Is it just me? Every time I walk past this in the hall on the way to the WSOP, I don’t see a patio chair turned into wall art as much as I see an old man’s walker, crushed under an SUV on Valley View trying to get across to one of the Subways in the Gold Coast, covered in colored crepe paper and stuck up to hide the evidence in plain sight.
I took another shot at the 9am mega-satellite on Friday, ending up firing two bullets because the field got to 38 (three full $1500 payouts and one $1200), but didn’t manage to ever get anything going (hence the second bullet).
I debated playing some single-table-satellites, but since I hadn’t been able to connect up with the person I probably would have sold the lammers to (I cannot imagine myself trying to hustle lammers to people in line, even in a full WSOP; I just don’t have the ‘strike-up-a-conversation-with-strangers’ gene) I decided to wait until the $250 Deepstack at 1pm, which has been getting a couple hundred entries the past week.
I made some call in the late morning, then headed down to the All-American Bar & Grill for a salad before I headed in to Pavilion. It was a little after the 1pm start time by then, but I wasn’t too worried, since the levels were 30 minutes. But even though the line didn’t even extend from the satellite cages all the way to the central aisle, it wasn’t moving at all, at first. There were maybe 20 people in front of me and three windows open, but I stood in the same place for a long time. It was nearly. Half hour before I was seated at the table. And I only lasted about 25 minutes, loving a couple chunky hands, then raising K♣J♠ in middle position, getting a couple calls, then seeing a 9x8x7x flop and Qx turn and getting my stack all in and called by 9x9x. Then, of course, Qx on the river.
That was the last tournament poker for me for this trip. I figured that I would go pick up my media credentials, mostly to add them to the collection, and went back to the room to rest up from the excitement of my HORSE min-cash. I saw that I now had a WSOP.com player page and my Hendon Mob profile has the update already, Sadly, it’s not enough to get my on the next installment of the PNW Poker Leaderboard.
I wandered back down to the Amazon room and ran into Kevmath (again, because he’d been one of just five people—including myself—in the drastically-reduced media room earlier) and we firmed up our connections for getting together later. The final two tables of the HORSE tournament were running, and I very much wanted to rail PNW player Kao “Flexx” Saechao, who was second in chips at the time to eventual champ Anthony Zinno (who I’d won a pot from earlier in the tournament, I will remind everyone from now on), but I contented myself with harassing PokerNews because they had Oregon’s Kao Saechao linked in their player profile.
DougChase @PokerNews, I think the wrong profile may be linked for Kao Saechao in the report below. As @HoldemMedia_Dan will attest, there are poker players by that name in all three West Coast states, and the Kao in the $1500 HORSE is from Washington.https://t.co/bnbe1Mp0Dv
— Poker “Socially and Emotionally Distant 2” Mutant (@pokermutant) October 15, 2021
No thanks for that, but they did fix it not long afterward. They might just have noticed that the guy in the player profile looked nothing like the guy at the table. Flexx made 4th place, so great congratulations to him, and he will appear in the Leaderboard. Now wee just need Portland Meadows—named after a horse-racing track—to put on some HORSE tournaments to make Portland the home of Big O and HORSE!
Picked up some beer for Kevmath, went back to the room for a while, then he DMed me to let me know it would be a bit later than he’d expected because of a big news thing, which turned out to be he last-minute announcement of two more day 1s for the Main Event and a reshuffling of the rest of the schedule, to accommodate the relaxation of COVID travel restrictions to the US. He made it about two hours later than he’d originally expected (and I left him waiting outside he door for five minutes because I didn’t see his first couple of DMs, my apologies, Kevin), and we watched some of the endgame of the $5K NLHE 6-Max, from 3-handed until just about the time it ended in real life (though not on the 60-minute PokerGO delay feed) while I got to hear some details of how he came to play next week’s Turbo Bounty bracelet event, and other insights into the weird niche he’s carved out for himself as poker’s social media ganglion.
So people of the world You take a bow Cause I used to be out But I’m flaming now So hold on tight With your knuckles white, cause My time is coming
OMG, I’ve had “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” stuck in my head as an earworm this whole trip. It’s keeping me up at night; right now it’s 4:30am and I’ve been awake for an hour.
That could be because I’ve got some latent adrenaline after yesterday, or it could be because my memory for lyrics is bad, so the chorus of the song is on an endless repeat like the Sergio Leone-style anthem music the WSOP plays over and over before events start.
The restart time for Event #27 $1500 HORSE Day 2 wasn’t until 2pm, so after writing up my post on Day 1, I thought about heading down to satellite land to play the 9am mega but I decided that since Wednesday’s hadn’t had that many entries, I’d be better served keeping it fresh for the HORSE. It felt a little weird to be not playing poker for half a day, considering I’m only here for four days, but I braved the crossing to the Walgreens to pick up some goodies (by which I mean a lot of Diet Coke), rested on the couch, and talked to my wife and father on the phone.
I consulted my wife on the question of which card cap to use for Day 2, and she said to go with the gold.
— Poker “Socially and Emotionally Distant 2” Mutant (@pokermutant) October 14, 2021
So, even with only about 4 hours of sleep, I felt up to the task of trying to somehow make a stack about one-third the average last for the day.
The day started off with good news for me, because I picked up a great hand in the first game of the day—Omaha/8—and managed to more than double up, which put me in median stack territory and room to wait for hands. One of the players at the table came back with just 6500, doubled on the first hand with an AAKx hand but was still so short that he was knocked out shortly after that.
We were early in the break order, so by the next time I did an update on the PokerNewsMyStack app, I’d been moved to another table. I got another double-up there that took me to 95k. Warning #1 for anyone using MyStack, if you take a photo (at least on the iPhone) through the app, MyStack does not save the photo to your Photos library! So take the pic with your Camera and add it to the MyStack post from Photos, or you’re never going to have access to that sweet, sweet chip porn, because there’s no way to export the image.
Doubled up early in O8. Table change, then managed to get rolled up kings in Stud/8 and scoop a big hand with 2 pair. Got up to 90K, then lost 30 of it with 4 flush cards and a low draw where I made a pair of 3s.
— Poker “Socially and Emotionally Distant 2” Mutant (@pokermutant) October 14, 2021
It was a bit of a roller coaster, I have to say. I haven’t played much HORSE live or online in recent years, and I can’t say I remember my game being this swingy before. Maybe I just don’t remember it. Anyway, two hours in, I was n worse shape than when I started, with just three big bets and 45 players to go before the money.
Did You Miss Me, Baby? Here I Am.
That was right about the time I went to do an update on MyStack and noticed that I’d been reported busted by PokerNews somehow.
I mean, geez, I didn’t think I was significant enough to get even a cursory bust report. We’re they reading my Twitter reports and just extrapolating? I mean, I’m a former WSOP live reporter and a former contributor to PokerNews.com. Where’s the love? I went over to the media table to check things out and the guy was unhelpful. I suspect this is some sort of software bug, because at my last table of the day, I heard James Woods, who reports on the app, mentioning to someone on the rail that it had happened to him, and I’m pretty sure nobody’s erroneously marking him out.
Just a note to the MyStack devs who aren’t reading this post: the Feed needs times, not just the date.
Another table change and I had a couple great hands in Stud/8 that put me back over 100K. Briefly.
Moved to new table 25/A4 in Stud/8 just gets better with two more aces on fifth and sixth.
— Poker “Socially and Emotionally Distant 2” Mutant (@pokermutant) October 14, 2021
That was the peak for me. We had 20 places to the money still, and I got my third(?) table change, finally over to the far side of the Orange section, about three hours into the day. Half an hour later were were told we were going hand-for-hand, then after about five minutes where I could see Norman Chad and some other folks standing at a table in the middle of the section, a rumor started going around we were already in the money.. Finally the announcement came through and I’d cashed at the WSOP for the first time. It was almost a little anti-climatic.
MEDIOCRE DAY TURNS WORSE As I was being processed for cashing in the $1500 WSOP HORSE event — there was no re-entry yet I somehow LOST money cashing (don’t ask) — my player card dropped from this copying machine and could not be found.
I was back to critically short by this point. Not so much from trying to eke into the min-cash but because I’d gotten Stud hands in the Razz rounds and Razz hands in the Stud rounds. Limits were up to 8k/16k; even the 2K antes in the Stud games were eating though my shot stack pretty fast. I had to commit to a Stud/8 hand that looked pretty good with three low cars a nut flush possibility, but the best I ended up with was a pair of threes. And that was it! I was a WSOP casher on my fourth bracelet event.
Got my cash from Payout, went back to Amazon to take a pic of the tournament clock—I forgot when I busted, I’m out of practice—then headed to my room to try to catch up various people. Apologies to the little poker group I belong to, PokerTeam 1: Brad, Steve, and Daryl, who I’d been updating through the day but neglected to ell I’d cashed among all the other people I was informing.
So, is a Smashburger a thing? Because it seems to me every short-order cook already used their spatula to smush the patty onto the grill.
Not sure what I’m gong to do with the next day and a half. I’m hoping the satellite scene picks up a bit on the weekend, plus going to try to arch up with Jeremy Harkin who’s been greatly encouraging—not to mention renting me a room wen I was down here as a reporter—and maybe grab a beer or two with Kevmath if we can squeeze it in.
This isn’t (hopefully) going to be a long post; it’s a little before 8:30am as I’m typing this, hoping I’ll get sleepy by staring at the screen, but I’ve been up for over an hour and I didn’t get to sleep until 4.
Yesterday started off with me popping over to Denny’s catty-corner from the Rio. It seems like, despite the wide-open rep of Las Vegas—many of the restaurants in the casino complex are shuttered—at least during the weekdays—which has led to scenes like this.
— Poker “Socially and Emotionally Distant 2” Mutant (@pokermutant) October 14, 2021
Denny’s, on the other hand, was busy and considerably less expensive than anything I’d seen on the menus at the Rio. All you have to do is take your life into your hands by walking across both Flamingo and Valley View each direction during morning rush hour to get there.
First order of the day was to get registered for Event #196 $180 NLHE Turbo Mega Satellite. I had my three $500 lammers from the evening before, but I was hoping to pick up another $1500 in lammers from this satellite. I’m starting to think my decision to grind satellites in the COVID era was -EV. By the end of registration, only 18 players had joined in, which meat just one full payout and one of two lamps and $200 cash. I had one AxQx hand get all in against AxJx and lose, which mostly wiped me out an I ended up fifth. The other players were discussing how to potentially chop it up as I picked up my bag, while the TD pretended something on the far wall of the Pavilion room was interesting.
— Poker “Socially and Emotionally Distant 2” Mutant (@pokermutant) October 13, 2021
That took a couple hours. It was time to make a decision about the path of my next three days in Vegas. I was (discounting expenses and treating my lammers as actual dollars) slightly ahead on the trip after the first day. Do I a) buy into the HORSE tournament? or b) use the lammers for the bulk of three more $580 mega satellites? With the number of players the mega were getting, I wasn’t sure how many of those were going to be profitable for me—I really prefer the larger satellite fields—and they could mean forgoing the two other bracelet events I was interested in.
As it happened, my passions took the lead and I dropped my lammers at the cage to register for HORSE.
Got the winner of the 2016 $1500 HORSE event I covered as a live reporter sitting next to me in the 2021 $1500 HORSE
— Poker “Socially and Emotionally Distant 2” Mutant (@pokermutant) October 13, 2021
My first table in the HORSE tournament couldn’t have had a better location. Though it also had Ian Johns in the seat next to me. It seemed like several other players there were from Washington state, as well. The next table wasn’t so good, in the ass-end of the Tan section of Amazon with bad lighting that made it difficult for the older players—not me, of course—to see the stud variant up cards at the other end of the table. Ran into some serious hardships and was down to 7k from 25k at one point before a phenomenal O8 segment took me up over starting stack and nearly 40k.
Got moved after a couple hours to a table with better lighting but also Alan Kessler. I lost the first hand I played there (to him) and then a (for me) massive hand where I had seven hearts in stud and I had to call off on the river when he raised me with his rivered boat. That stung. I did manage to pull off a flush that held up against Anthony Zinno to recover a bit.
Got moved to a table with Barry Greenstein and was dealt 2♦3♦4♦ in Razz, which got me excited. Then I got 2 black kings, which took some of the edge off. At this point, we were nearing the final three levels of play, which is still two hours before bagging, but I’d made it past the ed of registration, and if I could hang on with my <10 big bet stack, I might be able to make Day 2.
Attendance was down a bit for this event. There were 751 entries in 2019 and just 594 yesterday, which is a full 20% drop. I’m guessing that’s probably worse for someone like myself, because most of the people who aren’t showing up are the more casual HORSE players (like me).
Ran into Joe Brandenberg in the halls, and Jeff Mitseff at the next table at the end of the night. We got the “five hands” notice from the floor just as we headed into the Razz round. I think I managed to stay out of most of those hands.
Anyway, my table draw is interesting. Felipe Ramos is #3 in live tournament earnings in Brazil. Ron Ware runs the Mixed Game Poker in Las Vegas group on Facebook.
After we bagged up, I needed to find some food. If there was anything open at the Rio during the day, it wasn’t open at 2:15am. I headed across to Ping Pang Pong (crossing Valley View in the dark, yeek!) and managed to wolf down my first food since breakfast. This hibernation fat is good for something!
Going to try to make the day last as long as I can! Usually I change out the card cover each time I cash, I’ve got to decide whether making Day 2 of my first WSOP bracelet event is significant enough to swap out.
As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am not a professional poker player. The last bracelet event I played at the World Series of Poker was in 2013. I’ve only ever played two (well, now three) bracelet events, and they were back when the WSOP first introduced $1,000 events. This year, I sunk even lower and entered a $600 bracelet event.
It’s been a long haul, folks, Years ago, I’d heard about folks grinding satellites, and even though I felt I was decent at playing them, I’d never had the discipline to sit down and just do it. So many tournaments in the summer (or anytime I was likely to be going to Vegas), so many variations. Never mind that I’d done reasonably well in the Ignition Casino Thousandaire Makers (only to blow the money I made on MTTs). Never mind that I had Dara O’Kearney’s Poker Satellite Strategy on my Kindle mostly unread.
I did put my plan into action when I came down in 2018, but bricked out. In 2019, when I ‘retired’ from poker, I had to cancel the trip at the last minute because of work, and you know what happened to 2020. So I really wanted to take advantage of this revival year—and experience a WSOP that didn’t melt me when I walked outdoors.
I made my plans as soon as the schedule was announced, centering the trip around three bracelet events: #24 $600 PLO 8-Max, #27 $1500 HORSE, and #28 $1000 PLO 8-Max. Plus the usual $180 mega satellites and the daily $580 mega satellite. I figured either this WSOP would be one of the easiest (with so many players choosing not to or unable to travel to the US) or really hard (with the people who were dedicated to making it to the WSOP being concentrated with pros).
Up at 4am to catch the first flight to Vegas today. Disregard the enticing $250 offers from the airline to give up my seat for a later flight—we’re on a schedule, man!
Plane lands around 8:30. Now, spite months of mental preparation for this trip, I made a very essential error: fucking Columbus Day (I’m using that instead of Indigenous Peoples’ Day because this is a comment about how the day screwed me over). I wasn’t planning to travel with a huge wad of money, just enough to get me through the first day or so, but Friday was a bitch and Saturday I had stuff to do around the house, I old just pick up my cash from the bank on Monday, right? Did I remember that banks were going o be closed on Monday? No. And even the cheap-ass PLO game was more than an ATM puts out.
So, when I get to Las Vegas, I need to get to a branch of my bank, of which there are a number in town, one just a couple miles from the airport. It even opens at 9. I get there a quarter hour before it opens and it’s a cubbyhole inside the student union at UNLV. I just hope it has money.
Branch opens up, the very nice branch assistant tells me my specific ask is no problem, until they get to the part where they give me the money and they tell me that there’s some weird thing about the way the business account I have had for my sole proprietorship for more than a quarter of a century is set up in their system and I’m somehow not the “owner” of the account. Fie on you, Christopher Columbus! Anyway, it’s resolved by me transferring the amount I need to my linked personal account and taking it out of there. I was reminded that when I had some a paycheck—from Caesar’s Entertainment, one of the largest employers here—to my account a few years ago, one of the branches in a grocery store couldn’t take my deposit without the branch manager being there, which they were not. It was not, dear reader, a large sum of money.
— Poker “Socially and Emotionally Distant 2” Mutant (@pokermutant) October 12, 2021
The Rio at 9:30 this morning was quiet. Hardly any line for the registration cage. Mid-week mornings are good. I was bought in an hour before the event and kicked around. It was surprising to see what’s operating next what’s not. There were a fe people sitting at the tables inside Starbucks, but the lights were off and I didn’t see anyone behind the counter. That’s fine, I don’t drink coffee except socially.
So, how’d my first bracelet event in eight years go? Not so great. I was in a steady drift down for most of my time in the tournament, with a couple of players—one at the far end of the table and one just to my left—picking off chips. I looked at their stacks a couple of times before anyone had been knocked off the table and was a bit puzzled at where they’d all come from, I’d lost a lot but not that many, and it seemed like other people had more than me, too. I shrank down to less than a fifth of the 30k starting stack over the first four levels, then suddenly caught some fire in Level 5.
AA44 late pot over a raise and call does not go well. KKxx hits the flop and a wrap takes it with a straight. Should have got away on the flop even though I would have been back down to 20k. pic.twitter.com/PmSHjno5gb
— Poker “Socially and Emotionally Distant 2” Mutant (@pokermutant) October 12, 2021
Our little corner of the Brasilia room didn’t see any water service for a couple hours. I was damned if I was paying for some other drink. I wanted my 10oz/$1 water. Maybe the lack of hydration was messing with my game.
My stack got up to almost where it had started three-and-a-half hours before before I potted with a rainbow AA44, got called by two players, then shoved on a KQx flop where I ought to have known I was beat. Both players shoved, one with an open-ended draw and the other with a set of kings and the wrap made a king-high straight.
So naturally, instead of looking for something t eat or drink (all I’d had since the night before was airplane biscotti, which was pretty good), I went back to the reg cage to get into the $580 mega. Now the lines were a bit longer, it took about 40 minutes to get my ticket, even though the line—full of anxious PLO re-entries—didn’t reach the main hall. It’s almost enough to make me go sign up with Fastrac, which I was discussing with a couple of the folks in line behind me, only to have someone who’d just signed up have some serious frustrations with the machine outside registration.
So I got to the mega almost 90 minutes in, with 10k of chips and 400/800/800 blinds. Just the way I like to burn $580. This went a to better, even though there were a couple of large stacks. I was one of the later entries but there were only 24 by the end of registration, which was going to yield two payouts of $5k in lammer chips and one of $2k.
I was playing tight (12bb!) then less than half an hour in I had to call with AK and the guy who’d been opening a bit too much a little sheepishly turned over Q2 after raising 10x. The the big stack on my right raised a hand and I caught trip 9s on a flop with T♠9♠ which knocked him out. So I had a quarter of the chips as we went into a break and consolidated to a table of 9.
But then work interrupted. Something back home att the job was messed up. It was probably my fault, and I’m getting calls from the client who I don’t usually talk to, what with me being a worker grunt and not the face of the enterprise. I faltered and raised Q♠J♠, then called an all-in from a player at the other end of the table, who had enough to halve my stack, which was more than everyone else, but not especially deep.
The highlight of the evening was probably when I called with KxQx against an all-in from a two-time bracelet winner (someone I should have recognized, but it’s been a few years since it was my job to know these guys) and cracked his Ax hand. That wasn’t long before he shoved a small stack with tens T♠T♣, got called by T♥9♥ and the board ran out 4♠8♣4♥4♣4♦ for a chopped pot, which must just have been crushing, even to a pro.
We got down to 4 players, on the bubble and K, the player on my left and I were tied at about 37k, less than 10bb. I was getting the best of it, because the other old man at the table, P, gave me a couple walks and K wasn’t getting that, so he got a little shorter than me. T, the player with the most chips, proposed a chop, with him taking the full $5K, and P and myself passing a lammer chip each to K. Who am I to turn down a deal that pus me in the red for the day (not counting other expenses.
Everyone agreed to the deal, we went through the process to get out lammers, and that’s how I got my first-ever payout at the WSOP, though it’s not technically money. All for of us waved to the payout room together, T got his chips first, P went up to the window, but even though I had to wait in line for a little to get my paperwork and payout, P was still at the window. Both T and I hung around to make sure K got his other chip (I’d flipped him one right after I got them), and P paid off his part in casino chips for some reason. Everyone satisfied (except for the part where I blew $3500 in equity) we headed our separate ways. I got checked in, got some fluids, and had a nice pork-fried rice.
It’s only three days in to the 2021 World Series of Poker so there weren’t a lot of results yet from Las Vegas when I ran the numbers this morning. The only WSOP tournaments that had completed were Event #1 NLHE Casino Employees and Event #3 NLHE Covid-19 Relief, both two-day events that wrapped up on Friday. Several others have concluded by the time I’m writing this, though, includingthe one I had my hopes on: Event #2 $25K HORSE, so I’m already behind and I haven’t even gotten to Vegas yet.
Man, this is likely the only time I’m ever going to be next to @MariaHo!
— Poker “Socially and Emotionally Distant 2” Mutant (@pokermutant) September 24, 2021
A pretty short list of results this time around, with what seems to have been a lulll in events before the WSOP started up.
First off is Toppenish, Washington’s Rafael Haro, GPI: 4,889, with a 3rd place finish in Los Angeles, at the Commerce Hold’em Series NLHE Main Event. The tournament drew 399 entries for a prize pool of $399K. Haro placed one spot higher than Barry Greenstein. Haro moves nearly 1,000 places up the Leaderboard, to#923 from #1920.
Seth DaviesGPI:64 continues to do well in the high stakes games with a runner-up finish out of 38 entries at Poker Masters #10 NLHE. Davies maintains his #1 position on the Leaderboard.
And believe it or not, we’re already at the final result for this Leaderboard: Yesit’s Christopher Brewer, winner out of 57 entries in the Poker Masters #8 NLHE. Brewer isGPI:65 (just one spot behind Davies) and moves up on this Leaderboard five spots, to #16, jumping over the likes of Darren Rabinowitz, Quinn Do, Matthew Jarvis, George Wolff, and Tyler Patterson.
Also, want to mention that Hendon Mob is great people!
I’m actually a little late with this one, I should have done it a couple weeks ago, but life intervened. These are the top tournament earners from the PNW for the past three months (some movements are the result of late reporting from 2020 tournaments). Player whose names are followed by an asterisk were on the list last quarter.
No messing around this time, because I ran these stats a few days ago before heading to Seattle for the weekend (no poker! my wife’s birthday!) thinking I’d get it done late at night and I did not. I did get a chance to meet up with my old poker brother Jason Brown at Pike Place Market, though, so this edition is dedicated to him.
Lots of jumping back and forth in the stats here, apparently the Canadian tournament series reported at the beginning of the month led to results from a 2020 getting reported to Hendon Mob, so some of the info here is slow-release. Then, there are some results you’ve probably already heard about from last week that aren’t here but because I ran the Leaderboard scripts on Wednesday,
Oner of those 202 results, Viet Do from Calgary was the third-place finisher in last November’s 242-entry Deerfoot 2020 Fall Super Stack #3 NLHE Megastack. It’s Do’s 6th and largest cash. Do (GPI:30,952) moves from #4353 to #2702. The runner-up was Weston Pring, also of Calgary, GPI:5,456 who pops up to #512, more than 140 places.
Matthew JewettGPI:2,809 of Shoreline, Washington made the final table in ninth place at the $1,100 Wynn Signature Series $500K GTD NLHE. 935 entries made a prize pool of $908K. Jewett rises more than 100 places on the Leaderboard to #591.
Cranbrook, British Columbia’s Timothy Andrew GPI:21,928 was the winner of the Deerfoot 2020 FSS #1 NLHE Deepstack, a C$350 buyin tournament with 306 entries. Andrew goes from #418 to #374.
Over in Rozvadov in the Czech Republic, Kris SteinbachGPI:1,656 “seigt beim”—as they say—at King’s Casino in a side event of the WSOPC in Europe. 57 player (plus 13 re-entries) made the €1,100 buyin for WSOPC Rozvadov €50K GTDNLHE King’s 1000. There was a 4-way deal. Steinbach moves up 17 places to #260.
On September 11, Kao Saechao was the last player standing of the 113 player $550 NLH $50,000 GTD. Congratulations Flex for winning $17,078 and the trophy!
Kao “Flex” Saechao was the winner of a trophy for the Wynn Signature Series $50K GTD NLHE on September 11. No stats on this one at the moment, because Hendon Mob gave it to the wrong Kao Saechao.
Calgary’s Cuong LieuGPI:10,194 jumped nearly 900 places on the Leaderboard to #859 with a best-ever cash in the Deerfoot 2020 FSS #4 NLHE Superstack. There was an even chop of the top two players, out of the 280 entries.
Adam Hendrix (GPI:3) claimed 1st in the PokerMasters #3 PLO, and $10K buyin with 69 entries. It’s enough to move Hendrix two positions on the Leaderboard, to #24.
And, of course, there’s #1 Seth Davies again GPI:73. continuing to put space between himself and everyone else on the Leaderboard, with a win at the Merit Poker Super High Roller Bowl #8 NLHE, a $50K buyin with 14 entries in Cyprus.
Congratulations are in order to Joe Brandenberg, whose win of the Big O tournament at the Ante Up Poker Tour World Championship Series at Thunder Valley Casino & Resort, combined with final table spots in the HORSE and FL Omaha Hi-Lo put him in the lead for the Player of the Year, which netted him a free entry to the series’s Main Event and a couple nights at the resort. Portland Big O forever!
The second edition of The Kevmath Report is out. You can read in there about Norman Chad’s #DonkeyCaravan, his plan to play the WSOP’s $25K buyin HORSE tournament; he’s selling pieces on stakekings.com for 1.5 markup, with all of the markup going to the Hope for Depression Research Foundation. I’ve got a piece; here’s hoping that Norm makes it deep and funds my WSOP!
PNW Poker Leaderboard
Lots of news from up north, as some of the first tournament series kicked off in Canada since the pandemic started!
Nohad Tellani of Edmonton (GPI: 10,235) picked up his biggest-ever cash with a win of the Summer Super Stack #7 PLO at Deerfoot Inn & Casino in Calgary. Tellani beat 165 other players in a prize pool of almost C$57K (US$45K). He climbs just over 300 places on the Leaderboard, to #1224.
Another Edmontonian, Malcolm Bolger (GPI: 10,858) took 4th in the Summer Super Stack #2 NLHE Megastack. That event drew 488 entries and made a prize pool of C$232K. Bolger was already #150 on the Leaderboard and rises to #144. Sherwood Park, Alberta’s Kris Steinbach took 2nd, pushing him fifty places up the Leaderboard to #283 (GPI: 3,763).
Talal Shoush of Edmonton (GPI: 6,858) came in 6th in the Summer Super Stack #8 NLHE Superstack. Shoush moves more than 200 places to #828, but he was not the only entry from that tournament (695 players, C$660K prize pool) to make this edition of the Leaderboard. Coming in at 5th was Haowei Pan (GPI: 6,914) from Alberta, picking up their biggest cash to date and debuting on the Leaderboard at #2304. In 3rd was Calgary’s James Yang (GPI: 9,122) picking up their first Hendon Mob result in six years, their largest-ever cash, and debuting on the Leaderboard at #723. Homan Mohammadi of North Vancouver (that would be north of the Vancouver to the north of Vancouver) was the runner-up. He’s GPI: 5,922 and moves from #87 to #79. Alberta-based Diem Tran (GPI: 4,117) was the winner; it’s Tran’s third Hendon Mob result (one of the others was in the PLO tournament above) and by far the largest. His debut on the Leaderboard is at #841.
Straddling both Megastack and Superstack, Calgary’s Zhun Rui Chen placed 3rd in the Megastack before claiming 7th in the Superstack a week later. Chen is GPI: 5,539 and makes a first appearance on the Leaderboard at #904.
Also out of Calgary, Tyler Thomas was the 3rd-place finisher in the 653-entry, C$186K prize pool Summer Super Stack #6 NLHE Deepstack. Thomas is GPI: 9,323 and jumps nearly three hundred spots on the Leaderboard to #984. Toma Raffaul from Alberta (GPI: 22,921) got his first Hendon Mob cash in 2nd place, entering the Leaderboard as #2824, and Lethbridge, Alberta’s Robert McMurren picked up the win and his second-ever cash to jump in at #1829 (GPI: 19,069).
For our last Canadian result of this edition, climbing 370 places on the Leaderboard to #1087 is Omar Stefanini of Coquitlam, British Columbia, who took first place in the Summer Super Stack #5 NLHE/PLO Mix (112 entries, C$53K prize pool. It’s Stefanini’s largest cash GPI: 2,370.
I said Canadian result not Canadian player, right? Because Edmonton player Sam KimGPI: 14,874 placed 3rd in the World Poker Tour Choctaw #17 NLHE Monster Stack. There were over 700 entries and a prize pool of more than $200K. Kim moves up nearly 1,000 spots on the Leaderboard, to #1544.
And then there was Calgary’s Rey LeeGPI: 2,574 who squeaks onto the Leaderboard with his biggest cash at 20th in the Venetian/WPTDeepstacks $2M GTD NLHE Main Event. Lee climbs 900+ places to #1338.
What about our compatriots south of the border? Well, if it’s a Leaderboard these days, there’s got to be a Christopher Brewer result. Brewer took 2nd in the Merit Poker/PokerGO Super High Roller Bowl Europe #3 NLHE, with 26 entries and 19 re-entries at $25K a pop (assuming that’s on top of the 26; it paid 7 places). Brewer is GPI: 137 and moves up five slots on the Leaderboard, to #21. This finds Brewer moving up past the likes of Elliot Smith, Daniel Idema, Max Young, Doug Lee, and Adam Hendrix.
Brewer still has a way to go to catch #1 on the Leaderboard Seth DaviesGPI:45, who continues to put space between himself and the rest of the pack this time. Davies was runner-up in SHRBE #5 NLHE Short Deck and won SHRBE #8 NLHE.
Kind of a bummer week for the PNW poker scene as surging COVID case numbers led to governors in both Oregon and Washington imposing mask mandates on indoor facilities once again, and an outbreak at Chinook Winds Casino led to both a two-week (minimum) shitdown and the cancellation of the Fall Coast Classic.
I’d been starting to wonder if I should go, even though I was only going to be able to make the first weekend. I’d gotten a room reservation (now cancelled) and been planning to see some folks I hadn’t connected with for a long time. Not to mention Boozy Shakes at the ’60s Cafe and Diner.Really wondering if I’m going to see the WSOP‘s last hurrah at the Rio,
PNW Poker Leaderboard
First up in this edition is Portland’s Landen Lucas, who placed 17th out of 490 entries at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open/POKER GO #35 $1M GTD NLHE in Hollywood, Florida. Lucas climbs nearly thirty places on the Leaderboard to #353. GPI: 2,130.
Darren Rabinowitz came in 6th at the SHRPO #34 $3M GTD NLHE Championship (1,880 entries). His cash moves him from #22 to #20. GPI: #582. Matt Affleck was just ahead of him in 5th, for his first significant live cash in a while. He sticks at #15 on the Leaderboard. GPI: 3,686.
Chris Brewer — GPI: 178 — won the title in an ICM chop with Sean Winter in the 24-player SHRPO #24 NLHE Super High Roller. Brewer climbs 5 more places on the Leaderboard to #26
Writing this up after a very disappointing experience in the Ignition Super Millions Poker Open $350K GTD NLHE Main Event this afternoon. I don’t even want to talk about it. Ran like God in the satty. At least I didn’t win and have to forfeit my winnings because I violated the Terms of Service!
According to Kindle I’ve only read 8% of @daraokearney’s “Poker Satellite Strategy” but I just won a ticket for tomorrow’s $350K GTD SMPO Main Event on @IgnitionCasino! Pay attention to the part about overlay! pic.twitter.com/PaTz9Gvr92
— Poker “Socially and Emotionally Distant 2” Mutant (@pokermutant) August 15, 2021
Oddly enough, things slowed down a little mid-July, despite what seemed to be a huge amount of poker going on. Maybe I’m just starting to get excited/worried about the state of things in Las Vegas for the WSOP; Clark County, Nevada just passed a mask requirement for employees of public-facing establishments—vaccinated or not—the other day. Crossing my fingers.
As explained in the latest Lock In, it's looking increasingly unlikely that I (and many other Euros) will make it to the WSOP this year but for those who are going…. https://t.co/dUq4bGerwx
Starting off this very short Leaderboard with a dip below my usual threshold for reporting; and by ‘dip’ I mean, of course Dan “Goofy” Beecher (friend of the blog) who was part of a 4-way deal in the Venetian/PokerGO Deepstack Championship Poker Series #109 $20K GTD NLHE MonsterStack. Beecher took 3rd in the field of 149. He’s 2,313 on the Global Poker Index, and he moves up twenty places on the PNW Poker Leaderboard to #326.
Sequim’s Scott Silverman has a long record of Hendon Mob cashes, starting back in 1990, but not anything that’s popped up above the reporting limits for the lLeaderboard, which is why we might find him making a debut at #337 from his 3rd-place cash at the Venetian #107 $20K GTD NLHE Seniors. There were 181 entries in the tournament, and 2nd place went to another PNW player, Bruce Sicard of Hillsboro, who picked up his very first recorded cash and pops up at #3850. Why the 3500-place disparity, you might ask, when Sicard presumably made better money at 2nd than Silverman at 3rd? Because the Leaderboard is based on lifetime recorded cashes and Silverman’s record is much longer. Neither Silverman’s or Sicard’s winnings have generated a GPI score yet.
Aaron Thivyanathan (GPI: 89)headed down to Florida for the last half of the month, and promptly won the Seminole Hard Rock One Day Challenge NLHE, a 129-entry game that generated a prize pool of $125K. That’s good for nearly sixty spots on the Leaderboard: Thivyanathan is no #220.
And the last player on the Leaderboard for the month of July is Shoreline, Washington’s Matthew Jewett, due to a lifetime best cash in the Wynn Summer Classic $500K GTD NLHE. Jewett took 2nd out of 2,480 entries in what appears (per payouts) to have been a 5-way ICM chop. The total prize pool was more than a million dollars. Jewett is GPI: 7099 and goes from #4291 to #704 on the PNW Poker Leaderboard.
It’s been suspected for a while that this year’s WSOP would be the last one held at the Rio All-Suite Hotel. There hasn’t been an official announcement yet, but cancellation of a long-standing reservation for a pool tournament at Bally’s appears to have inadvertently broken the news.
With the Rio having been sold, and slated to become a Hyatt Hotel, a move for the WSOP was inevitable sooner or later. Now, a pool tournament organizer has revealed that it's getting booted out of Bally's/Paris Las Vegas next year to make room.https://t.co/xkgnG22LN6
Here in Portland, things are getting back to normal-ish. Final Table announced that August 5th will be the first post-pandemic $20K GTD. Buyin is $100, with one live rebuy, and there’s a $50 add-on. This Saturday is another $300 buyin/$150 add-on tournament at The Game.
I’ve only played one game live since the start of the pandemic so far, and even when I was playing a lot I didn’t get out of the metro Portland area much, but in the interests of general PNW poker, here’s a quote from Dan Gee about No Look Poker Room in Medford.
No Look has been consistently excellent, is extremely respectful to all players of all nationalities and ages and also very supportive of the disabled… excellent wheelchair access and the custom bathroom with seperate general bathrooms for men and women. But they also keep a decent amount of tourneys in the mix including a weekly Omaha day or two for those players, and games start consistently at noon…
Might be just the thing you need if you’re down in the Bootleg fire area and need a break from worrying. Stay safe.
Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard
This edition we’re adding in the Global Poker Index(GPI) rankings for players on the Leaderboard. If you’re not familiar with the GPI, it’s a ranking system for tournament players that calculates a value for every qualifying result reported to The Hendon Mob (now owned by GPI), based on the number of entries,size of the buyin, amount of money won, and age of the result (with more recent results counting for more and results over three years old not counted). There’s a handy explainer here.
I have exactly one qualifying result, from September 2019 when I chopped a tournament at Chinook Winds with John Gribben. When it was new, it was worth about 75 GPI points; at nearly two years old, it only counts for 15. My GPI score is 111,965.
The Wynn Summer Classic $1.5M GTD NLHE Mystery Bounty was a unique event with $600K in bounties over and above the guarantee. Every knockout on Day 1 was good for $100 (out of a $1600 buyin). If you got to Day 2, you got your $100 back and if you knocked out another player you got to draw an envelope awarding anywhere from $500 to $100,000. There were more than 1,500 entries. Beaverton’s Anthony An made it to 12th place, gaining his largest-ever score (plus whatever bounties he won). An climbs 1,050 places on the Leaderboard, to #1699 (GPI: 17824).
Oregon had two players at the final table of the Venetian DeepStack Poker Tour/PokerGO $150K GTD NLHE MonsterStack. Coming in 4th of 215 was Benjamin Garrick of Gold Beach (climbing almost four hundred on the Leaderboard to #1077, GPI: 2659). It’s Garrick’s second-largest cash. Portland’s Rambo Halpern (GPI: 5,941) got 2nd place (his second-best) making it to #430, a climb of over 200 places on the Leaderboard.
— Venetian Poker Room (@VenetianPoker) July 6, 2021
The WPT/Venetian #88 $3M GTD NLHE had just short of 1,200 entries. Cheang Yoo of Seattle (GPI: 938) came in 34th, rising nearly 80 places on the Leaderboard to #410. Portland’s Landen Lucas (GPI: 1,449) took 16th, enough to climb from #551 to #385.
There’s rarely a Leaderboard these days without an appearance by Christopher Brewer (GPI: 164) and this is no exception, though it’s just a small one: 7th in a field of 53 in the PokerGO Cup #3 NLHE at Aria. Even the min-cash is enough to tick him up from #32 to #31.
Vanessa Kade makes another appearance here with her own 7th-place finish (out of 66) in PokerGO Cup #1 NLHE. Kade is GPI: 636 and climbs fifteen places on the Leaderboard, to #128.
Back over at the Wynn Summer Classic $100K GTD PLO, Adam Hendrix made 4th (the number of entries wasn’t reported to Hendon Mob). The cash moves him from #26 to #25. He is currently the highest ranked PNW player on the Global Poker Index at GPI: 8.
The Wynn Millions as it was called, brought a lot of PNW players, as it was sort of a fill-in for this summer’s WSOP. Though about a fifth the size, with 1,328 entries, a large-field $10K buy-in—at the Wynn, considered to be one of the best poker venues in town—was an attractive draw for folks who’d mostly been holed up for over a year. Scott Mayfield (Grants Pass, GPI: 10564) placed 73rd, bumping him almost twenty spots up the Leaderboard, to #132. Climbing nine places to #114 was Scott Eskanazi (GPI: 3976), in 76th place. Max Young made it to 29th; he holds at #23 on the Leaderboard (GPI: 32, currently the second-highest PNW player on the GPI).
The real standout result is Vancouver Washington’s Jaime Cervantes Alvarez, with (as of now) five cashes on Hendon Mob, all of them since February, with the 3rd being 7th place at the Wynn Millions. He leapfrogs from #4076 to #185 on the Leaderboard (GPI: 583).
The big numbers for the week were put up by perennial casher Dylan Linde (GPI: 62) who placed 40th in the Wynn Millions then took 3rd in the PokerGO Cup #2 NLHE(61 entries) and winning the previously-mentioned PokerGO Cup #3 NLHE.
