Mission WSOP

It’s been a long night and morning as my day was packed full of work, poker and the occassional check-in to the current goings on in the world.  My WSOP fund is at $182.39, nearly $40 and 6 days aheaad of schedule.  My night of work ended around 10 PM with enough time to head to the DE Poker Room in Newark, DE, touted as "Delaware’s Only Legal Poker Room".  In between a loud bar and a bank with a free Internet cafe, the DE Poker Room runs almost nightly cash games playing low limit Hold’em and dealer’s choice games.  Tonight, I slid into a $2 max bet Dealer’s Choice table where we played mostly Omaha and 7-Card Stud with the occassional slip into Super Hold’em, Pineapple and 5-Card Stud.  We even played a hand of 5-Card Draw.  After a rough beginning, I found myself struggling to stay ahead of the $3-per-30 minute donation expected and ended the 3 hour session at +$2 for the evening.  An interesting table as I was easily the most aggressive player at the table against a group of calling stations with the older women at the table commenting about how "crazy" it was to raise and then instantly calling me down the entire way.  Overall, it was a fun experience because it is such a rarity to get an opportunity to play anything other than Hold’em.  I look forward to next time. 

Throughout the day, I tuned in and out to the hot sports story of the day: Beckham invades the States!  David Beckham, the biggest name in professional soccer, has been lured across the pond by the Los Angeles Galaxy of MLS thanks to the allure of trying to put soccer into relevancy into the United States and a hefty paycheck of roughly $32 million over 5 years.  Now Beckham is expected to resurrect a near last place team and a sport we call soccer and he calls football.  Soccer optimists are banking on Beckham revolutionizing the game in the US.  Some analysts expect the sexy Beckham to bring women to soccer.  They fail to realize that most women would rather shell out $4 a week to ogle Beckham’s phsyique caught by paparazzi and displayed in pics in the latest issue of Us or People.  Some think Beckham will bring excitement to the game of soccer.  "Becks" scored 3 goals in 31 appearances with Real Madrid last season and assisted on 10 more, roughly once every other game.  In a sport consistently ripped in the US for it’s lack of excitement, the Beckham effect may be bigger in getting new spectators to watch but will they stay once they realize it is still that game where we watch uninterrupted for about 2 hours and if my team scores once an hour, we’re thrilled.  In my opinion, Beckham will get a lot of attention but the game of soccer will not benefit.  Heck, Beckham gets a good amount of attention now in the US and no one has been going out of their way to catch a Real Madrid game in recent memory in the US.  Time will tell but I’m betting on the Beckham effect to be negligable although it still may draw viewers than the Stanley Cup finals that recently took place.  I’d tell you what you missed but I wasn’t watching either.

Dumbest Person In The World Candidate #1: "Pacman" Jones

Hypothetical situation:  You are a mega-talented football player in college, drafted fifth overall in 2005.  After a solid rookie season and an even better second year.  Do you:

(A) Get arrested for public intoxication, disorderly conduct and then three months later get arrested for assault after spitting on a woman following an altercation at a night club in Tennessee.

(B) Make a speech vowing to never see the inside of a courtroom only to find yourself involved in an incident which includes a strip club, $81,000 of your money, a melee and a triple shooting causing you to get suspended for an entire season from the NFL.

(C) After finding out of your suspension from your livelihood, drive your orange Lamborghini around the suburbs of Tennessee at 8:30 AM.  To ensure that situation is as complicated as possible, you put tags on the car that are not associated with the luxury sports car but rather another one of the vehicles you own causing yet another arrest due to a registration violation.

(D) Allow your legal representative to issue a statement accusing a sheriff’s deputy of targeting you in the aforementioned traffic stop claiming the police where singling you out.

(E) All of the above.

If you picked (E) then you too may one day be nominated for dumbest person in the world.  "Pacman", we’ll miss you… good luck in the CFL.  I hear the strip clubs in Toronto are amazing.

Finally, the WSOP Main Event is down to 112 players.  More of the big names have exited and all of the celebs are gone… even Spidey!!!  And the chip leader is a guy named Dag!?!

Besides Dag, there are still 2 past Main Event winners left (Huck Seed ‘96 and Scotty Nguyen ‘98).  There are still 12 bracelet winners in contention (Seed (4), Nguyen (4), Humberto Brenes (2), Lee Watkinson, Kirk Morrison, Daniel Alaei, Bob Slezak, Diego Cordovez, Alexander Kravchenko, John Spadavecchia, Francois Safieddine and William "Bill" Edler).  Of the 19 bracelets won, 5 were won playing No Limit Hold’em, 4 each in Pot Limit Omaha and Omaha Hi/Lo, 2 in Razz and 2-7 Lowball, and 1 in Limit Hold’em and 7-Card Stud.  Three of the bracelet winners accomplished the feat this year: Kravchenko, Edler and Safieddine.

Of the 112 players, more than half have cashed (58 of 112).  Humberto Brenes has cashed the most at 48. In total, the players have collectively cashed 331 times, almost 3 times per player.  Huck Seed and Scotty Nguyen both have cashed 33 times as well.  Rounding out the top 5 cashers are John Spadavecchia with 24 cashes and Chad Brown with 18.  Of the 331 cashes, 32 of them have occurred in the Main Event including 10 players who cashed in 2005’s Main Event.  Brenes again tops the list here with this year’s Main Event going to add to his 6 Main Event cashes including 4th place in 1988.  He did not come the closest though as Julian Gardner lost heads up to Robert Varkonyi in ‘02 and then finished 54th in ‘03 and 32nd in ‘04).

Gus Hansen still remains and is in serious contention.  Lee Watkinson is the pro in the best position sitting at 12th place.  The hottest players coming into the Main Event have to be Jared Hamby, William (Bill) Edler and Kirk Morrison, all currently ranked in the Top 25 in Card Player’s 2007 Player Of The Year rankings.

It should be a fun finish as the field plays down to just 27 on Saturday.