Today marks a day of pause in the World Series of Poker coverage, as it should be the first day that online sites are forced to return to old posts and rid their site of photos older than 72 hours (above photo from 2007 WSOP Event #1, which doesn’t fall under these rules). PokerListings has one of many views on this, but I can’t see how this is good for anyone. A quick glance around the web shows most sites have not complied yet, so we’ll see how all of this progresses today. As many have written, poker pros need more exposure, not less, so I can’t see how this benefits them. There must be side deals that exempt certain sites, and the biggest early offenders seem to be some of the biggest sites.
As I’m not part of the official poker media anymore, it is interesting to look at how coverage is unfolding. Several sites have mastered the art of the one-hour update restriction, which is a set-in-stone rule in effect the last two years (and policed in 2007). Sites are not supposed to update their blog or website with live coverage more frequently than an hour at a time, although other news (interviews, news reports, etc) is not covered by this. Probably the best at adapting to this restriction is CardPlayer and their coverage. It pains me to say that, to be sure. They were part of the first evil empire of poker media, and their people were quite arrogant throughout the 2006 WSOP, putting anyone without the CardPlayer badges in their place. I don’t know anyone there, but their tournament coverage is top notch. They have a common format they are using each hour to cover a tournament. It includes the following (in order): Blinds/antes, players left/# in starting field, Chip Leaders, average stack, and Big Hands and Storylines. It gives you a better understanding of how a tournament is progressing and is very easy to read, and I find myself retyping CardPlayer in my browser more than once a day (I can’t leave their site up on my laptop due to too many old scars…).
Event #2 saw the largest non MaIn Event field in the history of the WSOP, and with it came the first significant poker operational problem of the WSOP. A decision had already been made that these hugely popular WSOP-newbie tourneys would be split into two starting days. This brought out an initial red flag of the field dissipating too quickly, getting dangerously close to what the cash bubble might be on Day 1A. Think of it like a golf tournament, where you split the starting field of the Masters into two Days 1 & 2. The second player group would know what score they would have to shoot to make the cut, a very big advantage over the first players. 225 players made it through Day 1A from a field of 2,048, while 224 bagged their chips on Day 1B from a field of 1,881. With 378 players being ultimately being paid, it meant that the Day 1’s were too short (ending around a little after midnight, 19 minutes into Level 9) while the Day 2 was too long. The WSOP started play for Day 2 at 3:00PM Monday, which in retrospect was at least two hours too late (play ended around 12:30AM for Day 1B, and policy is to give players at least twelve hours off). I’m not sure of the exact time, but play ended on Day 2 around 6:00AM after play had gotten down to 18 players. A vote was held, and players will reconvene now at 1:30PM. All of this is an unfortunate side effect from the large field and quick evacuation of players on Days 1A and 1B. It is most unfortunate as the money gets significant as the players dwindle, and most of the players aren’t used to fifteen-hour marathons that end as the sun rises the following morning. I’m not sure why they didn’t simply tell the players to come back at 6:00PM and play to a winner for Day 3, unless it was as a convenience to any Harrah’s executive who would be at the Final Table. Pokerati reports that ESPN made the call as they are planning to film the Final Table. Again, why should that have anything to do with anything?
The first Final Table was all the WSOP could have hoped for, with top pros and recognizable names filling the seats.
1st Nenad Medic $794,112.00
2nd Andy Bloch $488,048.00
3rd Kathy Liebert $306,064.00
4th Mike Sexton $248,160.00
5th Amit Makhija $198,528.00
6th Chris Bell $157,168.00
7th Patrik Antonius $124,080.00
8th Mike Sowers $99,264.00
9th Phil Laak $74,448.00
My buddy Liz Lieu snuck away from her sick bed and entered Event #2 over the weekend. She’s had an evil run with pocket aces all year, and she was knocked out of Day 1B with them. She is blogging for PokerListings, so you can check her out there.
That is another trend this year, pros blogging virtually everywhere. I’ll scout around to see if there are any particularly worth reading. I’m hoping to snag some interviews remotely and will try to sneak in some WSOP content throughout the Series.
