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.

Another Alpha8

Was reminded a couple of days ago about having spent a week in December at the Bellagio just a couple of years ago. Was there helping cover the World Poker Tour Five Diamond World Poker Classic, which I believe was the last time that particular event had Doyle Brunson’s name on the sucker.

There were 639 entries for the $10,400 buy-in event this time around, making the prize pool close to $6.2 million. That’s up from 586 entries and a $5.68 million prize pool last year, and way up from the 449 and $4.36 million prize pool in 2013 when I was there.

Meanwhile there’s a new $100K buy-in WPT Alpha8 tournament starting today, also at the Bellagio. This one kicks off the third season of the Alpha8. A year ago they managed 55 total entries for this same event (including re-entries), the most they ever were able to get for an Alpha8, so it should be interesting to see if they manage to match or exceed that total.

Funny to think how it wasn’t that long ago that a $10K event was something relatively unique, while today even a $100K one fails to register as something all that unique. It’s still an exclusive, “boutique”-type affair, however, as indicated by the small fields and the fact that the player pool tends to be largely the same with each one that takes place.

Showing that event $100K isn’t enough for some anymore, the WPT is in fact putting on a $200,000 super high roller just after the new year as part of the WPT National Philippines Festival in Manila. There was a presser a week or so ago saying they’d already had a dozen players confirmed for the event.

Wonder how many they’ll ultimately draw. One thing for certain -- the player pool will likely include several businessmen and others we haven’t seen on the super high roller player lists before.

Have a Spare $51K Lying Around?

There’s a $51,000 buy-in online poker tournament this weekend. No shinola.

I’m sure you’ve heard about it. PokerStars’s annual World Championship of Online Poker is nearing the end of week number two (of three), and on Sunday comes a special “Super High Roller” with the $51K price tag. It’ll be the biggest buy-in online tournament ever on Stars, and I think ever, period.

They’re even trying out letting folks bet on the outcome over on the Casino side on Stars, with the opening lines listing Jason Mercier, Daniel Negreanu, and Chris Moorman as favorites.

If betting on a winner were an option for me, I wouldn’t take it -- not because the lines don’t seem so favorable, but the sheer fact that betting on any individual to win a poker tournament, even one with a small field, is inherently going to be a longshot play.

Speaking of the field size, if I were betting on how many might participate, I’d look back at the last $21K buy-in heads-up event from the Spring Championship of Online Poker back in May where 33 players took part. Could it draw that many? More? (Many seem to think more, actually.)

It has a $1 million guarantee (20 players), which will surely be met. It also will most certainly feature many of the usual super high-rolling suspects who populate the small fields in the World Poker Tour Alpha 8 events and other live SHRs on the schedule.

Should make for some decent railbirding, I’d imagine. That costs nothing.

Regarding Those Ribbon Clerks

The 2015 World Series of Poker Main Event is underway, with the first of three Day 1 flights drawing a smallish Sunday crowd of 741. Today and tomorrow will obviously be much bigger, and I think most expect the total number of entrants to rival or even exceed last year’s 6,683.

The $10,000 buy-in Main comes in the wake of that huge $500,000 Super High Roller that just finished playing out at the ARIA Resort and Casino over the weekend, the biggest buy-in poker tournament of the year. Brian Rast topped a field of 43 to win a $7.525 million first prize that should rival the $8 milly or so the Main Event winner will take away.

The divide between those two events is enormous, of course, with that 50x difference in the buy-ins obviously meaning those playing the $500K belong to a very exclusive club. In fact, if you go back into the early history of the WSOP, back to the 1970s when the Main Event fields had yet even to crack 100 players, it’s tempting to draw further comparisons between the guys currently paying a half a milly each to play a poker tournament and WSOP ME players of old.

In 1978, the year Bobby Baldwin won the WSOP Main Event (and the first year it wasn’t played as a winner-take-all tournament), just 42 took part, one less than the number who played the $500K Super High Roller. That said, $10,000 in 1978 was worth the equivalent of something like $38,000 today, so the comparison only goes so far.

Speaking of separating the high-stakes players from the hoi polloi, I was recently listening to an old interview with Richard Nixon in which he was talking about the long and winding road that led him to complete his comeback to political prominence to win the 1968 presidential election after losing to JFK in ’60 and also losing the California governor race in ’62.

He was talking about having dinner with friends right after the ’66 elections in which the Republicans had gained a few senate seats (three), a lot of House seats (47), and what many thought to be some momentum going forward for ’68. Nixon’s friends were urging him not to wait much longer before announcing his intention to run for president, but he would actually hold off officially doing so more than a year until February ’68.

Nixon paraphrases his friends’ urging thusly: “Now you’ve got to get in [they said]. You’ve got to announce for president, and so forth, and get the ribbon clerks out.”

I had to pause over that phrase “get the ribbon clerks out,” employing as it does a term that Robert McLaughlin also uses in the title of his 1945 New Yorker poker-themed short story “Let’s Get Rid of the Ribbon Clerks.”

The title comes up halfway through the story in the middle of a poker hand in a game played at the Officers’ Club among some enlisted men. The game is seven-card stud, and by fourth street a player bets a dollar, then the story’s protagonist, Lieutenant Fred Wilson, announces he’s raising. “I’ll just raise that five,” he says. “Let’s get rid of the ribbon clerks.”

Besides being used simply to describe a raise (as Lt. Wilson does), the phrase is also used in poker to refer to raising the stakes in a game, such as when someone suggests changing a $1/$2 game to $5/$10 to “weed out the ribbon clerks.” You’ll find the term in a lot of poker dictionaries, such as in The Poker Encyclopedia edited by Elkan Allan and Hannah Mackey where a “ribbon clerk” is defined as “slang for a small-stakes player.”

It’s also used more loosely to describe tight players (or “rocks”) who can be easily frightened out of a pot by a big bet. Thus, any player not courageous enough -- or, in the gendered world of poker, manly enough -- to handle upping the stakes or an aggressive raise, can be considered a “ribbon clerk.”

Why a “ribbon clerk”? Well, a ribbon clerk was the common job title for a cashier working in a dry goods store back in the late 19th or early 20th centuries -- that is, a place where you’d buy clothes, household goods, cloth and fabric, and other miscellaneous items including hair ribbons. Again pointing back to the historically hyper-masculine context of poker, the man working such a job would be considered just a touch less macho because of his employment.

Searching around about the term also shows it’s having been used in the context of gay slang. I’m seeing a couple of different examples there, with ribbon clerk once used to refer to a gay man working a desk job, though more recently (and more frequently) used to refer to a woman who primarily socializes with gay men. Such uses obliquely allude back to the earlier-created idiom and its reference to presumed gender roles.

So in a poker game -- or a presidential campaign -- calling opponents “ribbon clerks” is mildly demeaning, suggesting as it does the idea that the players being so described aren’t as tough or brave as the one doing the name-calling.

Of course, upping the buy-in ante to $500K gets rid of not just the ribbon clerks, but 99.9% of the rest of us, too.

Travel Report: 2015 PCA, Day 2 -- The Surge

Last fall when I was in Lima reporting on the final event of Season 7 of the Latin American Poker Tour, I first heard about the plan to kick off Season 8 with a regular LAPT event in the Bahamas. The tournament would be positioned as a kind of special preliminary tourney at the PCA, and thus could draw both the regular tour players (a number of whom already go to the PCA every year) and a lot of new players who’d never participated in an LAPT event before.

My initial reaction was that it sounded like a cool idea, and I liked the thought of mixing together players from all over. I’m a big fan of the LAPT for a variety of reasons, including the many great characters and interesting people who play those events, so I liked thinking about a lot of players from the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere getting to play a big event with that crowd.

I also thought it would be a big event, maybe even the biggest the LAPT had ever staged. But then I interviewed LAPT President David Carrion on Tuesday and he suggested that the turnout might be on the modest side, saying that he’d be happy if it drew 250 entries. I shared Carrion’s thoughts over on the PokerStars blog, then came in yesterday very curious to see just how the turnout would turnout.

It was clear during the first hour that David’s hope to reach 250 was going to be a cinch, as there were already close to 200 in seats from the start and late registration (and the reentry period) lasted through the end of the dinner break. As the afternoon wore on they cruised past 250, then 350, then 450, and we were all laughingly trying to come up with suitable adjectives (“staggering,” “stunning,” “jaw-dropping”) to describe the size of the field.

By the dinner break the number was way over 600, then following the final tallying during the early evening it was determined there were 736 total entries, with 532 unique players and 204 reentries. Just incredible. I had to evoke the water slide here called “The Surge” in my end-of-day recap as I was out of adjectives to use.

That meant a prize pool of close to $2 million, just shy of the LAPT’s biggest ever at Brazil last year. The scheduled first prize of $367,928 is almost a tour record as well, with only the $381,030 Dominik Nitsche won in Argentina back in Season 2 being higher.

The LAPT folks were all predictably elated, and I also was excited to see the event prove such a hit. I thought back to David’s references to the event overlapping with the PCA Main Event (which starts today) and other factors that might limit the field size, all of which had sounded reasonable. But it turned out the LAPT Bahamas event was positioned perfectly for many players arriving a little early this year.

Also had a chance to talk with last year’s PCA Main Event champion yesterday, the young Polish player Dominik Panka. Very friendly, well-spoken guy.

We went late last night, and thanks to the super-sized LAPT field today is guaranteed to be a long one, too, as they’ll try to whittle the 183 survivors down to something manageable before tomorrow.

Check back over at the PokerStars blog today for reports on the LAPT Bahamas event, the finish of the Super High Roller, and the start of the PCA Main Event, and also follow the live reporting at PokerNews for hands, counts, and more. Among other things it should be interesting to see if this LAPT Bahamas surge carries over into the Main.

Travel Report: 2015 PCA, Day 1 -- Down-and-Up, Down-and-Up

Was a fun first day yesterday helping report on the $100,000 Super High Roller here at the 2015 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. As expected, the tournament attracted a big turnout -- 61 entries, with 48 unique players. Late registration extends to the start of today’s Day 2, which could possibly add more to the field and prize pool.

While there were some intriguing hands, by far the most interest was derived by the constant games of “What Lodden Thinks” and prop bets, including a couple involving Mike “Timex” McDonald that saw him perform some impressive physical feats.

The first was a $10K bet with Bill Perkins requiring McDonald to perform 300 air-squats during a single one-hour level. That turned out to be relatively simple for McDonald -- in fact, he did 320 with more than 20 minutes to spare. Click here to read my report on how that bet developed and the result.

Later in the day McDonald was given a more strenuous challenge by Perkins to do 350 push-ups in an hour. If McDonald accomplished the feat, he’d win $10K more from Perkins plus another $10K to go to a charity chosen by Timex, and if he lost, he and Perkins would be square with the businessmen winning back his money.

It was quite a scene watching McDonald, ably described by my PokerStars blogging colleague Stephen Bartley. He ultimately came up just shy, doing 323, though earned a lot of respect from all nonetheless. (That pic above was taken during the attempt.)

It was down-and-up, down-and-up for Timex all day beside the table, but strictly up-up-up when he was seated as he managed to win a lot of chips during the day to end in second position. Players were commenting on how he couldn’t play as many hands and also had to act more quickly than usual when he did -- there were no “McDonald stares” -- and so it was interesting to see him accumulating regardless.

Also managed a post yesterday highlighting Donovan’s classic “Atlantis,” a tune that’s basically been stuck in my head ever since I arrived here at the Nassau resort. That’s one of those songs many people have heard yet don’t know the title, instead being more familiar with the much-repeated chorus from which I borrowed my headline: “Way down below the ocean, where I wanna be, she may be.”

Here... you can sing along:

Gonna move over to cover the first ever LAPT Bahamas Main Event today, about which I talked with LAPT President David Carrion yesterday. A lot of excitement surrounding this $3K event, and I’m very curious to see who plays and what the turnout ends up being.

Again, head over the PokerStars blog today for reports on both the LAPT Bahamas event and the Super High Roller, and also follow the live reporting at PokerNews for SHR hands, chip counts, and more. Looking forward to another long day of sitting down, getting up, sitting down, getting up....

Travel Report: 2015 PCA, Arrival -- Slipping and Sliding

My first full day here in the Bahamas was suitably restful with a couple of enjoyable meals bookending an afternoon of water sliding as we took advantage of the time available before the poker cranks up in earnest today.

After a quiet morning in the room tending to various tasks, I met up with my PokerStars blog colleagues Stephen, Howard, and Adam for a burger and root beer float at the Johnny Rockets. Then Adam parted from the group for the afternoon, leaving the three of us to tour the water slides for the next several hours as I took advantage of Stephen and Howard’s considerable prior experience with them.

Had thought initially I’d confine myself to the Lazy River, the super slow, “toddler friendly” slide better suited for those more interested in seeking sun than fun. But thankfully my guides directed me to the more adventurous options.

We rode the Serpent which includes a slow section carrying you through an enclosed tube surrounded by sharks, and also the Surge which like the Serpent features a stretch of complete darkness as you whipped around the curves. If you're curious, those are the first two slides in this video someone took with a GoPro.

We didn't try the Abyss (the third in the video), but Howard and I did go on the Challenger -- a five-second ride in which you race down against one another (Howard won). We also did the Leap of Faith (the fifth ride in that same video).

Otherwise we took a few tours around the River Rapids, which I think stretches about a mile as it winds all around that side of the island near Cove Beach. A fun mix of fast and slow sections in that one, and in fact each of us managed to get completely dumped from our respective tubes once during the day.

There were lots of families enjoying themselves all around us, and I kept thinking how much Vera would have liked it. Also thought of my nephew who turns six next month and how much fun he could have there as well. Spotted a few poker players and media, too, amid our adventuring, here early enjoying the amenities.

I cannot remember the last time I’d been down a water slide. Might well have been way back as a preteen, for all I know. Pretty easy thing to pick back up again, and it was definitely a blast getting a chance just to relax and let the water carry us where it would.

For dinner we all reconvened along with Brad and Joe for a cab ride over to the Poop Deck, a favorite seafood place of the PCA vets, and the Grilled Fisherman’s Platter I had did not disappoint. Just west of Nassau on the northern coast of the island, we had a spectacular view out onto the water tracking the upward progress of the big round moon shining down as it rose from the horizon for its nightly trek.

Having a morning coffee now and readying to ease into things with today’s $100,000 Super High Roller. Looking at a preliminary list of entrants, many of the usual suspects appear set to participate, including a few new ones like the WCOOP Main Event winner Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz.

This is the fifth year of the $100K tournament at the PCA, and it looks like it could attract a largest-ever field for the event. There were 46 entries last year (when Fabian Quoss won), 43 in 2013 (when Scott Seiver won), 30 in 2012 (when Viktor Blom won), and 38 in 2011 (when Eugene Katchalov won the first PCA SHR).

Check over at the PokerStars blog today for reports from this first 2015 PCA event, and additionally follow the live reporting at PokerNews for hands, chip counts, and the usual. I’ll also today be looking ahead to start of tomorrow’s LAPT Bahamas Main Event event, a three-day tournament with a $3,000 buy-in and unlimited reentries. In other words, after today it’ll be a lot more slipping and sliding around from event to event as the 2015 PCA starts to unfold.

Huge Leap at Aussie Millions A$100,000 Challenge

The Aussie Millions A$100,000 Challenge, a quick-structured, two-day event with unlimited re-entries through the start of Day 2, had a remarkable 66 total entries yesterday, pushing the total prize pool up close to $6 milly USD. The second and final day kicks off in about two hours, and there’s a good chance a few more might jump in at this point to push the total up over 70 entries.

Donnie Peters summarizes yesterday’s action over on PokerNews, noting how both Daniel Negreanu and Isaac Haxton entered five times on Day 1, with Negreanu surviving on his fifth try while Haxton busted yet again. Mike “Tîmex” McDonald leads the 29 players still in the hunt, who along with the extra entrants will play down to a winner tonight.

The event was first introduced at the Aussie Millions in 2006. Look at the number of entries for the first eight times the A$100,000 took place (with winners in parentheses):

2006 - 10 (John Juanda)

2007 - 17 (Erick Lindgren)

2008 - 25 (Howard Lederer)

2009 - 23 (David Steicke)

2010 - 24 (Dan Shak)

2011 - 38 (Sam Trickett)

2012 - 22 (Dan Smith)

2013 - 22 (Andrew Robl)

The A$250,000 Super High Roller was added in 2011, which was perhaps a reason for the drop off in the A$100,000 over the last couple of years. That event, incidentally, drew 20 entries in 2011 (Erik Seidel won), 16 entries in 2012 (Phil Ivey won), and 18 in 2013 (with Sam Trickett winning). This year’s version of that event starts this Sunday.

Of course, the unlimited re-entry format is the biggest factor pumping up the total, something that hasn’t always been part of the tourney. In addition to Negreanu and Haxton firing five times each, Dan Shak and Paul Newey each entered three times yesterday, and Tom Dwan twice. (By the way, 100,000 Australian dollars currently equals about $90,000 USD.)

The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure started having its $100,000 Super High Roller Event in 2011, and this year it reached a peak in entries with 46. Again, at the PCA the tourney is also now an unlimited re-entry format. Here are the totals and winners for the PCA $100,000 events:

2011 - 38 (Eugene Katchalov)

2012 - 30 (Viktor Blom)

2013 - 43 (Scott Seiver)

2014 - 46 (Fabian Quoss)

There have been three World Poker Tour Alpha8 events thus far, another $100,000 tourney with re-entries. Those have drawn 21 entries (Florida), 20 (London), and 28 (St. Kitts). The next one happens in a week in Johannesburg, South Africa.

So while this year’s Aussie Millions A$100,000 Challenge won’t come close to the prize pool of last summer’s $111,111 buy-in “One Drop High Rollers” event at the WSOP (not a re-entry) which drew 166 players total -- obviously a unique event -- it still represents a remarkable leap up from what’s been generally happening generally with these six-figure tourneys.

I mean, come on... 70 entries?!? That’s Bob Beamon-esque.

(EDIT [added 2/9/14]: The A$100,000 Challenge ultimately drew 76 entries; meanwhile the LK Boutique A$250,000 Challenge drew an incredible 46 entries.)

Familiar Cast in Latest Super High Roller

The 2014 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure has finished, with the three headlining events -- the $100K Super High Roller, the $25K High Roller, and the $10K Main Event -- all generating a lot of excitement and interesting finishes, with each featuring final tables filled with a lot of familiar faces.

Looking at how the $100K Super High Roller finished up, the top eight finishers for that one contained exactly zero surprises. What I mean is, all eight were players we have seen doing well in high buy-in events before (and low buy-in events, too, for that matter). That got me thinking a little about the short history of these $100K-and-higher events and how we more or less see the same people participating in them every time out.

There was a double-bustout with nine players left in the PCA $100K Super High Roller, which meant only seven were present when the “official” final table began. Thus eighth-place finisher Mike McDonald did not make that photo of the final tablists above (courtesy Danny Maxwell/PokerNews). As it happened only the top eight finishers in the tourney cashed as there were 46 entries total.

Here were the final eight in the $100K Super High Roller (with payouts):

1. Fabian Quoss ($1,629,940)

2. Dan Shak ($1,178,980)

3. Vanessa Selbst ($760,640)

4. Antonio Esfandiari ($575,920)

5. Matt Glantz ($445,520)

6. Tony Gregg ($347,720)

7. Ole Schemion ($277,080)

8. Mike McDonald ($217,320)

It has only been a few years since these tournaments with six-figure buy-ins started popping up regularly at places like the PCA, the Aussie Millions, the WSOP (with its “One Drop” events), and elsewhere.

Looking at these eight names and how all eight have turned up in high rollers/super high rollers frequently of late, my first suspicion was to guess that all of them had probably cashed in $100K-plus events before. I took a peek through Hendon Mob and found that wasn’t quite the case, but most had.

Setting aside these last couple of invite-only PartyPoker Premier League tourneys with the $125,000 buy-ins in which all of the participants cash, it looks like six out of the eight cashers in the 2014 PCA $100K Super High Roller had cashed in six-figure buy-in events before.

Winner Fabian Quoss finished third in the 2013 Aussie Millions A$250,000 Challenge to win A$750,000. Runner-up Dan Shak has cashed three times in Aussie Millions A$100,000 Challenges (winning in 2010 for a A$1.2 million prize), twice before in previous PCA $100K Super High Rollers (in fact he’s final-tabled that one three times in a row), and also cashed in the $111,111 One Drop High Roller at the WSOP last summer.

Vanessa Selbst finished third in both the $25K High Roller and the $100K Super High Roller at the PCA this year, picking up more than $1.36 million between those two cashes. I’d thought she must’ve had a cash in a six-figure buy-in event, but I’m not seeing one among her eye-popping results (which now total more than $10 million in career earnings).

Fourth-place finisher Antonio Esfandiari of course had the big win in the $1 million Big One for One Drop at the 2012 WSOP for a $18,346,673 prize. He also finished fourth in the follow-up $111,111 One Drop High Roller last year for another $1.4 million-plus.

Last year fifth-place finisher Matt Glantz cashed in a couple of six-figure buy-in events, the $111,111 One Drop High Roller (finishing 13th) and the $100K WPT Alpha8 Florida event (finishing fourth). Tony Gregg, who took sixth at the PCA $100K Super High Roller, won the $111,111 One Drop High Roller at the WSOP last summer and the $4,830,619 first prize.

Like Selbst, seventh-place finisher Ole Schemion doesn’t appear to have cashed in a $100K or higher buy-in event before this week, although he did finish sixth in the 2013 EPT Barcelona Super High Roller (a €50,000 event).

And Mike McDonald who took eighth has some final tables in €50,000 Super High Rollers on the EPT, too, plus a third-place in the recent $100K WPT Alpha8 at St. Kitts. McDonald nearly won the Main Event last night as well, finishing runner-up and taking away close to $1.1 million after a deal at three-handed.

Not really pointing out anything particularly surprising here by observing that this latest $100K event featured a lot of the same folks we’re seeing play the others. Stands to reason that those profiting in these events will be reappearing at future $100K final tables both because (1) by winning they’re replenishing their bankrolls enough to keep participating in them, and (2) they’re good players.

The “super” high rollers still retain my interest, even if the narratives they create tend to feature the same characters and produce similar plots. And while the high-dollar buy-ins and prizes probably create some intrigue just because money generally does interest many, it’s really the poker that draws me in, which is almost always being played at a high level at these pro-filled final tables.