Nightline gets into the online gambling fray by taking a deeper look at internet poker players under age 21 — represented by defending WSOP champion Joe Cada and others — tonight on ABC at 11:35pm ET/PT.
For a preview:
NOTE: Over 2,100 players have registered for day 1d, with a capacity field of over 3,700 expected.
Day 1c of the Main Event drew the biggest field as 2,314 players as defending champion Joe Cada handled the “shuffle up and deal” to get today’s activities underway. Cada finished the day with a respectable 55,000 in chips. Among the notables who don’t get to return for day 2b on Saturday: Tom Dwan, Howard Lederer, Huck Seed, Isabelle Mercier, Chad Brown, Men Nguyen, Faraz Jaka, Dario Minieri, Chau Giang, 2009 November Niner Steve Begleiter, and after making his usual dramatic entrance, Phil Hellmuth exited quietly.
At the end of 9 hours of play, 1,642 players will join the 762 day 1a survivors Friday afternoon at 12pm at the start of day 2a. The reported leader at this time is Mathiu Sauriol with 169,900 in chips. Johnny Chan finished the day 2nd in chips with 163,700, other notables back for day 2a include Lauren Kling (149,650), Barny Boatman (144,050), Hoyt Corkins (129,150), David Williams (112,225), Todd Terry (96,175), Jennifer “Jennicide” Leigh (85,425), Brock Parker (71,125), Liz Lieu (70,050), Annie Duke (62,000), Yevgeniy Timoshenko (48,150), and Antonio Esfandiari (44,150). The full list of chip counts is now available at wsop.com. The full table draw for day 2a will be linked here and at my Twitter for those interested when it becomes available.
Day 1d of the Main Event gets underway at 12pm, with football Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith handling the “shuffle up and deal” duties, with some poker site sure to put a patch on him if he decides to play. The Main Event field is already the second-largest in history with over 7,000 players registered with a chance it breaks 8,000 over the next 8 hours. Catch the action over at wsop.com, Pauly’s blog and Twitter to see if anyone gets shut out, who gets knocked out, and how this afternoon’s action is played out.
Is this news only to me?
UPDATE: Question mark removed. Williams and Selbst signage confirmed by Williams’ agent and PokerStars marketing exec.
David Williams, 2010 WPT World Champion, apparently will be donning the Spade-and-Star of PokerStars during the WSOP main event. I’m pretty sure you can bet on it …
Maybe I just missed the announcement, or any telltale patchwork in the Amazon room … but I hadn’t yet heard whom he’d be allying with, and this morning got an email invite for a little media meet-and-greet with:
Joe Cada: 2009 Winner – World Series of Poker
Vanessa Selbst: 2010 Winner – North American Poker Tour at Mohegan Sun
David Williams: As of 2010, his total live tournament winnings exceed $7,893,000A formal invite is below, please let me know if you would like to RSVP for this event!
Figured it had to be them or Full Tilt … maybe Victory, but probably not, as Williams, upon becoming a free agent this spring just after winning the $25k WPT Championship, seemed to be one of the very few pros with the right combination of image and cred to make him extra-marketable.
All makes perfect sense really. As powerful a duo Williams could make with Antonio Esfandiari, it seems much cooler to match him up with two other current and defending big-event champs.
The $50,000 Players’ Championship reached the bubble earlier today with day 2 chip leader Kirk Morrison the unfortunate bubble boy, leaving 16 players guaranteed almost $100,000. At this time, Robert Mizrachi is the current chip lead with over 2.5m in chips, followed by John Juanda at 2.4m in 2nd. Michael Mizrachi is currently in 5th with nearly 1.7m while Nick Schulman, and Daniel Alaei have around 1m in chips with just 13 players remaining. The Mizrachi brothers are looking to be the first brothers to make the same final table since Ross and Barny Boatman performed the feat in 2002. (Thanks to a poster on 2+2 for that info).
The $1,000 NL Holdem event reached the money within the first level this afternoon, and the pace has not slowed down, with under 200 players remaining at the end of level 14. The chip leader at the dinner break is Drew Crawford at 230,000. Play continues to the end of level 20 or the final table, whichever comes first.
Around 120 players remain in the $1,500 Omaha 8 or Better event as they head to their dinner break. Phil Ivey, Allen Kessler, David Bach, Brock Parker, Andrew Black and Team Pokerati’s own Tom Schneider are some of the familiar names looking to make the money bubble at 81 players and the eventual final table.
The $1,500 NL holdem event drew a field of 2,092, with 216 making the money and the winner getting over $500,000. 638 players will return after their 90-minute dinner break. The early leader appears to be online legend Shaun Deeb with 55,000 chips. Lauren Kling is unofficially in second with 45,000, while Antonio Esfandiari, Daniel Negreanu, Mark Seif and Joe Cada off to a fast start as well.
Be sure to check the links on the right to find more content, live updates, and other WSOP-related stuff.
Here’s a preview of a prospective reality show/documentary called 6th Street: Life After the River, featuring Joe Cada and four of his friends from Michigan. The trailer features the highs and lows Cada and friends experienced over the past few months, with Cada’s agent Dan Frank, hip-hop party band LMFAO, Darvin Moon, and others. No word yet on when the full program will be available, but expect more details shortly.
We’re no TV experts here — when is Gilligan’s Island gonna get the trophy it deserves? — but we knew we were looking at something special on the small screen watching Joe Cada upend the hopes and dreams of Darvin Moon and logger poker players everywhere. (Phil Ivey probably had something to do with that, too.)
Sure enough, for the second year in a row, ESPN’s WSOP coverage got an Emmy nomination.
Specifically it was for the November Nine coverage in the category “Outstanding Live Event Turnaround”.
I think they’re referring to the fine TV production work of Dave Swartz, Matt Maranz, and the 441 Productions crew, moreso than the chipstack turnaround of Cada.
The big announcement that the WSOP announced on Twitter over the weekend has now turned up online. The 2010 WSOP Tournament of Champions will have 27 players will meet in June to play for a $1 million prize pool with the winner earning $500,000. The twist for this year is that the public will vote for the remaining field of 20 WSOP bracelet winners. A list of the 521 living bracelet winners is available here , along with the current top 50 in online voting. Voting starts at noon ET March 15 and runs through June 15th at midnight. The other spots have been filled by these players:
Joe Cada – 2009 WSOP ME winner
Barry Shulman – 2009 WSOPE ME winner
Mike Sexton – 2006 WSOP TOC winner
Mike Matusow – 2005 WSOP TOC Winner
Annie Duke – 2004 WSOP TOC Winner
Two sponsor exemptions (the WSOP will announce details on how these seats will be awarded shortly)
The TOC will begin on June 27th at noon, and play down to the final table. Play will then resume July 4th (the day before the WSOP Main Event begins) and play down to a winner. ESPN will film the action to air as a two-hour show on August 3rd. The entire press release is on page 2:
For those Pokerati readers who missed out on what’s going on, here’s some stuff that’s happened over the past few days:
The first PokerStars.net NAPT event in the US got off to a roaring start on Saturday, with 872 players putting up $5,000 at the Venetian as part of their Deep Stack Extravaganza. 149 players started day 3 a few minutes ago, with 128 making the money. Hand for hand play has just begun, and the tournament staff is hoping to play down to 24. You can follow the action over at PokerNews, PokerStarsblog.com, or PokerListings. The winner when play ends on Thursday will collect $827,648.
Reality show star Trishelle Canatella made the final table of the WPT Celebrity Invitational, part of the LA Poker Classic currently running at the Commerce Casino. The final table will resume on March 3rd with this lineup:
Seat 1: Steve Elliott – 1,520,000
Seat 2: Thor Hansen – 1,480,000
Seat 3: Trishelle Cannatella – 1,540,000
Seat 4: Sean Urban – 2,090,000
Seat 5: Neev Baram – 1,900,000
Seat 6: LeRon Washington – 1,790,000
In other LAPC news, Al “Sugar Bear” Barbieri took down his 3rd preliminary event of this year’s LAPC, winning the $2,100 Ironman event, a tournament with no scheduled breaks. Barbieri pocketed almost $60,000 for the win, plus a seat to the $10,000 Main Event, which starts February 26th.
The NBC National Heads-Up Championship is just a few days away, with the draw party on March 4th at Pure at Caesars’ Palace, followed by the tournament from March 5-7. The full list of 64 participants hasn’t been announced yet, but over 20 players already received their invite through a series of criteria, including last year’s winner, Huck Seed. Other automatic invites include: Phil Ivey, Joe Cada, Vanessa Rousso, Darvin Moon, Jason Mercier, Eric Baldwin, Sammy Farha, Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier, and Barry Shulman. One invitee who had to decline: Jeff Lisandro, who has a prior commitment in Australia which prevents him from attending.
The EPT Copenhagen event, which drew 423 entries, concluded Sunday evening with Sweden’s Anton Wigg outlasting Italy’s Francesco de Vivo in a four-hour heads-up duel to win 3,675,000 Danish kroner ($6782,918). Other notables who cashed: Roberto Romanello, Peter Eastgate, Juha Helppi, and Bertrand Grospellier.
The Inside Deal makes its to its second season on ESPN.com with Joe Cada and John Pappas appearing on the show.
ESPN.com’s Andrew Feldman and Bernard Lee co-host the last Inside Deal episode of the year, discussing the news in the poker world over the past few weeks and a visit from 2009 World Champion Joe Cada. The good news is the web series will continue in 2010.
That’s what the now-22-year-old WSOP Champ is doing today … meeting with Rep. Candice Miller (R-MI) to help push Barney Frank’s legislation.
Interesting story in the Miami Herald about Joe Cada, Kevin Schaffel (Florida’s representative in the November Nine), skill vs. luck, and whether or not the game is good for you. My favorite line(s):
“We had 115 different countries have players represented this year,” said Seth Palansky, a World Series spokesman. “It’s just an astonishing amount — more than the Olympics.”
To be fair, that’s only more than the Winter Olympics. Poker still has a bit more work to catch the Summer games.
Ha ha. Burn on Palansky.
The story continues:
Not everyone is happy with the poker boom. Gambling critics like the Florida Family Policy Council say the game’s greater social acceptance is largely a result of aggressive PR efforts.
“It’s being promoted as something that’s sexy and adventurous and cool,” said council President John Stemberger. “All the big money is on the side of promoting it, not on the side of educating people as to why it’s not a smart thing.”
True enough, Mr. Stemberger, but the same thing could be said about religion, right? You think our activity can be harmful — and indeed it can — and I think your activity can be harmful … and indeed it can. But that’s where living in the wonderful US of A comes into play … As an American (and Floridians are Americans, even the ones who are Cuban) I have the personal freedom to pursue my happiness, just as you do … even though I can show you example after example of people pursuing the activities Big God money is pushing doing tremendous harm … usually with a lot more blood and death, in fact.
Trust me, when it comes to potentially addictive products, poker is much closer to Starbuck’s than Marlboro … even though financial advisors have shown time and time again how quitting a $5 a day Starbuck’s habit can equal millions of extra retirement dollars in the course of life.
Meanwhile, here’s another Herald story about Florida’s longtime wagering culture as the state considers it’s biggest expansion of gambling in history.
Here’s some video of Joe Cada enjoying his ringside seats at WWE Raw (with Dennis Phillips) … as pro wrestler Sheamus O’Shaunessy shows the poker champ how to best handle Norman Chad:
Recently stumbled across the blog of a Vegas-grinder guy who rented a couch to Joe Cada at the start of the WSOP, well before the main event. Festive times … and kinda interesting to see that Joey was living a summer life not unlike a lot of other young 20somethings who venture to Vegas for their first ever World Series of Poker.
Pics below from his first night in town:
The caption on the second one, of course, is probably more accurate than any coulda imagined at the time!
Joe Cada is no longer a 21-year-old — he turned 22 last week … and spent the weekend on the sidelines of the Michigan-Ohio State game (Wolverines < Buckeyes) after this recent (to me) appearance on ESPN's First Take. He breaks down his backer deal (again) ... and also says, as might be expected from a young online pro, that he doesn't put much stock in physical tells. Gotta wonder though what Joe Navarro might say about his comfort level when discussing the age when he got his start.
