I am going to write a little about the WSOP over the next few days, we are now down to just 36 players in the main event, from a field of 6,358 which generated a prize pool of just shy of $60m.
Every player left is guaranteed at least $285k, but having come this far, few will be happy with that, especially with a first prize of $8.25m, the second biggest payday in the history of poker.
The field is led by little known poker pro David Tran with over 10m chips, he has earned just over $500k in 10 years on the circuit and is looking at his biggest cash by far, whatever happens.
The top of the "leaderboard" is made up by a bunch of "unknowns", although internet pro Hevad Khan, currently in 4th spot, is famous on Pokerstars, mainly for playing 26 tables at once online ! There is a video on youtube of him doing this apparently.
Further down the field we have a few better known players, including the only former champion remaining, Scotty ( it's all over baby) Nguyen and well known cash player Daniel Alaei, both sit with just under 2m in chips. Well respected tounament pro Lee Watkinson, has a useful looking 3.5m and would be my choice, if somebody twisted my arm to pick a winner.
Picking out a few others, Bob Slezak won a bracelet back in 2001 and appears to have done almost nothing since. Two inform players with obvious chances, are Bill Edler and Alexander Kravchenko, who have both already won WSOP bracelets this year. Guess that Edler would be the favourite of many pros at this stage.
Although the WSOP picks up most of the column inches, it is not the only game in town. Online pro and high stakes cash game player Brian (sbrugby) Townsend, who just a couple of years ago was playing 50c/ $1 games online, has dropped $1.8m in a little over 36 hours in Las Vegas. Imagine losing $2m in two days, at 25 years old, or any age really. Some of the swings in these big games are brutal and Townsend documents these in his blog, which you can read here, poker is a sick game !
Back later.
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