Poker Blog and Poker Gossip

Hmm..so, has anyone ever heard of the World Team Poker Event?  Me
either.. But apparently it’s a pretty big deal, and it’s happening on
May 19th. 

The tourney will take place at The Golden Nugget,
and will have team representation from China, Australia, Israel,
Vietnam, England, Brazil and Greece.  As you can imagine, some of the
biggest names in poker will be representing their countries.  The
events will be PLO, LimitHoldem and No Limit Holdem, but no word yet on structure, or weight of the games, weather cumulative, or if the No limit game will crown the best in the world.  

The team from the USA will have many well known faces as well, and be anchored by Phil Helmuth and Doyle Brunson. 
Phil brings the most World Series of Poker bracelets to his name (11 of
them!) to the team while Doyle, who is largely considered the
“Godfather” of modern poker brings years of experience and some recent
major tournament wins.   Unfortunately, Phil Hellmuth has been on a bit
of a down swing these past 2 years, and his last bracelet win was in
2007.  If it were me, i would be choosing a more stable player to
co-anchor with Texas Dolly.  The total bracelets for Team America is 47
and includes these huge poker names: Jennifer Harman, MikeMatusow, Allen Cunningham, Chris Ferguson, Erik Seidel, and the brother/sister combination of Howard Lederer and Annie Duke.

It’s a shame that Canada hasn’t announced a team yet.  Come on Negranu!

Because this is a tournament that is suppose to be determining the best in the world, there will be no satellites to the event, but as always you can satellite into World Series of Poker at any of the major poker rooms!

The
even will also be broadcast on TV but as yet, no one holds the rights
to broadcast. But seriously, has anyone ever heard of this?

I do love me some televised poker, and with the 2009 WSOP out of the way, the “November Nine” a distant memory and Christmas and New Years only a slight lingering hangover, World Poker Tour is set to televise their new season on Fox Sports Net starting January 24th at 11pm.  And for the first time it will be in HD.

While Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten are back commentating it’s unclear weather Amanda Leatherman will also be returning.  In July Steven Lipscomb (WPT President) stated to pokernewsdaily “My sense is that we won’t have a hostess in Season 8. Most of the things we did with the hostess in Season 6 and before we accomplished by holding a microphone in front of someone last year and it worked. We’re trying to make it more about poker.”

I’m personally not sure about this choice, as Shana Hiatt is one of my favourite memories of my introduction into poker, and, while the poker is great to focus on….having an ambassador and hell, some eye candy, can’t hurt either!

Season 8 will follow a similar format as all previous seasons, where it follows 13 final tables in two one hour episodes, which will be premièred Sunday nights through the winter season.  This seasons kick off episode is the $15,000 Bellagio Cup final table, and continues to different venues around the US. 

This years sponsor is one of the top 2 online card rooms FullTiltPoker.net

Will You be tuning in, or did you get your fill in November??

With 2009 coming to an end Tonight, i was asking myself what is the biggest poker story of the year??? I have spoken a lot on this blog about theUIGEA and how the PPA lobbying group delayed the compliance deadline.  But 2009 has been a banner year for the high stakes online poker scene with Isildur1 vs. durrrr, and 2009 has crowned the youngest WSOP Main Event Champ in it’s history. 

UIGEA Deadline Delayed
Not much has happened in the last month or so with the UIGEA deadline.  At the beginning of December Barney Frank and the PPA were successful in getting Treasury Secretary Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernake to delay the deadline by 6 months (to June 2010), essentially preserving on-line poker in the United States, and giving necessary time for “further research” into on-line gaming.  This move is huge, as it’s widely believed to be a shift in thinking toward on-line poker (basically a cash grab for the government), but more importantly it allows on-line players to continue playing in the states without interruption.  Look for developments in this story as 2010 will see further debate and hopefully strong legislation to legalize and regulate on-line poker (instead of criminalize and stop it). 

Isildur1
Isildur1, the unknown Scandinavian, ignited the high stakes tables at Full Tilt poker this fall, and during his rise to super-stardom in the on-line poker world, took down Tom “Durrrr” Dwan.  There was huge coverage of these back and forth battles, and even records set for largest on-line poker win in a single hand, and we sawDurrrr drop down in stakes to rebuild his bankroll.  The end of 2009 was not so rosey for Isildur1, as Phil Ivey and others took note of his play and the wildest swings ever seen by on-line poker resulted.  While this story is far from overIsildur1 changed the way high stakes poker is played on-line.

Youngest Champ in History
This could have been the section i talked about a man who hadn’t played on-line poker, but won the WSOP without a sponsor.  But it’s not.  This is the story of the youngest ever winner of the WSOP main event.  Joe Cada beat out an impressive “November Nine” final table that included huge chip stacks (Darvin Moon), a very seasoned poker pro, who was on everyone’s list to win it (Phil Ivey) and a hole host of others.  Since winning Joe became an excellent ambassador for online poker, appearing on many late night programs and generally helping to bring poker into the mainstream spotlight.

So goodbye 2009. We had some big wins, some records broken, and some losses.  But overall, in 2009 the world of poker continued to push into the lives and living rooms of more and more people, and i can’t see that trend ebbing in 2010…we’ll have to wait and see though!

Going into Heads up play, Cada had a more than 2:1 chip lead over rival Darvin Moon.  He was easily the favourite to win the event based on that alone.

“I don’t know; it still hasn’t hit me,” Cada said moments after the win. “I don’t know what to think.”

“I put a lot of time into poker. Poker has been my life for some time now. Doing this the first year out (at the WSOP) is unbelievable. I got really lucky, I ran well and I am very fortunate.”

But the victory was not a quick, nor was it easy.  Darvin Moon was able to take most of the pots in the first hour, without having to show down a hand.  Moon built his chipstack to draw even with Cada, and eventually had Cada outchipped 3:1.  Cada was forced to play Moon’s game of bigger pots and a lot of pressure.  Cada stated “He’s (Moon) definitely a hard player to get a read or a line on. He did a great job.”

Cada then started applying pressure of his own, four-betting Moon and forcing a fold to gain back some ground.  He then doubled through Moon to take back the lead.  Cada made a huge call with second pair when Moon was all in.  Moon showed an open ended straight draw, and never improved. A few hands later, a pre-flop raising war saw Cada pushing with 99 and Moon made the call with QdJd.  The flop made no improvements to either player, and Cada took down the $8.5 Million first prize. Moon took home $5.1 Million in prize money for second place.

Cada is embracing his win, and plans to spend the next year living the life of a poker pro, and maximizing his new found notoriety.  He said “I definitely plan on playing all the big tournaments, travelling and playing cash games on the side,” he said. “I’ll definitely embrace it. I want to see poker grow.”

The longest final table in WSOP history has come down to the final two players, and Phil Ivey is not one of them.  I wont go through the hand histories of each player’s elimination hand, but Phil Ivey’s is definitely a special case.

He was eliminated from play in 7th place, and this time he was holding a dominating AK over Darvin Moon’s AQ.  Of course, Moon FLOPPED his queen, and no king (or any improving cards for either player) came ending Ivey’s hopes of being the first professional since Mortensen to win a World Series of Poker.

Here is a video of Phil Ivey being eliminated in 2003 while holding Ace Queen.  Better Luck next year Phil! (and, for the record, finding the 6 WPT episodes on youtube that have Ivey getting eliminated holding Ace Queen..more difficult than you’d think..)

Here is the link, as for some reason embedded video isn’t working for me right now!

The two remaining players are Darvin Moon and Joseph Cada.  Darvin Moon had a commanding chip lead when the final table play resumed, however he is facing a tough battle with only 59,000,000 of the remaining chips.  Joseph Cada is well positioned to become the youngest World Series of Poker champion in history with 135,950,000 of the chips, easily out-chipping Moon 2-1 +.

My question is this: Do you think Darvin Moon is a fantastic player who was never noticed due to not playing on line? Or, was he an amature riding a HUGE lucky streak to the top 2 spots in Poker for 2009?

Final Table play resumes tonight at 10pm

Players Eliminated

Akenhead            9th            1,263,602
Schaffel              8th            1,300,228
Ivey                   7th            1,404,014
Begleiter             6th            1,587,160
Shulman             5th            1,953,452
Buchman             4th           2,500,000
Saout                 3rd            3,500,000

I don’t want to mislead anyone, Doyle didn’t take over for anyone who fell ill (as the WSOP starts this weekend!).  He has been tapped to announce “Shuffle Up and Deal” as the WSOP resumes.  Understandably Doyle is excited, and has said “I’m honored and excited to be a part of the 40th WSOP final table and while I wish I’d actually be sitting down in front of a large chip stack, this is the next best thing.”

Over Doyle’s fifty years of playing poker professionally, he has made 24 WSOP final tables and has 10 bracelets to his name.  His total tournament winnings from WSOP’s alone are close to $3 million dollars. It’s a great time for Doyle to be in the spotlight as well, as his autobiography “Godfather of Poker” is being released on the 11th of November.  It has been in the works for years, and chronicles Doyle’s whole career as a professional gambler, father and the trailblazer that brought poker to living rooms across the world. 

And Brunson isn’t done yet.  He has continued innovating and growing with the world of poker, up to and including online poker.  He has recently put together a team of young players called the Brunson 10.  They have been put together to bridge the gap between old-school poker and the rise of the online poker world.  I’m not sure exactly how they are going to do that, but given Doyle’s track record, expectations are high.