Party Poker Celebrates a Birthday
Date: Thu, Jul 24, 2008
PartyPoker.com is counting down to celebrating its 7th birthday and is giving players an opportunity to join in the party with a $1,000,000 guaranteed Birthday Party bonanza tournament.
There will be no cake, no disco and definitely no unwanted gifts, just a cool $1,000,000 guaranteed prize fund that will be up for grabs in a special tournament on Sunday 10th August at 1245 ET. Daily qualifiers are now taking place at PartyPoker.
Players can buy-in directly to the championship-style blind structured main event for $640. As always, PartyPoker will provide a diverse qualifying structure allowing ALL players, no matter the size of their bankroll, an opportunity to qualify and participate in the $1 Million Birthday Million. Qualifiers start from as little as $1 with a range running daily. It is possible to get involved in the action by using just 15 PartyPoints. Detailed information on qualification can be found here.
A PartyPoker spokesman said,
“There is no doubt this is a party not to miss. It is not often you go to someone else’s birthday celebrations with the chance of walking away with a share of $1,000,000. It will definitely feel like a birthday and Christmas all rolled into one for our big winners. The birthday celebrations will start on Monday 4th August, with a range of special celebration tournaments.
Backlog from the World Series
Date: Mon, Jul 21, 2008
Time to sort through all of those non-WSOP notes and see what has been happening outside of Las Vegas for the past two months.
The most recent Ultimate Bet cheating scandal is still apparently not fully investigated and the results are
"expected to take an additional two to three months."
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You can read a semi-complete account of the current state of the affair based on a conversation between Barry Greenstein and Russ Hamilton, former principle in UB.
There is a documentary based on the final table of the 2005 WSOP about to be released. It's called "Pass the Sugar", yes 2005 when Joe Hachem won the Main Event. Not surprisingly this is an Australian production and Tony Hachem, Joe's brother is a co-producer.
The fact that the press noise around this release says that "Pass the Sugar also will feature interviews with Jennifer Tilly, Jose Canseco and other celeb cardplayers", makes me want to repeat that Jose Canseco is not a celebrity but a old baseball player who thinks it's appropriate to play in Ladies Only events and impose his own warped view of the world on others because he once took steroids and could hit a baseball.
Sticking with show business, the Venetian is going to open a show next month based on poker. The Real Deal will apparently be audience interactive and will include in its cast on a rotating basis, many name poker professionals including: Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Jr., Antonio Esfandiari, Gavin Smith, Eli Elezra, Jennifer Harman, Phil Laak, Scotty Nguyen, and Todd Brunson. The pros will participate in shows each month, taking on the Las Vegas audience members in interactive games. More on The Real Deal can be found here.
The Game Show Network, after deciding not to renew the World Poker Tour and subsequently seeing the WPT move to Fox Sport Network, well GSN decided not to remove poker completely from its lineup and has renewed Poker After Dark for another year.
Betting Odds on the November Nine
Date: Fri, Jul 18, 2008
Chipleader Dennis Phillips (26,295,000) is not the odds on favorite to win the WSOP Main Event, he is listed at 5/1 on PartyBets.
Ivan Demidov (24,400,000) with the second largest chipstack has been installed as the favourite to win the November World Series of Poker main event final table. Ivan currently is listed at 3.68/1.
Scott Montgomery (19,690,000) is offered at 6/1.
Peter Eastgate (13,750,000) is 7/1 to win at PartyBets, while David Rheem (10,230,000) is listed today at 9/1. Ylon Schwartz (15,525,000), Darus Suharto (15,2000,000)and Craig Marquis (10,210,000) are all 11/1.
And finally the chances of short stack Kelly Kim (2,620,000) taking down the $9 million prize are rated at 26/1.
Ivan Demidov 3.68*
Dennis Phillips 5.00*
Scott Montgomery 6.00
Peter Eastgate 7.00
David Rheem 9.00
Ylon Schwartz 11.00
Darus Suharto 11.00
Craig Marquis 11.00
Kelly Kim 26.00
*Demidov and Phillips opened as 4/1 co-favourites, apparently some early money came in on the Russian.
World Series of Poker: Television Schedule
Date: Thu, Jul 17, 2008
With the actual WSOP events nearly over and on hiatus, ESPN will begin broadcasting the 2008 World Series of Poker this week. Below is the U.S. based television schedule. ESPN affliates around the world will be picking all of part of this schedule, I will post those times and channels when they are released.
July 22 -- 8-10 p.m. $10,000 pot-limit hold 'em
July 29 -- 8-10 p.m. $1,500 no-limit hold 'em
Aug. 5 -- 8-10 p.m. $5,000 mixed hold 'em
Aug. 12 -- 8-10 p.m. $1,000 no-limit hold 'em with rebuys
Aug. 19 -- 8-10 p.m. $50,000 HORSE
Aug. 26 -- 8-10 p.m. $10,000 pot-limit Omaha
Sept. 2 -- 8-10 p.m. $10,000 no-limit hold 'em main event
Sept. 9 to Oct. 28 -- 9-11 p.m. $10,000 no-limit hold 'em main event
Nov. 4 -- 8-10 p.m. WSOP main event final table preview show
Nov. 11 -- 9-11 p.m. WSOP main event final table
World Series of Poker: Tournamentus Interruptus
Date: Wed, Jul 16, 2008
"And then there were nine."
.
.
.
.
.
The World Series of Poker got down to the nine survivors; the final table; the November Nine. There were a lot of different reactions when that finally happened.
Relief that it was over.
A sense of being cheated because it wasn't really over.
The beginning of a long period of delayed gratification.
A cool celebration at the final table.
An unsatisfactory celebration because we had not a champion.
As you all know, I was for the delayed WSOP final table from the beginning but you also know I was pulling and praying for at least one "name" player to make the final nine; that did not happen. So we begin a long walk and wait until November. How will this all play out? Well at this point everyone has an opinion and no one has an answer.
This is just the first of many "9" posts.
World Series of Poker: Four Letter Word
Date: Mon, Jul 14, 2008
Whatever your favorite four letter word is, today is the time to mutter it under your breath. No need to shout it out loud, no need to shake your fist and rant to the gods, just mutter it quietly and dream of what might have been. There will be no "big" name at the World Series final table in November. I know the odds were long on someone making it but yesterday they played down to 27 and lost Hellmuth and Matusow. Damn that would have been great. Four months of either of those guys would have been just amazing for poker.
Now the publicity machines will have to focus on the nine who survive today and try to create some interesting characters. Tiffany Michelle is the one player remaining who it might be possible to elevate to some real level of celebrity. Also in the mix are Brandon Cantu and Phi Nguyen both are "know professionals" to the poker world. But it was sad and painful when Matusow left the field in 30th place. The last chance at a truly big show for November was resting on his shoulders and, of course, he got nailed by a 3 outer; but the real bad beat was delivered not to Mike but to the Fall Final.
World Series of Poker: A Penalty Delayed?
Date: Sun, Jul 13, 2008
I was at the ESPN final table last night when the Day Five play ended and Phil Hellmuth was given a one orbit penalty for player abuse. Details of the incident are everywhere, I will only add that I am not convinced Phil did more than he ever does and, in fact, he pointed out to the floor supervisor at one point that: "You guys don't put me at the television table to be quiet."
However, I have a problem with penalties that are accessed beginning with the next day's play. If a player is going to sit out a round of play based on his or her actions; then shouldn't the players who were at the table when the infraction took place benefit from the penalty? I mean Phil will be giving up 81,000 chips [30K/15K blinds, 4K ante] to eight players who were not at his table when the penalty was given.
Let's not even deal with the increased blinds since the penalty was given or the fact that no penalty was considered until the offended player loudly complained to the floor staff. By the way, the other player, Cristian Dragomir, should have also been warned for his behavior but in the shadow of a full Hellmuth rant, it may have been hard to see his rule bending behavior.
I will suggest to the Tournament Director's Association that if a player is given an "overnight" penalty and if there is also a seat/table redraw for the following day that those penalized blinds and antes be removed from play and the player simply is dealt out of the hands. This causes some issues with the blinds but free chips, as is the current solution, seems a not well considered remedy.