Oh yeah, kinda forgot to mention that Barry Shulman defeated Daniel Negreanu heads up for the WSOPE ME title. I actually sweated the final table pretty closely via the live reporting from the good folks at Pokernews. Like the majority of the poker world I was cheering pretty hard for Kid Poker, he’s a good ambassador for the game. A funny summary/parody/newsreport of the final table outcome is over at Wicked Chops Poker, who compared Barry’s win to the Dark Side defeating the Jedi (replete with Darth Vader photo in place of Barry). That’s probably a little harsh but roughly sums up I think the general feeling across the poker community. Definitely recommend the WCP post for a laugh!
Daniel got pretty unlucky to be beaten from what I saw. Several times he had Aces and either got no action or had them cracked … at one stage he had Barry all in with A5s vs AA and Barry made the flush. Then when Daniel got shortstacked he managed to grind it back to almost level before the critical hand, where Negreanu (ironically) got all in on a J high flop with QJ, Barry shows AA, the turn is a J which brings the house down, and then Barry rivers one of his two A outs to cripple Daniel. Shortly thereafter is was 44 vs TT all in and that was that. You can see a video of the critical hands here, it’s not great but captures the audience reaction – including unfortunately Barry Shulman’s wife whom almost everyone must have wanted to throttle as she whooped up the miracle river that delivered Barry the title.
Like many poker fans I’m an avid watcher of the World Series of Poker. I follow all the preliminary events and of course the main event. This years WSOP I thought was fantastic, with Aussie Jeff Lisandro taking an amazing three bracelets in stud events, and of course Phil Ivey’s double braclet win plus becoming a member of the “November Nine”, ie making the final table of the main event. But for me the real highlight was the deep run in the main event of Joe Sebok, who eventually busted 56th. For those of you who don’t know Joe is the CEO of Pokerroad and has run/been part of a series of poker radio shows such as The Circuit, and more recently Poker Road Radio. If you’ve never checked out Pokerroad, I highly recommend it. Joe seems to be a super fun guy, although he attracts some criticism from hardcore poker fans as not really being a top player. Personally I think he epitomises a fun, positive attitude to what must ultimately be a very expensive grind on the tournment circuit.
Anyway – the main event of the WSOP Europe (WSOPE) is currently running. This is a curious event, while they talk about “bracelets” a la the regular WSOP, I’m not really sure where a WSOPE bracelet stands in the context of overall bracelet history and counts. The WSOPE main event is a different beast to its American cousin, with this year’s WSOPE ME having 334 runners, compared to the 6000+ in the tradtional WSOP ME. But the quality of the field in the WSOPE ME seems very high, and so I suspect pro players would regard this title as a significant win.
As I write Pokernews is reporting that 12 players are left standing, with chipcounts as follows:
An interesting list, with two November Niners in Akenhead and Saout, although they are both the short stacks going into the Novemeber final table. Great to see Daniel Negreanu still in it, another great ambassador for the game. Some big names in the top 25 places paid as well with Yevegeniy Timoshenko (25th) who recently as “Jovial Gent” took down the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) Main Event, and of course the biggest name of all, Doyle Brunson, who busted 17th.
I’m cheering for Negreanu of the remaining stacks, but Mercier should be hard to beat as the big chipleader.
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