Raymer took a couple big hits late last night, losing to a rivered inside straight and taking KQ up against AQ, but he's still in the hunt with a little over $750,000 chips. With 58 players remaining, that puts him just below the average chip stack. Phil Ivey is still in the top 5 with just over $2 million, but Mike Matusow has made a charge and now stands in 2nd place with a little over $2.5 million. The chip leader is Tim Phan with $3.2 million. Also still very much alive are Lee Watkinson ($1.2 million) and John Juanda ($841,000), both very dangerous players.
ESPN is surely drooling over the possibility of having Mike Matusow and Phil Ivey make the final table. That would set up a perfect storyline for their TV coverage, with the loudmouthed and obnoxious Mike the Mouth taking on the soft-spoken and amiable Ivey. The producers are probably treating this like a Jerry Springer show, urging Matusow to keep up his obnoxious behavior and maybe even feeding him drinks and lines of coke. You may remember that last year Matusow won a pot from Raymer fairly late in the tournament and started talking trash, comparing the size of his testicles to the size of Raymer's testicles. After making a total ass out of himself, he then tried to shake Raymer's hand and apologize, which the champion coolly rejected. When Matusow busted out later, the cameras should him crying and virtually having a breakdown. There was a reason for that, which ESPN never told. What Matusow knew, and most of the poker world knew, was that he was facing jail time for a drug conviction shortly after the World Series ended. Since last year's tournament, he has spent 6 months in the Clark County Jail and reemerged to have a semi-meltdown in a World Poker Tour event.
So this is a guy who really is on the edge to some extent and I'm sure the good folks at ESPN are urging him on to greater heights of stupidity because it makes compelling television. It allows them to position him as the Bad Guy when they air this event in a few weeks, and Phil Ivey, the telegenic young boy wonder of poker, would make the ideal white hat to oppose him. So would John Juanda, the affable and brilliant young Asian player, though his thick accent might be a negative in that respect. But believe me, ESPN has a camera crew following Matusow everywhere he goes, hoping to catch him saying something outrageous. And he is too happy to oblige, last night telling some railbirds, "I just can't help it. I play so well the chips just come to me." But the truth is that Matusow really is a very good poker player, even if he does often go on tilt and steam off his chips. If he can hold it together, he has a real chance to win this thing.
There's also a woman in the top 10, a brit named Tiffany Williamson with about 2 million in chips. If I remember correctly, only one woman has ever made the final table at the World Series of Poker, which I'm sure is a function purely of numbers rather than ability. Far fewer women play the game, but there's no reason why a woman can't be just as good as men at poker. A few years ago (before he was arrested for allegedly molesting his granddaughter), Amarillo Slim famously told a reporter that he would slit his throat if a woman ever won the World Series of Poker. While the lower numbers may put the odds on his side, I doubt there's any man in the poker world who really thinks he'd be even money at a table made up of Jennifer Harman, Annie Duke, Kathy Liebert, Barbara Enright or any of a half dozen other great female players.
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Sounds to me like the ESPN folk are trying to apply the World Wrestling Federation formula for success to the tourney. Poker as morality play.
Is this being broadcast? If so, where?
From the comment, it sounds like "amack-down" of WWF fame. Do any of the participants have their own money on the line, or is this like "celebrity poker" on Bravo?
Do any of the participants have their own money on the line, or is this like "celebrity poker" on Bravo?
There is a $10,000 buy-in. But there are "satellite" games with smaller buy-ins to win the $10,000 for the real-deal tournament.
Here's a little more info.
worm eater at July 13, 2005 12:11 PM
I should have said "thanks in advance." I'll thank you now.
There is a $10,000 buy-in. But there are "satellite" games with smaller buy-ins to win the $10,000 for the real-deal tournament.
But there are also some celebs staked by various and sundry organizations.
What happened to Ed's favourite player, Phil Hellmuth? According to lasvegasvegas.com, he busted out in the first round.
This event is not being broadcast now, but it will be on ESPN in a few weeks after they edit in all the spontaneous commentary and edit out all the hands where someone raises pre-flop and everyone else folds. The entry fee is $10,000, but I would guess that less than 1/4 of the entries actually pay that out of pocket. A full 20% of the entries this year - 1116 players - won their seats on Poker St*rs alone, not to mention all of the other rooms that hold satellites and all of the casinos around the world that host live satellites. And for the pros who actually pay their own way, a lot of them have backers or sell portions of themselves to other players as a way of minimizing their risk. The WSOP is actually a series of 42 separate tournaments, with the main event being the last one. A pro who wanted to enter even half those tournaments with his own money could easily risk $100,000 with no guarantee of a return, so they often swap percentages of each other to hedge their risk a bit.
Last year, Greg Raymer only took him a portion of his win because he had a group of backers, not just for the World Series of Poker but for all poker tournaments. He and his wife made a deal a few years ago that he could only have a certain amount of money for his poker bankroll and no more. When he decided he wanted to step up to play larger buyin tournaments, he sought out investors who would contribute a certain amount of money and get a certain percentage of his winnings. He actually posted a message in the usenet poker newsgroup, rec.gambling.poker (RGP), seeking those investors and many regular posters there who had played with him and knew he was talented stepped up and formed a group to back him in tournaments. So when he won the $5 million last year, a large portion of that money was paid out to those backers, who obviously made out quite handsomely for their investment. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that this backing arrangement has now ended. The backers all profited nicely, but now he has more than enough bankroll to do it on his own, plus he has a deal with Poker St*rs to pay his way.
Just wanted to chime in and say thanks for the WSoP coverage. It's fun to follow and your writing (as always) is engaging and interesting. It's kind of nice to take a break from the Deep Thinking and Politics As Usual stuff.
So thanks, and keep it up!
Thanks Jeff. I'm sure there's a portion of my readers who couldn't care less about poker, but it's one of my passions and has been for a long time.
I am not particularly interseted in Poker, but I enjoy reading your commentary.
However, constitutional is law is much simpler and easier to understand.
John wrote:
That's really funny. Of course, both subjects have specific lingo that can appear confusing to someone who doesn't keep up with the field, which I try to avoid using as much as possible. "Raymer smooth called the check-raise after the flop one off the button" probably sounds as odd to someone who doesn't play poker as "the court refused to do a de novo review" does to someone who doesn't keep up with con law. I try to aim the discourse level of my blog at the midpoint between "scholar" and "rank amateur", so that one probably has to be an intelligent person with at least a basic understanding of the issue to understand it, but doesn't have to have a PhD in it.
If I remember correctly, only one woman has ever made the final table at the World Series of Poker, which I'm sure is a function purely of numbers rather than ability.
That was Barb Enright in 1995, but she only had to compete against 300 players then, not 5618. Williamson finished in a very respectable 15th place.