By Pauly
"The structure is too fast," said Cyndy Violette.
She was the first player eliminated on Day 2. She sat near media row near the ESPN final table and sweated her good friend Mike Wattel who appeared at the feature table for the $50K HORSE event. She peered over my shoulder to check out chip counts. That's when I asked her about the structure.
"Last year's (structure) was better," she said. "Much slower. In all of the events this year, not just HORSE, you start out slow but by the end it's a crap shoot."
By the end of day 3, only 21 players remained out of the original 148. The Day 1 chipleader, Eli Elezra failed to advance to Day 3, along with last year's champion Chip Reese, last year's runner up Andy Bloch, and Phil Ivey who has so many prop bets that it's hard to keep up. There's the $2 million bet (at 5-1 odds) that he'd win a bracelet this year, and I found out on Day 3 about another bet specifically about a $30,000 bet that he made where he was getting 10-1 odds that he's win the HORSE event. If my math is correct... had Ivey won HORSE, he would have collected $10,300,000 in prop bets.
Players busting out of HORSE on Day 3 included... Rob Hollink, Toto Leonidas, Phil Hellmuth, Mike Wattel, Huckleberry Seed, Tuan Le, Eli Elezra, John Juanda, Steve Sung, Isabelle Mercier, Andy Bloch, Robert Mizrachi, David Oppenheim, Erick Lindgren, Sam Grizzle, Thomas Weideman, Allen Cunningham, Daniel Shak, Matthew Hawrilenko, Neal Friets, Joe Tehan, Phil Ivey, Annie Duke, John Hennigan, Erik Seidel, Chip Reese, Scotty Nguyen, David Williams, Greg Mascio, David Sklansky, and Cyndy Violette.
Late in the session, Amnon Filippi had a massive surge and jumped to the front of the pack as the chipleader.
End of Day 3 Chip Counts:Negreanu lost a couple of big pots during Stud and slipped to the bottom. He needs to double up quick if he wants a shot at the final table. Flipchip picked Mike Matusow as his horse to win HORSE. I'm sticking with Mr. Kotter. He'll come out of nowhere to make a final table!
Amnon Filippi - 2,343,000
Kenny Tran - 1,959,000
Bruno Fitoussi - 1,248,000
John Hanson - 1,215,000
David Singer - 1,017,000
Freddy Deeb - 963,000
Tim Phan - 889,000
Barry Greenstein - 700,000
Mike Matusow - 696,000
Gabe Kaplan - 625,000
Thor Hansen - 537,000
Chris Reslock - 536,000
Greg Raymer - 504,000
Mark Gregorich - 386,000
Justin Bonomo - 295,000
Stephen Wolff - 263,000
Dewey Tomko - 248,000
Noah Jefferson - 167,000
Daniel Negreanu - 149,000
Patrick Pezzin - 102,000
Max Pescatori - 81,000
For reasons unknown, I was pulled off of HORSE and have to cover the Day 2 of $2K Limit Hold'em event instead of Day 4 of HORSE. For the first time in almost four weeks, I was super pissed that about my assignment. I should be back for the final table, but in sports terminology, no one wants to be sent to the bench when you're playing well.
And now... some pimpage.
RawVegasTV had an interview with Vinny Vinh's chair.
PokerNews ran an interesting piece on Vinny Vinh.
ESPN will be doing PPV for the final table again. Check it out.
Johnny Hughes has been emailing me since the WSOP. He sent me a link to this piece called Remembering Johnny Moss.
And don't forget about Fantasy Sports Live.
Bouncin Round the Room on Day 26
I bumped into my buddy Zeke from the Borgata. I saw him a week ago and had not seen him since. He told me that he had been playing at the Bellagio's tournament and that their numbers were pathetic. The Bellagio committed suicide by trying to run a series of tournaments during the WSOP. What were they thinking? In the past, the $10K buy-in Bellagio Cup always took place after the main event of the WSOP ended. Although the field was not very large, the event was top heavy with pros. For some reason, the wizards over at the Bellagio decided to go head-on against the WSOP and you know what? They got stomped like a narc at a biker rally or like a bug splattering it's brains out on the windshield of my car. Despite all the complaints about Harrah's and the Rio, the WSOP will always be the premiere event in poker. The Bellagio's weak-ass attempt was like trying to go up against the NFL and the Superbowl. Unreal. Whoever came up with that idea should get fired, especially since they couldn't even outdraw the Venetian's summer tournaments.
At the WSOP, in four of the $1,500 NL events, they had numbers such as 2,998; 2,628; 2,541; and my event was 2,778 players. There were seven Hold'em events at the Bellagio during that same time that drew a paltry... 101, 78, 100, 37, 11, 63, and 78 players. Add all that up... that's 468 players in seven events. We got more players in previous blogger events in Las Vegas than the Bellagio got during that stretch.
The Bellagio can't event outduel the Venetian. According to Lou Krieger, "The Venetian’s Deep Stack II series is averaging 426 players per event for their first ten tournaments... If someone had asked me to make attendance predictions before these events began, I would have said that the Bellagio event would have been in second place. In fact, I would have thought that the Venetian's results and those of the Bellagio would be flip-flopped."
OK... how about some prop bet info? Rafi Amit and Farnood Sharkahn had a $50K last longer in HORSE. They both busted on Day 1 but Amit outlasted Farnood by an hour or so.
Lindgren is supposed to do a crazy prop bet. He has to play four consecutive rounds of golf, shoot under 100 all four times, and walk the course. That seems impossible since he shoot sin the mid-80s, but I think Lindgren can pull it off. He's already got 340K in bets against him including 200K from Phil Ivey. Me? I got $20 against Snake from Wicked Chops Poker. I took Lindgren. Let's hope he pulls this one off.
Tilted Kilt Stella Count: 37
Don't forget to check out LasVegasVegas for Flipchip's WSOP photos and there's the Poker Prof's cool 2007 WSOP Info page.
And come back at the Tao of Poker for daily recaps and head over at PokerNews for live coverage and updates including chipcounts.
For all you fantasy sports junkies, check out our new site... Fantasy Sports Live.
Original content written and provided by Pauly from Tao of Poker. All rights reserved. RSS feeds are for non-commercial use only.
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