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.
It’s been less than two weeks since the last edition of the Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard, but there’s a lot going on so I’m going to bang this out as fast as I can.
Oregon and Washington COVID-19 restrictions are over, and the clubs in the Portland are are back in business, with Portland Meadows running a bounty tournament tonight at 7pm, and Final Table resurrecting their $10K guarantee on Friday night at 6pm (there are other changes at both clubs, but check their web sites out to get the latest. The Game is back to regular hours and ran a $400 buy-in tournament last weekend. Check out Facebook for more info on places like 45th Street Pub & Grill, Kit Kat Club, Rialto, and yeah, even Last Frontier. Poker beggars can’t be choosers. Most of this stuff can be found through the NW Poker group.
PNW Poker Leaderboard
The super high rollers seem to have been on a bit of a bye for the past week or so, so we’ve got a crop of not-as-familiar names this edition. What’s truly notable, though, is that every single one of these cashes includes the player’s best-ever recorded cash, even for people with long Hendon Mob trails.
We’re starting with Darnell Holder from Seattle, whose first cash isn’t huge, but it’s a respectable 34th place in the Wynn Summer Classic $1M GTD NLHE, which had 1,312 entries and a $1.9M pot. He enters the Leaderboard at #3916.
Congratulations to Cornelio McLean of Tacoma, WA who was the outright winner in our DCPS Event #64 $600 Pot Limit Omaha 8/B $30,000 guarantee on 6.17.21
Congratulations Ryan Roeder, winner of the Summer Classic $400 NLH $40K GTD on June 14. Ryan was the final player standing of the 284 player event, winning $23,754!
Ryan Roeder of Seattle comes onto the Leaderboard at #2094 with a win in the Wynn $40K GTD NLHE. With 284 entries, it more than doubled the guarantee.
Lots of smiles for Kevin Theodore from Seattle, whose biggest cash as winner of the Wynn $40K GTN NLHE was followed a week later by winning the Venetian/PokerGO #70 $20K GTD NLHE Bounty. There were 252 entries at Wynn and 114 at the Venetian. Theodore moves 400_ spots on the Leaderboard to #844.
On June 15, Kevin Theodore won $17,769 for his first place finish in the Summer Classic $400 NLH $40K GTD. Congratulations Kevin!
Stephen Ferrell made the trip to the Venetian/PokerGO #63 $200K GTD NLHE MonsterStack from Post Falls to take 2nd place in a field of more than a thousand for his first recorded cash, which catapults him to #1415 on the Leaderboard. I think the Venetian’s tweet here has a typo in Ferrell’s name.
— Venetian Poker Room (@VenetianPoker) June 20, 2021
Speaking of typos, I see that Seattle’s Karan Chadha, who was at the same final table and placed 6th, should be on the Leaderboard but Hendon Mob has the residence as Seattle, CA. This was Chadha’s biggest cash, and the first that would qualify him for inclusion in a Leaderboard write-up, so I’m glad to have noticed it.
— Venetian Poker Room (@VenetianPoker) June 20, 2021
Finally, Aaron Thivyanathan is back, and despite having been featured here numerous times this year already, this is Thivyanathan’s largest cash as runner-up in the WPT/Seminole Hard Rock Tampa #6 NLHE. 167 entries and a prize pool of $334K. Thivyanathan climbs from #417 to #281 on this edition of the Leaderboard.
That’s it for now! See you on the non-virtual felt soon!
