Main Event Memories

Been back on the farm more than a week now from Las Vegas. I snapped that pic to the left as I left the Rio for the last time following a 16-night stay.

It took me a while, but finally I’m sharing links to some of my favorite features posted during the World Series of Poker Main Event.

Early on I had the chance to chat with New York Times best selling author Maria Konnikova about her current book project. You might have heard something about it -- the story has been passed around the poker world the last few month’s as Konnikova writing a book “about” Erik Seidel, although that isn’t exactly what she’s doing.

Rather, the author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes and The Confidence Game is spending a year playing poker on the professional poker tournament circuit as part of an inquiry into how humans make decisions, including when faced with elements outside of our control (such as happens in poker).

Talking with Konnikova was one of my favorite half-hours of the entire trip, to be honest, and while not everything we talked about made it into this post, a lot of it did, including a fuller introduction to her study. You can read it here: “Konnikova seeking answers in the cards about life, poker, and everything.”

A couple of days after that I had another fun conversation with Vanessa Selbst, a player I’ve been covering in tournaments for nearly a decade now.

If you followed the Main Event you probably remember how Selbst found herself in a highly unusual spot only an hour or so into the tournament, running into Gaelle Baumann’s quads to be eliminated halfway through the very first level.

We talked about that hand, of course, but also about one of the very first tournaments I ever covered, the $1,500 pot-limit Omaha event at the 2008 WSOP in which Selbst won her first bracelet. That remains one of my favorite reporting experiences ever -- thanks in large part to the crazy finish -- and it was fun inviting Selbst to remember the scene.

She also neatly tied together with her comments the end of that tournament and her exit hand in this year’s Main -- check it out: “Vanessa embraces the variance.”

The cash bubble burst at the end of Day 3, and just before the start of Day 4 I spoke with one of those who’d made the money -- Kenneth “K.L.” Cleeton.

You might have heard something about this story, too. Cleeton is a 27-year-old player from Illinois who suffers from a rare neuromuscular disorder that leaves him essentially paralyzed from the neck down. He’s anything but handicapped otherwise, though -- very quick-witted and gregarious and also a good poker player, too.

Cleeton entered a contest put together by Daniel Negreanu and along with a couple of other entrants was put into the the Main Event by Kid Poker. With his father at the table providing assistance looking at cards and making bets, Cleeton survived the bubble bursting with a short stack, and both of them were unsurprisingly ecstatic about it all when we chatted just before Day 4 began.

Negreanu shared some comments as well for the post. Read about Cleeton and be energized by one of the cooler stories of the whole Main: “K.L. Cleeton continues inspiring run into Day 4.”

As the tournament wore on, a player named Mickey Craft started to get everyone’s attention thanks to his big stack and especially loose style of play. He was also kind of a character at the tables, chatting it up and obviously enjoying himself immensely.

I happened to be around when Craft won a big pot on Day 4 in an especially nutty hand. I remember watching it play out alongside the ESPN crew, talking a bit with one of them who was marveling at how crazy the poker was. I knew right then they’d be finding a way to get Craft onto a feature table soon, and sure enough that’s what happened later in the day.

Here’s that post describing the wacky hand: “Mickey Craft is must-see poker.”

Finally, if you paid any attention at all to the Main Event -- particularly to the final table -- you certainly heard about the 64-year-old amateur from Bridlington, England named John Hesp.

You couldn’t miss Hesp in his multi-colored, patchwork shirt and jacket and Panama hat. His personality was just as colorful, and by chance I ended up chatting with him on multiple occasions during his deep Main Event run, including about how the Main was a “bucket list” item for him, a bit of a diversion from his usual 10-pound tournaments in Hull.

Just before the final table (where he’d go on to finish fourth to earn $2.6 million), I posted a piece sharing some of what Hesp and I chatted about: “John Hesp’s Vegas vaction continues; or ‘When I’m Sixty-Four.’”

These are just some of my favorites among the nearly 100 posts Howard Swains and I wrote over the course of the Main Event. Wanted to kind of bookmark them here, though, and also invite some more eyes to ‘em in case folks missed them before.

Cepheus and the “Solving” of Heads-Up LHE

Yesterday I was writing about the “New York Times 4th Down Bot” and related efforts by those studying stats to present math-based models for dictating how best to coach a football game. There was a related story last week regarding the team of researchers at the University of Alberta who have been working for several years on “solving” heads-up fixed-limit hold’em, with their new study published in the January 2015 issue of the journal Science “announc[ing] that heads-up limit Texas hold’em is now essentially weakly solved.”

I remember many years ago -- way back in the summer of 2007 -- speaking with Jonathan Schaeffer of the University of Alberta about Polaris, the computer program developed by his team of researchers that comprised the university’s Computer Poker Research Group (CPRG) in the dept. of Computing Science which he chaired. An LHE match between Polaris and two pros, Phil Laak and Ali Eslami, took place that summer in which the humans won, and for PokerNews I spoke to Schaeffer about Polaris and the CPRG’s goals.

“One of these days -- within 5 to 10 years -- two-person, limit hold’em will be solved,” he said to me. Here we are about seven-and-a-half years later, and it sounds like those continuing the work there at Alberta have fulfilled Schaeffer’s prediction.

The new heads-up LHE-playing program is called Cepheus and is in fact available to play against online, although when I went to the site there were “too many in queue” and I was invited to come back later to try.

With my academic affiliation I have been able to get a copy of the Science study and have read through it. Simply titled “Heads-up limit hold'em poker is solved,” it begins by pointing out that while certain “perfect-information” games like Connect Four and checkers have been solved, others like chess have not even if much-celebrated events like Deep Blue’s victory over Garry Kasparov has led some to suggest it has. “Defeating top human players is not the same as ‘solving’ a game,” the study’s four authors point out.

The study then notes how only “perfect-information” games have been solved thus far, making their claim regarding the “imperfect-information” game of heads-up limit hold’em groundbreaking. Reference is made to the work of game theory pioneer John von Neumann and the element of bluffing that distinguishes poker, to Michael Craig’s The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King (which details the high-stakes LHE games between by Andy Beal and “the Corporation”), as well as to the previous work of Schaeffer and his team at Alberta.

An explanation of what it means to “solve” a game follows, with the distinction “weakly solved” referring to a game in which “for the initial position(s), a strategy has been determined to obtain at least the game-theoretic value, for both players, under reasonable resources.” From that definition, the researches extrapolate that as far as heads-up LHE goes, it is safe to say that the game is “essentially weakly solved... if a human lifetime of play is not sufficient to establish with statistical significance that the strategy is not an exact solution.”

From there comes further refinement of what is meant by an “imperfect-information game” then an explanation of the programming of Cepheus and the “solution” ultimately found. This admittedly is where your humble scribbler feels especially humbled, not being versed in the various fields of the researchers.

Back in 2007 there was already lots of talk about “poker bots” and online poker, so I had to ask Schaeffer about Polaris and how it might relate to the online game. “I want to be clear,” he told me. “We do not play online poker. None of our software is enabled to play online poker on any of the sites.”

Nor has being able to “solve” heads-up limit hold’em ever been the endgame for the researchers at Alberta. They conclude their study by noting how “the breakthroughs behind our result are general algorithmic advances that make game-theoretic reasoning in large-scale models of any sort more tractable.” In other words, as often gets pointed out by those who study game theory as it applies to recreational games or sports, the findings there have value in other realms involving human decision-making.

As a longtime fan of LHE, I’m curious to learn more about Cepheus, including how it was created and what it can do. If you are also curious, here’s a good piece on the FiveThirtyEight site summarizing the team’s work and placing it in a broader context by Oliver Roeder called “Computers Are Learning How to Treat Illnesses By Playing Poker and Atari.” And I’m about to go listen to the latest episode of the Thinking Poker podcast on which Andrew Brokos had on as guests two of the study’s authors, Michael Bowling and Michael Johanson of the CPRG at Alberta, to talk about Cepheus.

In the meantime I’m going to keep queueing up to try to play Cepheus. Last night Vanessa Selbst was on PokerStars playing at some some 8-game play money tables, and I actually sat at one for a few orbits. Feeling equally intimidated to sit across from Cepheus, I think.

Surprise! Selbst Strong

Been thinking about Vanessa Selbst and her big win over the weekend in Event No. 2, the $25,000 Mixed-Max No-Limit Hold’em event that kicked off this year’s World Series of Poker (pic via PokerNews).

I’ve written here many times about Selbst whom I happened to get to see win her first bracelet back in 2008 during my first summer helping cover the Series for PokerNews. That was one of the first tournaments I can remember having covered from beginning to end in which a single player seemed legitimately to have “dominated” the event pretty much from start to finish.

She’d taken the lead midway through Day 1 of the $1,500 pot-limit Omaha event, kept it all of the way to the final table, then fairly ran over her opponents there, too, before running into a kind of unique situation heads-up in which Jamie Pickering began repeatedly raising the pot without looking at his cards. He actually managed to grab the lead briefly, I recall, but Selbst handled the situation and was able to prevail. (Read more about that wild finish here.)

I did not watch Selbst win her bracelet in 2012 in the 10-game event, but like the rest of us have followed her progress over the years as she became the highest-earning female tournament player in the world while now challenging for the top ranking in the Global Poker Index, too, where she is now second behind Ole Schemion.

It’s interesting how each year the WSOP tends to confirm our understanding that being skilled at tournament poker often translates into positive outcomes, with the successes of those we’ve seen win before being instinctively regarded as support for the skill argument.

That said, it’s also interesting how we tend to be surprised when we see, say, Selbst negotiate her way through yet another big field (or a small but tough one in the $25K Mixed-Max) to triumph once more. I mean perhaps only a little surprised, because we do, after all, expect good players to succeed. But surprised nonetheless whenever one of the repeat winners repeats and wins again.

That small little pleasure of amazement, though, is a big part of what makes following these events fun.

On the Bubble Boy

Earlier today I noticed Vanessa Selbst’s tweet from last night responding to the World Poker Tour having signed off its coverage of Day 2 of the Bay 101 Shooting Star by referring to the plan today to play down to the “bubble boy” of the six-handed televised final table.

Selbst humorously pointed out an unintended assumption made by the statement. “Since the WPT says it is playing down to its ‘television bubble boy’ tomorrow, just wanna say congrats to @candacepoker on her 1st WPT FT!”

Indeed, Candace Collins was among the final 36 making it to the end of play yesterday (and she’s in the top 10 in the early going today), so if she were to bubble the final table it obviously wouldn’t do to call her the “bubble boy.”

Selbst followed that tweet with another clarifying that those covering poker tournaments should stop summarily referring to poker players as male, and others chimed in afterwards to agree both with that point and to bring up other examples of poker’s male-centric culture still exhibiting several characteristics that can make the game seem less inviting to women.

I wholeheartedly agree with the larger point, as well as with the need for poker to be mindful of its long legacy of excluding women and to be especially conscious not to persist in doing so going forward, even if in unintentional ways.

Meanwhile, the initial tweet made me think about how it has been many years since I’ve actually used the term “bubble boy” to describe the last person out before the cash in a tournament. I know I used it early on in my reporting career (and here on the blog), but at some point I stopped doing so.

I didn’t stop because the term assumes that person is male. It goes without saying that I’d never been tempted to use “bubble boy” to describe a woman busting out just before the cash. Nor has anyone else, I imagine. I know I’ve seen “bubble girl” used in those situations.

I stopped because it just sounded silly. And kind of clichéd, too. There had to be a better way to describe the situation, I thought, and so I dropped the term from my poker vocabulary.

It’s sometimes hard not to use clichés, though, when it comes to reporting on poker tournaments. The “bubble” itself is a case in point. After all, when’s the last time someone wrote about a tournament reaching the money without employing that metaphor?

(Above is A young boy blowing soap bubbles, a painting created by a follower of the 17th century Dutch painter Reinier de la Haye.)

Selbst in the Lead

My first experience watching Vanessa Selbst play in person was at the 2008 World Series of Poker when I happened to help report on her bracelet win in the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event. It remains a memorable tournament for me, punctuated by a crazy finale that saw her heads-up opponent, Jamie Pickering, raising pot blind hand after hand in an effort to gamble his way to victory.

That actually marked Selbst’s fourth WSOP final table in three years, and she’d go on to add a semifinal (or third-place) finish in that year’s $10,000 World Championship Heads-Up No-Limit tournament. In other words, out of seven WSOP cashes she’d had up to that point, five of them were eighth-place finishes or higher.

As Shawnee Barton wrote about late last week in her terrific (and timely) article about Selbst for The Atlantic, Selbst usually employs a “relentlessly attacking, boom-and-bust style” that finds her often either accumulating chips early then making a deep run or falling shy of the cash altogether. Barton evokes Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi as a suitable comparison.

Such was the case in that PLO tourney back in 2008 where Selbst essentially led wire-to-wire. The first long day saw the field shrink from 759 all of the way down to 46, with posts about “Selbst Soaring” already starting to appear by late afternoon. I remember her having the chip lead for certain with about 100 left, maintaining it overnight and throughout Day 2. In fact she’d start the final table with more than 1 million chips while the nearest challenger (Pickering) had but 329,000. She’d then lead for most of the final table, too, before ultimately winning.

Since then Selbst has enjoyed numerous other victories and final-table finishes, among them a $1.8 million-plus score at the 2010 Partouche Poker Tour Main Event, back-to-back Main Event victories at NAPT Mohegan Sun in 2010 and 2011, and a second WSOP bracelet last summer in the $2,500 10-game event.

And yesterday Selbst added another huge line to her poker resume by winning the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure $25K High Roller event (photo above courtesy Neil Stoddart/PokerStars). Thanks to a larger than expected field plus numerous re-entries, the prize pool ballooned up close to $5 million in that one, thereby meaning Selbst’s victory earned her an eye-popping $1,424,420 first prize.

Selbst outlasted a final table that included Micah Raskin (who also final tabled the Sands Bethlehem last month), Tobias Reinkemeier, Bryn Kenney, Shaun Deeb, online star Ole “wizowizo” Schemion, Mike “SirWatts” Watson, and finally the Russian Vladimir Troyanovskiy who also final tabled the PCA $100K Super High Roller last week where he finished seventh.

Now Selbst’s career earnings have inched over the $7 million mark, more than $6 million of which has been won since the start of 2010. A quick scan of the top earners over the same period shows only a handful of players earning more than that, and most of those finished first or second in either the WSOP Main Event, the “Big One for One Drop,” or that $2 million HKD High Roller event in Macau last August.

Excluding those guys, it looks like only Erik Seidel ($7,338,543), Michael Mizrachi ($7,130,635), and Phil Hellmuth ($6,508,181) have earned more than Selbst in tourney winnings since 2010 (unless I’ve missed someone), and of course Hellmuth got a big boost by earning more than $2.6 million for taking fourth in the “One Drop.” Meanwhile, on the overall “All-Time Money List,” Selbst is now listed in 40th place, just ahead of Scott Seiver who jumped up when he won the $100K Super High Roller at the PCA last week.

And of course, as many have been reporting, with her finish yesterday Selbst catapults past Kathy Liebert and into the top spot on Hendon Mob’s “Women’s All-Time Money List.”

I was saying yesterday how I was finding it hard to get too excited over Viktor Blom’s big online swings, but such is not the case here. While bigger payouts and more high-roller events have obviously skewed these all-time lists considerably, Selbst becoming the all-time leader in tourney winnings among female players nonetheless seems like a moment worth noting.

Liebert first grabbed the lead in that race way back in 2002, lost it to Annie Duke in 2004 after Duke won $2 million in that invite-only, single-table Tournament of Champions freeroll, then reclaimed the lead in early 2006 and had held it for nearly seven years before Selbst pushed in front. (Chart via Hendon Mob.)

Selbst now has a big lead in that race, more than $1 million ahead of Liebert (2nd, $5,855,655), with Duke (3rd, $4,270,549), Annette Obrestad ($3,780,520), and Vanessa Rousso (5th, $3,471,293) following.

In other words -- just like happened in that 2008 WSOP event -- now that she’s pushed into the lead on that list, chances are good Selbst will be remaining in front for a good while.

Good Read: The Atlantic on Vanessa Selbst and Women in Poker

On Twitter, sometimes one discovers messages pointing to online articles with an accompanying declaration “#goodread” or some other terse recommendation of a particular landing spot on the endlessly-distracting interwebs.

I’ll send out such tweets sometimes when I haven’t the energy to provide a more detailed recommendation, say, in a blog post. I’ll also admit to experiencing some vain satisfaction whenever someone on Twitter points to something I’ve written in similar fashion, such as happened yesterday with something I wrote for Ocelot Sports “On the Baseball Hall of Fame Shutout.” (Sorry for the shameless Shamus plug.)

With character limits, there usually isn’t much space left in a tweet to say much if one is also including a link. Nor is Twitter really a great place (in my estimation) to deliver meaningful critiques of anything, really, although some use the medium regularly to deliver such commentaries on movies, books, TV shows, music, politics, news of the day, Justin Bieber, and/or just about everything else. And a select few are even good at delivering such evaluative assessments in 140 characters or less.

In any event, I usually rely a lot on my knowledge of the tweet’s author before automatically clicking through when encountering such a recommendation. Earlier today, Change100 delivered such a message, referring to a new piece on the Atlantic website by Shawnee Barton profiling Vanessa Selbst. Trusting Change100’s taste generally speaking -- and in particular regarding a mainstream outlet’s discussion of poker (and a woman in poker, at that) -- I didn’t hesitate clicking through.

Unsurprisingly, the piece by Barton titled “What It’s Like To Be a Woman Who Plays Professional Poker” is indeed a worthwhile read for anyone interested in poker, Selbst, or issues concerning men and women and how they interact.

There are a number of aspects of the article that recommend it, one of which being an obvious awareness on the part of Barton of both Vanessa Selbst’s background and playing history as well as of recent trends in poker, generally speaking. Indeed, at no point in the article did I find myself questioning Barton’s knowledge of the game or the historical context for Selbst’s story -- kind of a rarity when it comes to poker articles emanating from non-poker outlets.

And -- also refreshing -- I not only learned new things about Selbst, but feel like Barton made some insightful observations about cultural expectations for men and women and how those expectations often get amplified in the context of the male-dominated world of poker. Barton also adds a good point near the end regarding the possible impact of Black Friday and the relative absence of online poker in the U.S., noting how it might be affecting women’s participation in poker.

But go read the article yourself, and forgive my going on a little longer than 140 characters in my recommendation of it. As a fan of both Selbst and solid poker writing, I’m glad I followed Change100’s suggestion.

Revisiting Selbst vs. Lamb, 2012 WSOP ME, Day 3

This week ESPN began airing its coverage of the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event. Like last year, they are picking things up on Day 3 after the entire field finally combined.

Unlike last year, there was no “almost live” coverage of the WSOP back in July, so these shows that will be aired every Tuesday night through late October present the first opportunity for viewers to see anything from this year’s Main Event.

I’m somewhat intrigued to watch this time around, in part because I was there helping cover the ME for PokerNews every day from Day 3 onward. As you might imagine, when I watch I’m often searching the backgrounds for familiar faces -- and perhaps even my own.

I’m also keeping a lookout for hands I might have seen and even reported on, too. That was pretty unlikely to happen this week, given how most of the coverage centered on those two feature tables, neither of which I was covering. And with nearly 200 tables’ worth of players starting Day 3, the chances I’d be standing next to one and seeing a hand that ESPN both shot and thought worthy of including were pretty minimal.

But it happened. There was one hand featured on Tuesday’s show that I not only saw but reported on, too. It involved Vanessa Selbst and Ben Lamb who happened to be seated right next to each other to begin Day 3.

They weren’t at a feature table, but were at one of three other tables that had been separated for easier access for the cameras. In other words, the odds of a hand being shown from one of those tables were a little higher, generally speaking. But the chance that I would actually be over there at the exact moment one of those hands took place was pretty damn slim, as I was stationed way over on the other side of the Amazon Room that day and only got over there a couple of times early on before another reporter took over covering that section.

If you watched the coverage on Tuesday, you might remember the hand. ESPN only picked up the action on the river. Selbst, playing from the small blind, had led with a bet, Lamb had raised on the button, then Selbst was shown pushing out a big reraise. ESPN shows Lamb smile briefly at the sight of the reraise, think for what appears to be just a few seconds, then fold.

The board was . Selbst had for sevens and fives, while Lamb had for a spade flush. Thus when we watch on ESPN we see that Selbst forced Lamb to fold the best hand.

Like I say, I watched the hand live and reported on it for PokerNews. I even mention in that hand report that it might be a hand worth showing on ESPN. My report of the hand begins with the preflop action, and thus spells out how Lamb had opened preflop from the button and Selbst had just called. Selbst also check-called the flop after making top pair-top kicker. Selbst then led the turn after that third spade hit, and Lamb just called.

My report also mentions how much time the players were taking before acting, with Selbst taking a couple of minutes before making that reraise on the river and Lamb’s final tank-and-fold having lasted over three minutes. It was a tense one to witness, and I’m a bit amazed now to learn what both players were holding. Indeed, I'm kind of marveling over both Selbst’s river reraise and Lamb’s fold.

If you’re curious to compare my hand report and what was shown on ESPN, read here, then check out the coverage starting at the 12:20 mark of this video. (The latter link goes to the timestamp.)

By the way, one thing you won’t see in the clip is your humble reporter, who was dutifully staying out of the shots.

2010 WSOP, Day 46: The Odd Couple

Yesterday was Day 3 of the 2010 WSOP Main Event, the day when all the players finally came together.

Of course, when I say the players were “together” they were still spread out pretty far.

The Amazon room, which I’ve heard can seat up to 1,089 players, was filled to capacity. And the Pavilion, which has something like 257 tables set up, looked to be about three-fourths full of Main Event players when we began yesterday.

There were 2,557 total runners to start the day, and the bustouts came quickly. In just eight hours of play, they’d made it down to less than half that total, with a little over 1,200 players making it through the last hand of the night with chips.

PokerNews had the full court press on yesterday, with all available bloggers and reporters working. Even then, it was a challenge. For instance, there were two of us -- me and a field reporter -- covering about 50 tables to start the day over in the Pavilion. By mid-afternoon, though, the tables in our section began to break elsewhere, and so as the day wore on things became more manageable.

Probably the most interesting table we had was one at which sat both 2002 WSOP Main Event champion Robert Varkonyi and Vanessa Selbst, positioned on either side of the dealer. The two players couldn’t be more different, both in terms of their personalities and reputations. I am a fan of both, actually -- for different reasons -- and so enjoyed watching the two of them play.

Varkonyi, the amateur who won the WSOP just before the Moneymaker boom, continues to play the Main Event each year and occasionally will show up for other tourneys here and there. But he’s always retained that amateur status; he even jokingly said something at the table last night about how he’s “new to the game.” He’s a soft-spoken guy who generally seems desirous to avoid conflict, if possible.

In other words, he seems like the sort of player Selbst consistently runs over. I actually helped report on Selbst’s WSOP bracelet win in 2008 -- one of my favorite events I’ve covered, in fact -- the $1,500 pot-limit Omaha event in which her aggressive style served her well. Unlike Varkonyi, Selbst’s reputation as a sound, tough player is unquestioned. That is to say, even though relatively speaking she’s only been a pro for a short time (just a few years), no one would ever even joke about her being “new” to the game.

One could probably pursue the contrast further by bringing gender into the discussion, and perhaps characterize Selbst’s style as including so-called “masculine” tendencies (aggression, competitiveness) while Varkonyi could even be said to have “feminine” traits (passivity, conflict avoidance).

But I won’t go too far down that road. The culture creates these so-called “gender roles,” of course, and also tends to criticize -- unfairly, in my opinion -- those who exhibit tendencies usually associated with the other sex (i.e., a “masculine” woman or a “feminine” man). You get my point, though, I hope. Two very different people. And players.

And, as I say, I like them both, though for different reasons. Varkonyi just seems like a friendly guy with a very good perspective both on his own abilities and his place in the poker world. I probably identify with his still being an amateur (and being humble about it). And Selbst is an intelligent, clever player whom one cannot help but respect. With her I am probably more awed and fascinated to see (and maybe learn from) the plays she makes.

So it was particularly interesting to see this odd couple get involved in an odd couple of hands with big pots in which their differences seemed to be highlighted.

I’m not going to go through both hands in full detail here -- you can read the reports on the PokerNews live blog, if you’re curious (linked to below). The first was delivered to me by my field reporter, Dave, and the second I saw for myself. Both eventually had Varkonyi all in, and both resulted in chopped pots as the two players held the same hand.

In the first one, both players made the same straight on the turn, which was the current nuts. There was a third player involved in the hand who led with a bet, Varkonyi called, and Selbst raised. The other player folded, and Varkonyi took several minutes before reraising all in. Selbst snap-called, and was surprised to see Varkonyi had the same hand. Indeed, it was strange that he’d tanked like that having the best possible hand.

In the second hand, the pair were the only two involved. Varkonyi had raised from the cutoff and Selbst called from the button. They each flopped top pair of queens, but kings came on both the turn and river. Still, they made it to the end with Varkonyi pushing all in and Selbst taking a long time before making a very tough call.

Both hands -- especially the second one -- were ones that kind of fell into that “strange but true” category of hands that can be challenging to report. I wrote about that subject last summer in a post titled “Seeing Is Believing.” Actually the only real strange thing about the first one was Varkonyi’s tanking before reraising all in, but the second one involved some interesting thinking from both players that could have helped explain how the hand went.

But that’s where the reporter has to pull back -- we can’t explain what players are thinking, even if we’re tempted to do so.

Today I imagine the Amazon room will be filled, and there will be about a dozen tables or so over in the Pavilion which will be the first to break. The money bubble will burst sometime in the late afternoon or early evening, which in some ways is the most exciting moment of the Main Event other than the final table. Head over to PokerNews to see how it all plays out.

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.

2008 WSOP, Day 14: Reporting from the Eye of the Hurricane

What a night.

The final table of Event No. 19, the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event won by Vanessa Selbst, will likely be remembered as one of the craziest, most manic, and most entertaining final tables this summer. By the few of us who saw it, anyway.

Working conditions were not ideal, but we managed. They played out this final table not in the mini-arena-slash-staging area where they shoot the televised tables (that’s where Daniel Negreanu was busy winning his bracelet in Event No. 20). Rather, they had the final nine of Event No. 19 gather around just another table right outside the arena, tucked in a corner somewhat away from the hustle and bustle of the Amazon Room.

That meant very little access for railbirds, which would become an issue as the night wore on. It also affected how we covered the proceedings. Rather than remain stationed at a desk from which we could watch the action, we had to set up our workstations on chairs off to the side. Not too cool (or convenient), and frankly it meant our coverage would necessarily be slowed down as we always had to run back and forth from the table to our laptops. Nothing we could do about it, though.

As it turned out, we still managed to report every bustout hand and all of the major hands for the entire final table. Things got particularly hairy once it got down to heads-up and Jamie Pickering, the eventual second-place finisher, started raising pots without looking at his cards. That’s when the crowd really started to grow larger. And louder. Both players had a number of supporters among the group gathered along the ropes. And the drinks were flowing.

We actually ended up reporting almost every hand of heads up -- certainly all of the significant ones. Which was an example of overcoming huge odds, in my opinion, given the conditions and the scene. Here’s a post I filed just after the third hand of heads-up play:

Insanity at the Final Table
The third hand of heads up began with Pickering having about 950,000 to Selbst's 1.3 million. The two talked a bit about chopping the cash and playing for the bracelet, but couldn't come to terms and the hand was dealt.

“RAISE POT!!!” cried Pickering, again without looking at his cards. An incredulous Selbst checked hers, and made the call.

The flop came . Selbst checked. Pickering again bet the pot, still having not checked his cards. “Have you really not looked?!” asked Selbst. She made the call.

The turn was the . This time Pickering checked. It was Selbst's turn to put on the pressure. She bet the pot.

Thus ensued about ten minutes' worth of hilarity as Pickering contemplated whether or not to call, or perhaps raise the pot again. He also had to decide whether or not he was going to look at his cards.

Finally, amid the shouts of the 70-80 spectators we have gathered around, he gave in and looked at his hand.

“Oh, sh*t! I'm dead!” he said. “Five-king-eight-two!”

“RUN IT FOUR TIMES!” came a shout from the rail.

“I've got a shot at a wheel,” he said. Finally, amid the ever-rising craziness surrounding the table, he let it go. Selbst showed Q-7-7-9, not much, but better than what Pickering had folded.

Selbst has retaken her commanding chip lead.

What did I leave out? Not too much. During that long delay when Pickering was deciding what to do, he did offer once again to split the prize money with Selbst. “Not anymore,” she said. Fact was, when they had been discussing the chop just before this hand, Pickering didn’t seem to understand that since Selbst had a chip lead, she didn’t want simply to split the money 50-50. Maybe he did understand it, but was pretending not to. (Or maybe he’d had one too many.) That’s why the deal couldn’t be made.

I typed all this up in less than five minutes, ran back over to the table (trading spots with my partner), and watched another hand which I then posted ten minutes after this one. With nearly a hundred drunks howling at the top of their lungs as my ambient soundtrack.

Pickering actually managed to take the chip lead via this unorthodox strategy, and in fact Selbst would have to draw out on him in a later hand to avoid elimination. Selbst is a hell of a player, and most definitely earned the bracelet she won tonight. (And I am most definitely glad she won.) But she also had to gamble (a lot) along the way, and especially there at the very end. In the wrap-up post, I described her having “to negotiate her way through the land mines of Pickering's no-look pot-sized raises to take home the bracelet.” Kind of the perfect end to a PLO tourney, really, well capturing the spirit of the “action game.”

I was glad to have been there.

I remember before I came out to Vegas talking to someone about what I’d been hired to do. After I’d explained what the WSOP was, how tourneys worked, and how I’d be reporting hands and happenings as they occurred, my listener thought a moment and asked what I thought was a very reasonable question.

“And there are people who are interested in that?”

I laughed. “Incredibly, yes,” I replied.

Because I know 99% of the world could care less about this stuff. But then there are those who do care about it. A lot. I know. I’m one of them.

It can be pretty damn deflating (sometimes) to see how hypercritical a very small percentage of this already small group can be about the coverage. Hell, I’m critical of it, too. I know it could be better, given different conditions.

But I also know it is pretty much a miracle that there is any coverage at all, let alone this kind of minutely-detailed chronicling of the actions of a few people gathered around a table tucked away in the corner of a ballroom in Vegas.

Day off tomorrow. Chance to recharge, refuel. To tell you the truth, I’m already looking forward to Saturday.