of the $50K

The $50K “Poker Players Championship” event has circled back around at this year’s World Series of Poker, and in fact has already played down to a six-handed final table from a starting field of 91 players. Will probably have to tune in to watch the live stream a bit later today with this one.

A couple of former PPC winners are still in the mix -- Michael Mizrachi (who has won twice) and Brian Rast -- while Justin Bonomo is the chip leader.

That 91-entry field represents a slight increase from the 84 who took part last year when Mike Gorodinsky topped the smallest field ever for the tournament which began in 2006. Entries over the years (since 2006) have been 143, 148, 148, 95, 116, 128, 108, 132, 102, 84, and 91. (See this post from last summer for a summary of results from the tournament’s first decade, minus Gorodinsky’s win).

The tournament was switched back to an eight-game mix this time after experimenting with the 10-game format a year ago, with Badugi and 2-7 NL draw being dropped again from the rotation after being included for one year.

Hard to believe, actually, that the “$50K” (as it’s often called) has been around for more than a decade now, given how well I remember both the announcement of the first one and watching the final table play out on ESPN where David “Chip” Reese outlasted Andy Bloch in a marathon finish heads-up.

Was an altogether novel thing suddenly to introduce a preliminary event featuring a buy-in five times that of the Main, with a lot of talk at the time about how it could eclipse the Main in terms of prestige and even thoughts about who exactly would be considered poker’s “world champion” for a given year.

That latter discussion faded away long ago with regard to the $50K, despite the introduction of that “Poker Players Championship” name for it back in 2010. It’s now mostly regarded as another “high roller” -- one of many on the tournament calendar, although the only one to step outside of the no-limit hold’em circle to include other variants in the mix.

For that reason alone it continues to pique my interest, as I’m sure today’s finale will grab the attention of many.

Photo: PokerNews.

Following the $50K

Been following the $50,000 Poker Players Championship this week (Event No. 46).

This is one that over the past few years I generally have spent at least a couple of days covering, although I don’t believe I ever covered the five-day event from start to finish. Always an intriguing one both because of the rotation of games -- they play it as an “8-game mix” tourney -- and the collection of big names who necessarily populate the field.

Just 102 took part this year, well down from the 132 who played a year ago. Donnie Peters wrote an article for PokerNews about the PPC this week, looking closely at who didn’t play -- including the usuals like Erik Seidel, Huck Seed, and Barry Greenstein -- while also talking to a few players about possible reasons for the drop-off in entries.

The cash games are cited as one reason, with some thoughts about the current state of the poker economy also considered. Seidel had a funny response when asked about not playing, noting “I don’t play triple draw so I thought I would save $48,500 and play this instead,” referring to a $1,500 event playing out this week, too.

The example of Seidel skipping the $50K makes me think also of the steep rise of “high roller” and “super high roller” events over the last three years in which he frequently plays. When the $50K H.O.R.S.E. event was first introduced back in 2006, the buy-in made it the biggest game in town, but nowadays there are two or three dozen events on the calendar with bigger price tags, not to mention that “Big One” coming up this weekend.

Still a compelling event, though, even without all the usual suspects being involved. Gonna check back over at PokerNews to see where it stands.