The problem with the WSOP creeping up on us is that sometimes we tend to ignore the run up to the biggest tournament series of the year. March is a big month for poker tournaments, and it shows in the people that came out on top in this month\’s winners. From Erik Seidel proving he needs to be in a $20k+ buy-in to win anything to a couple pros making back-to-back final tables, this was a big month for the tournament pro. And its not even June yet. As for the losers, well, I\’ll admit I had to nit-pick this month for a couple of them, but others were just too easy. Lets see who was noteworthy this month.
Winners![\"\"](\"http://old.pokerati.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/6a00d8341c556453ef01156e801ae3970c-500wi.jpg\" "\\"thumbs-up\\"")
- Erik Seidel (4): Seriously Erik, only play the Players\’ Championship and the HU High Roller in this year\’s WSOP. You\’ll lock up two bracelets and you can sit out the main event knowing you may very well still win Player of the Year because you are winning damn near everything else. Erik impressed again in March by winning the NBC Heads-up Championship, a gimmicky made-for-TV tournament sure but its still against some of the best in the business. It\’s funny that he is having this kind of sick run just a couple months removed from being inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. It is almost as if he felt like he needed to prove he earned it. (Writers Note: Which admittedly in my head he did. In my series on the Hall of Fame voting, he made the cut but got the least number of votes from me.)
- Vivek Rajkumar (1): A LAPC 2nd place finish and a Bay 101 4th place finish makes for back-to-back final tables in WPT events. Pretty impressive considering these two tournaments are probably amongst the toughest the WPT can provide. Also, the fact the guy has a Computer Engineering degree on top of his millions of tournament earning is just icing on the cake for why he\’s a winner this month. Yea, I\’m bias, so what?
- Tim West (1): Not to be outdone, Tim West actually won the Wynn Poker Classic main event and then came runner-up in the WSOP-C Regional Championship in Rincon (aka San Diego). Now, he\’s not huge on the radar (unless he\’s an internet player and I don\’t know it….paging @jesswelman) but that might change at the pace he is running.
- The Pokerstars (1)/Wynn Partnership: What Pokerstars put into Steve Wynn\’s drink to get him to agree to this we will never know. But this is a complete 180 from his prior stance on the issue of online gambling, and the fact that Pokerstars \”landed\” this partnership could be nothing short of amazing. Will this mean anything in the short term? Don\’t know, there is a Nevada bill out that legalizes online gambling, but it has about as much of a chance as New Jersey\’s in this writer\’s opinion. Still, Stars is probably looking for a way to get into the US market by getting all buddy-buddy with the brick-and-mortars, and this was one hell of a way to show it.
Losers![\"\"](\"http://old.pokerati.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/thumbsdown.jpg\" "\\"thumbsdown\\"")
- The Full Tilt (-1) /Station Casino Owner Partnership: Conversely, however, Full Tilt\’s partnership with Fertitta Interactive looks like a \”oh crap that site we pretend doesn\’t exist signed a deal…SCRAMBLE!\” Yea, deals like this are usually talked about way in advance, but having the second announcement with a less flashy alternative is not impressive. In fact, I\’d say it looks a little sloppy. Its worth mentioning that Fertitta and Station Casinos are completely separate, and while the UFC brand might help Full Tilt get new customers, it just doesn\’t feel as good as the Stars/Wynn deal.
- Daniel Negreanu (-1): I am sorry Daniel, but you lost the Superstar Showdown, you did not tie no matter what the official tally may say. My co-host on my podcast \”Rabbit Hunt\” beat me to the punch but I can say it in far fewer words. Even if
5000roughly 4000 hands is not enough to determine who is better and he ran woefully under EV, its still a pretty good indication he was outclassed…at least this time. I\’ll give Daniel credit for his comeback in the second week, but this was in no way a \”Clash of the Titans\”. Daniel was not in the same realm as isildur1 and he might have wanted to have some more practice before trying to take him on.
- Joe Sebok (-2)/Prahlad Friedman (-2)/Jon Aguiar (-1): Yea this wasnt going to miss my crosshairs in a million years. This whole saga was a mess from top to bottom, and I\’m lumping the three of them together because all three of them failed miserably. Prahlad should have never played the John Racener card (\”oh no I lost a lot of money against a known cheater time to call bullshit!\”). Joe shouldn\’t have sent a thinly veiled statement saying he had shit on Aguiar\’s girl, then pseudo-apologize only to definitely suggest he has some real dirt on her. And finally, Jon shouldn\’t have flown off the handle, posted the DM attempting to crowdsource some sympathy and justice, and then constantly bring up his girlfriend almost as if to call a bluff. The whole thing was a mess, and nobody looked particularly good at the end of the day.
- Mason Malmuth (-1): I\’m totally content with getting personally blackballed from 2+2 for saying this: there is not a chance in hell that 2+2 is the poker community. Its like the people that aren\’t members of 2+2 are suddenly alienated from existence. If that forum is the only poker community, then I\’m glad to be an outsider…because the wise helpful 2+2 poster seems to be the exception rather than the rule. All Mason did was prove how big of an ego he has, and given the backlash regarding his statements…its unlikely too many people outside of \”the poker community\” approve of him being the mayor.
Coinflips![\"\"](\"http://old.pokerati.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/stack-of-coins.jpg\" "\\"stack-of-coins\\"")
- Norm MacDonald (0): This has been a point of contention for some. Gabe Kaplan losing AJ Benza as someone to bounce his jokes off of made season 6\’s commentary fall a little flat. Gabe\’s replacement is either making people happy or disgusted, with very little room in between. Personally I don\’t mind Norm taking Gabe\’s place on the show, but I still think it would be a lot better if there was someone else in the book, and High Stakes Poker hasn\’t seemed to figure that out yet.
- Anyone that played an April Fool\’s Poker Media Gag (0): You wanna know why this didn\’t come out on the 1st? Because I was going to originally write a WLC where UB was the Entity of the Month, isildur1 was the \”Eff You\” winner for beating down Daniel so hard, and whatever else I could have come up with. But instead I looked at the gags that were played rather than get creative and write my own. We were Fricke-rolled by The Micros (awesome), Pokerstars had its weird-as-fuck tournaments (not as fresh but still good), WSOP had \”Strip Poker\” introduced as an event (lame, plus my eyes will be glad that\’s not true), and Pokernews tried telling us they were hiring a chip counter for every table (didn\’t you read the media rules? gonna need 6 per table).
- 2+2 Posters (0): Nothing showed the signal-to-noise ratio more on 2+2 then the whole Sebok-Prahlad-Aguiar affair. While some people kept things civil, you know damn well people like Kevmath were working overtime to make sure the site didnt collapse under the weight of some of their poster\’s shittiness. So props to the moderators and the intelligent posters, but not so much to the trolls.
The \”Eff You, Sir/Madam\” Award
![\"\"](\"http://old.pokerati.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/middle-finger-e1296498293221.jpg\" "\\"middle-finger\\"")
- Mason Malmuth (-3): You thought I was going to go for the low-hanging fruit huh? Thought Sebok was an easy target for this months award for being an abject failure in the community? Well, here\’s the thing, Sebok at least tried to come on and be reasonable. It wasn\’t successful, although I don\’t think anyone could have reasonably expected Joe to have any impact, but at least he tried. Mason, if he tried anything, it was to be a dick. In a very short time span, he proclaimed 2+2 as \”the poker community\”, which we\’ve already touched on a little bit before. I get it, its Mason being Mason, but being a dick just because you happen to have a popular forum within the poker community does not make you God. Openly stating to Sebok that short of getting Paul on a moderated thread he\’s got no reason to even be in the forum is…well…idiotic at best. At worst, well, it earns you the Fuck You award for March. Your forum isn\’t the entire poker community Mason, because otherwise this post wouldn\’t have passed moderation.
Entity of the Month![\"\"](\"http://old.pokerati.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/2192584448_3feed79a42.jpg\" "\\"trophy\\"")
I don\’t think anyone should be surprised by this but…
- Erik Seidel (2-time champ: 7): Yep, giving this one to Erik again because he\’s really starting to show how much he can\’t lose. He won the NBC heads up and for the most part won the Number 1 spot in ESPN\’s Nuts segment, because Ivey was, is, and always will be a permanent fixture in the top spot for better or for worse. The guy is just playing absolutely amazing poker and his sense of humor (and guest appearances on shows like The Micros) keep him high on other people\’s lists. If he can keep this up…well…there is no telling where he\’ll end up. That said, he\’s won \”Entity of the Month\” for two months out of the three…so there is a good chance we have a runaway winner for any potential \”1st Annual WLC Awards\”.