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There’s nothing left to do except start handing out bracelets. Attention now turns to the Rio as the WPT finished up at the Bellagio and today kicks off the first WSOP event. There will be plenty of people hitting up the Venetian DeepStack Event as well as the other smaller series trying to pick up some overflow but most player are ready to descend upon the (for now) pristine hallways of the Rio convention center.
There was still a little business to handle before the caravan moved west off the strip. Marvin Rettenmaier, fresh off his new signing at Party Poker, won the $25,000 WPT Championship against a tough final table which included Philippe Ktorza, Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi, Nick Schulman, Steve O’Dwyer, and Trevor Pope. Rettenmaier now has an extra $1.2m to play with at the WSOP.
That wasn’t the toughest final table of the weekend, that honor belonged to the $100,000 WPT Super High Roller. The tournament drew 27 players with 7 of them choosing to re-enter after busting for another $100k. With only 5 spots paying, Justin Bonomo busted on the $263,160 money bubble. Tom Marchese won the nosebleed tournament for $1,308,405 after beating Andrew Robl heads up for the title.
Next stop, the WSOP $500 Casino Employees event.
Today’s Boxscore
Marvin Rettenmaier $1,196,858 WPT Championship
Tom Marchese $1,308,405 WPT Super High Roller
Link Dump
Live WSOP Chip Counts (Google Doc via Kevmath) – The World Series of Poker will attempt to have regularly updated (aka damn near live) chip counts and player tracking for every bracelet event this summer. The document was sent to WSOP dealers from Seth Palansky detailing the added steps they need to perform for the new system to work. My initial reaction was bull$#!$t but quickly changed my mind. This has the potential to be a huge development and I’m cautiously optimistic. If nothing else, it will stop Negreanu from whining every 15 minutes about his count being 100 chips off.
Bellagio Attempted Robbery – Another week, another Bellagio robbery. This time it was two members of Mensa grabbing a bunch of $5k chips from a blackjack table. They were quickly caught and no truth to the rumor it was a high-stakes poker player pissed off at playing a $25,000 tournament in the middle of noisy slot machines while Ma and Pa Kettle smoked it up.
ESPN Fantasy Poker Draft – Andrew Feldman has pulled a few people together each year, a good combination of players and media-type folks, for a WSOP Fantasy Poker draft. It usually a pretty good barometer of those running hot coming into the WSOP and who people think will have a great summer. As an unapologetic stats geek, I looked at the teams from every angle. Even with his laughable pick of Erick Lindgren, I think Chops has the best all around collection (Doc Sands, Buchanan, Bonomo, Haxton, JP Kelly, Dempsey) with Bluff’s Lance Bradley not far behind. I’d almost be willing to put down a wager.
The Micros – Thank god this wasn’t one of their webisodes or I would have Richard Marx stuck in my head. Speaking of their webisodes, I think it’s about time someone with deep pockets stepped up to fund these guys getting back to what they do best. Imagine the goodwill you would generate by returning the animated Tatjana Pasalic to the world.
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