PokerTips Blog

The final table of the World Poker Tour’s (WPT) Bay 101 Shooting Star event concluded yesterday. Arriving at the televised final table of six with the second largest chip stack was none other than 11 time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth. Here were the chip stacks at the start of play:

Seat 1. Hasan Habib – 455,000
Seat 2. Phil Hellmuth – 1,433,000
Seat 3. Andy Seth – 2,164,000
Seat 4. Matt Keikoan – 371,000
Seat 5. Mclean Karr – 1,112,000
Seat 6. Dan O’Brien – 1,129,000

Not too far into the start of the final table, Hellmuth clashed with Andy ‘BKiCe’ Seth. Here’s how the action unfolded according to the World Poker Tour Live Updates (my emphasis):

Phil Hellmuth completes the small blind to 20,000, Andy Seth raises from the big blind to 80,000, and Hellmuth reraises to 280,000. Seth thinks for a bit before he moves all in, and Hellmuth calls with QQ. Seth shows AJ, and he’ll need to improve to bust Hellmuth and claim his bounty.

The flop comes K65, and Hellmuth retains the lead. The turn card is the 10, giving Seth additional outs to a gutshot straight.

The river card is — the A of hearts!

The crowd explodes in reaction, while Hellmuth just sits at the table, stunned. Hellmuth slowly takes off his sunglasses, takes a deep breath, and shakes hands with the other players at the table.

Then Hellmuth steps off the stage, kneels down, and drops down to the floor in a little ball. The other players expected a blowup, but not this. Someone asks if he needs a doctor, and Seth asks, “Do you think he’ll sign my bounty shirt?”

Needless to say, that hand will probably make for exciting TV when it eventually airs on Fox Sports Net.

Andy Seth went on to finish runner-up to Mclean Karr. Here are the full results from the final table:

1st: McLean Karr – $878,500
2nd: Andy “BKiCe” Seth – $521,200
3rd: Dan O’Brien – $292,800
4th: Hasan Habib – $234,300
5th: Matt Keikoan – $175,700
6th: Phil Hellmuth – $117,000

The Poker Brat’s quest for a WPT title has yet to come to an end. This was his fourth appearance at a WPT final table. The closest he came to winning an event was a 3rd place finish at Foxwoods in Season 2.

I’ve been meaning to write this a while ago, but I wanted my Vegas trip report finished first. This was about a year ago at a charity cash game. I was sitting on a stack of $300. Villain 1 had roughly $200 and Villain 2 had me covered by a lot, lets say he had $400 or so.

My reads going into this hand were this – Villain 1 was either 18 or 19 and with his dad. He didn’t have a whole lot of live experience due to his age, but it seemed as though his competent father had taught him basic strategy fairly well. Villain 2 was probably the only good player at the table, he had plenty of live experience, knew the basic tells, knew his odds, didn’t make any big mistakes, etc.

I was the big blind, Villain 1 was in mid position, Villain 2 was the dealer. It folded to Villain 1 who raises to $10. Villain 2 called. I looked down to see my favorite hand, Ace-Nine of hearts. Normally in this position, I’d probably fold, but since it’s my favorite hand, and two other players were in the hand, I thought I’d take a stab and call.

Flop comes out 8h 4h Ts giving me the nut flush draw. Not a bad hand for me, so I led out for $20. Villain 1 shakes a bit and calls. Hmmm… he is stronger than he’s leading on, probably hit his ten, and maybe has a flush draw as well. I put him on something Jack-Ten of hearts. Villain 2 confidently raised to $40. Min raise, that’s odd, he wants us in. But why raise so small with a set when there are two hearts on the board? Well maybe he wasn’t as good as I gave him credit for. We both called.

So now there’s roughly $150 in the pot. I have about $250, Villain 1 has about $150, Villain 2 still has me covered with roughly $350. Turn is 2h. I see Villain 1 kind of jump a bit. Yeah, he has Th xh, probably the jack. Villain 2 doesn’t do a whole lot – not surprising for him. I hem and haw and try to figure out how to extract. I decide a small bet will get raised and opt for a $40 bet. Villain 1 calls. Interesting, he wants Villain 2 to call. Villain 2 raises to $100. Okay, he has trips, probably 8’s maybe 4’s. So now I have Villain 1 and 2 figured out for what they have. This isn’t the double soul read part though.

Now I know I can eventually get Villain 1’s money, but I’m still vulnerable to Villain 2 if the board pairs. I know Villain 1 hasn’t read “Caro’s Book of Tells” and whether or not Villain 2 has, he would see right through what I’m about to do. I pretend to tank for a bit knowing exactly what to do. I say, “aww F it, I’m all in.” Villain 1 hears what I say and since he isn’t familiar with deception, he thinks I’m on a draw and probably have a pair as well. He decides to call, which pushes him all in. Villain 2 is quite familiar with Caro’s rule #1 whether he knows it or not. He sees my overtly obvious attempt to look weak, which means I’m strong and puts me on the ace high flush and since Villain 1 called, puts him on the lower flush. Villain 2 still tanks for a while trying to figure out if it’s worth calling knowing that at the very least, one of us has him beat and he has 10 outs for his boat or quads, but probably one or two less since we may have had pairs as well. He ends up folding and shows his pocket 8’s.

We both flip over our cards. He sees my nut flush against his Jack-Ten of hearts and mumbles about how he thought I was on a draw and looks at his dad almost as though it was his dad’s fault for not teaching him about obvious deception. Isn’t Caro’s first rule something like: “determine if the player is being sincere, if they aren’t, then do the opposite of what they want you to do?” Anyway, Villain 2 nodded his head when he saw the nut flush as though he made the correct read. Then the river card was a 4 pairing the board and giving Villain 2 the boat had he stayed in the hand. Villain 2 kind of let out a “crap I should have stayed in” type expression and I scooped up the $400 pot.

So the first soul read was knowing if I pushed, Villain 1 would call. The second part was knowing I could get Villain 2 to fold by pushing, AND that the board would pair on the river, because that’s what always happens to me. So, why put people on ranges, when you can read right into their soul and put them on an exact hand? Now if I can only do that on every big hand that I’m in, I could quit my day job!

The poker world received good news yesterday when officials of the upstart North American Poker Tour (NAPT) announced they reached an agreement with ESPN2 to broadcast 16 one-hour episodes of its tournaments. The first airing of NAPT action will take place on April 19th and feature coverage of a $25,000 high-roller shootout tournament that will soon be played at the Venetian in Las Vegas.

They will also be airing coverage of a $5,000 buy-in tournament that starts at the Venetian this weekend as well as footage from tournaments that will be played at the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut in early April. Finally, footage from the $25,000 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure High Roller event, which was won last month by William Reynolds, will air on May 17th.

This is pretty good news for the poker world as it means more poker coverage will be televised on ESPN networks. As of now, the only poker that hits the ESPN airwaves is World Series of Poker (WSOP) and WSOP Europe coverage. It is nice to see that non-WSOP events will be getting some TV time now as well.

As for the North American Poker Tour, it is entirely new. It was founded by PokerStars who must be involved in some high stakes bet with another company to see how many poker tours they can launch. They already have the European Poker Tour (EPT), Latin American Poker Tour (LAPT), Russian Poker Tour (RPT), Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT), Italian Poker Tour (IPT), Czech-Slovak Poker Tour (CSPT), Australia New Zealand Poker Tour (ANZPT), and U.K. and Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT). I’m not making that up, either. Every one of those tournament tours actually exists!

Their latest creation leaves even less room for the already suffering World Poker Tour (WPT). With recession-friendlier buy-ins ($5,000 vs. $10,000 and up) and the promise of ESPN2 airtime to top finishers, the NAPT seems pretty well positioned to succeed and perhaps deal the WPT a death-blow in the process.

On a personal note, I’ll be at the Venetian this weekend to attend the NAPT launch party featuring T-Pain and perhaps play in the $5k event. Keep an eye on this blog for coverage on that.

You can find Part I of this Vegas Trip Report here.

I forgot to mention in the previous entry that one of the activities I got to do while at work functions was to take a tour of the Red Rock Canyon. I highly recommend doing that if you have an extra few hours to spend. Our tour guide looked just like that PBS painter Bob Ross, he was a bit more up beat about it and had lots to say about the vegetation and elevations and stuff. The views were just incredible. Being somewhat of a gin drinker, I was surprised to see juniper bushes. Some say the berries smell like Christmas, I disagree, I think they smell like gin.

My point for bringing this up is that at the TI tournament that I entered, I arrived a bit early and saw a different guy who also looked kind of like Bob Ross. Same hair and everything. He seemed like a nice enough guy who was local and was saying how very few of the local casinos have bounty tournaments these days. Based on our discussion, he seemed to be a profitable player who likes to play the occasional bounty tournament to mix it up. When the tournament started, it was two full tables, he happened to be at my table sitting just to my left. Being that he seemed pretty competent, I was hoping he’d be to my right. Oh well, at least I had somewhat of a read on him before even starting. The guy to my right looked like Leslie Nielsen, only a little bit older. For a while I was convinced it actually was, except that his voice was almost a spot on Paul Newman.

Structure for this tournament is pretty decent for a $125 tournament. There are 30 minute blind levels and 6000 starting chips. The first blind level is 25-50. As usual I started out pretty tight to see how everyone plays. The guy who looked like Bob Ross seemed like a pretty typical TAG player. When he hit, he would probably bet a bit too much, probably because in live poker everyone loves to chase. As for the guy who looked like Leslie Nielsen he basically just knew the rules, but had a tough time figuring out the value of his hand relative to what was on the board. So if he had a flush on a 4 to a flush board and he only had a 2 in his hand, he’d bet it hard. I was happy to have him to my right. It was kind of annoying when the antes kicked in though because he had to be constantly told to ante up. He did mention that he was more of a blackjack player anyway – it sounded like he was fairly proficient at counting, but didn’t make it a habit so he could continue playing.

At one point I was dealt QQ, raised it up, and got a couple of callers. The board was dry, I continuation-bet, got one caller, bet on the dry turn and it was folded, so I chipped up a bit. Not a whole lot happened after that. I drew to a flush at one point. The Bob Ross guy continued playing straight forward. The Leslie Nielsen guy kept playing very odd and calling light, occasionally sucking out to stay alive.

After the first hour, there was a break, I was up to around 9000 and it was still two tables with 18 players or so. The next couple of hours were really quite uneventful, I don’t even remember much of the hands, I did hit trips at one point which kept me going as the blinds crept up. The Bob Ross guy got moved to the other table (which seemed to be playing much more aggressively since more people were being knocked out there). The Leslie Nielsen guy eventually got knocked out after calling some dumb bets. I managed to chip up to around 10,000 when we finally combined into one table.

At the final table, the Bob Ross guy had by far the chip lead. I guess he is pretty competent or just super lucky. Blinds were really starting to creep up at this point. I was losing chips from blinds and the antes. Finally I looked down and see AK with a raise in front of me. I pushed all-in, and had one guy behind me hemming and hawing about what to do. Eventually he pushes too. We all flip over our cards. The original raiser shows KJ – excellent lets skip the jacks okay? The guy behind me flips over pocket sixes – crap, lets see an ace or a king. Flop gives me an Ace and I triple up knocking out the guy with KJ and get a bounty. At this point, I know have a stack where I can actually do some damage. One guy sitting across from me was somewhat annoying complaining about how much the blinds keep going up. He seemed like a competent player, just one of those stereotypical whiny players who always has a bad beat story to top somebody else’s.

Not too much happened after that other than blinds creeping up some more and an occasional short stack pushing and not getting any action. Eventually we got down to 4 players and everyone was essentially even except the Bob Ross guy who had almost twice what everyone else had. The annoying guy mentioned a 4 way chop. I was fine with that, so was everyone else. I was expecting to give the Bob Ross guy a bit extra since he had more, but surprisingly he was really cool about it and didn’t want any extra. He had about 6 bounties in addition to the chop, so he still came out with the most. We all tipped the dealers $15 and with the bounty I got plus my own bounty, I ended up with about $325, so a profit of about $200 or so. While we were getting paid, I shook Bob Ross’s hand and told him that he did not have to settle for a four way chop. He said that it was pretty much a crap shoot anyway and he didn’t want to be rude. Even still, if it were me, I would have wanted some more. Maybe I’m just a rude.

After the tournament, I played the 1-3 game and made another $100 or so and went to bed. One guy was drunk pretty bad and could barely play, I only got about $50 from him before he gave up. Other than that, not much else worthy of talking about.

The next day, I woke up pretty late and always wanted to try In N’ Out Burger. So I needed some fresh air and just some quiet time to myself not to mention some exercise, so I walked about three miles to the closest one to TI. When I got there, it was super crowded and there weren’t any seats. I got the double double (I didn’t get lucky like Homer Simpson when he was working for Mayor Quimby and ordered the double double, but got the “Double Double, Double Double” instead). It was pretty good. It’s no Five Guys good, but still better than average. I was feeling too lazy to walk all the way back, so I walked over to the Palace Station casino and hailed a cab back to TI.

Later that day, I sat back down at the 1-3 table at TI and played for a bit with not much happening. Then one of the more bizarre hands I’ve had came up. I was dealt AJs while UTG. I raised to 10, there was a call and a reraise to 25, I call and the other guy calls. Flop comes AQT. I lead out thinking I have AT and I flopped two pair. It gets raised, and I call and the third guy calls. The turn is a king. I check, still thinking I have AT. Guy to my left bets small, it gets raised again. I look back at my cards and think “Oh wait, I has a straight” I raise again, and both players call. River was a blank, and I push AI and the other two fold.

So I made about $300 or so that hand. I chip up some more and end up about $500. Then it goes down hill.

I’m dealt KK while in the big blind. A limper or two, dealer raises, I reraise, dealer calls. Flop is 247, I bet. Dealer puts in a big raise. I put him on a mid over pair, but not 7’s he seemed like the type to slow play that. I push him all in. He calls and flips over 24. Nice hand sir, wasn’t expecting that. Next two cards brick. I couldn’t even get the non 2,4 cards to pair. Then after that I just kept slowly bleeding from being card dead, suck outs and second best hands. One lady at the table was starting to get her drink on and was kind of boisterous and funny. She eventually leaves. I continue on for hours essentially back to even.

On one of the other tables was that same lady, only now she’s super drunk and was playing limit. She was fairly loud, which wasn’t too big of a deal, except apparently she would shove all in, despite it being a limit game. Eventually the other players got fed up with her and management kicked her out. She made a huge stink about it and lots of passers by stopped to see what was going on. She was swearing and swinging and security had to escort her out.

Anyway, I ended up leaving being up only five bucks for all that time. That damn 2,4 hand just changed my momentum. The next day I only had an hour or two to play before my flight home. I sat down just as the first table was starting, it was just 2-4 limit. My first five hands were all premium, AA AK AJ KK AQ. Crazy, being that it’s only limit, I didn’t make a whole lot. After a bit, the NL table opened and I was pretty much card dead and left with what I started with.

So overall for the trip, I ended up $570 and after the hotel portion I had to pay for, it was closer to $300. I was hoping for four figures, but hey, at least I was up!

- Darryl

This is really funny, but I think the reason I’m not laughing is that it’s even more sad: it seems that T.J. Cloutier sold a WSOP bracelet to a pawn shop who is now listing the item on eBay. The Plano Pawn Shop (located ten minutes from Cloutier’s Texas residence) has a minimum bid of $2999 on the bracelet won by the poker pro in 2005.

What makes this story potentially sad is Cloutier’s notorious reputation for poor money management and insatiable addiction to craps. It is possible that he had good reasons for selling this bracelet. Maybe he needed money for a family medical problem or something, but knowing his reputation as a pit game connoisseur makes it tough not to fear the worst. If he sold the bracelet to satisfy a craps urge, it would certainly be a new low. I mean… selling a WSOP bracelet? C’mon man! I really hope he had a good reason to do this.

If he were addicted drugs or strippers, you could sort of understand. There are tons of poker players with brilliant gambling minds who are pretty big screw-ups in most other areas of their life. Cloutier, however, is not known for these other types of vices.  If a pit-games addiction was a leading factor in him hawking a gold WSOP bracelet, that would just be really sad. I really hope it comes to light that this was not the case.

My full time job sent me to Vegas for a few days for the annual team meeting. They chose to have it at the Red Rock since they are a part of the Station Casino network who is a new customer of ours. The Red Rock is about 12 miles from the strip, but from the hotel room, you could still see the strip (and the mountains) as though it’s not too far away. For being off the strip, it’s really quite an incredible hotel – the bathtubs are probably 3 feet deep and you could easily drown if you don’t electrocute yourself from the remote control for the TV right over the tub first.

Anyway, I arrived Monday before the work functions began specifically to play poker. Being that it was an off strip hotel, I figured it would be pretty much all locals playing. My first impression was that it was about half locals, and half business people there with some time to kill. There was some sort of dentist convention going on there which was perfect because lots of dentists apparently like poker and have money spend. Anyway, my first session went fairly well. Without having any memorable hands, I wound won $57 without any major confrontations in about 2 and half hours or so – not enough to quit my day job.

My work obligations then began and I was tied up until later that evening. I managed to get another hour and forty five minutes in and made $114 without any trouble. I recall hitting trips and getting some premium pairs but not getting paid as much as I would like. I was probably up more, but lost a few showdowns with the second best hand.

The next day I only had about an hour to play and was essentially card dead. Being the nit that I am, I only lost $36. I probably called a raise or two and limped a few times and missed. I think I raised once and pretty much just took it down. It seems these players play way too many hands. Even the locals. I love live poker, I seem to make most of my money with just preflop selection and using position.

The next day I didn’t really have any time to play until night. I was thinking of actually calling it a night, but I thought since I’m here, I may as well play. It turned out to be a wise decision. I sat down, hit trips, got paid. Was card dead for a while, raised a bunch preflop, kept getting called and kept taking it down with C-bets. Then I was dealt 88 in a raised pot. I call. Flop was 885. Well, that’s nice, how can I extract now. The raiser puts out a C-bet. I’m trying to conceal my excitement. I try to make as few movements as possible since when I have the stone cold nuts I sometimes shake. I think for a few seconds and call. Turn was a Q. The raiser doubles his bet, I call. River comes some other rag, I try to put out a smooth $50 bet, but apparently it wasn’t as smooth as I wanted and he folded. I think he pretty much would have folded to any bet though. I still made a decent amount from that hand. I ended up flipping over the 88 because with quads you automatically get into a freeroll tournament. Well, it turns out that tournament was on Sunday which I couldn’t play anyway. I asked if I could give it away to the guy who I just beat, but unfortunately they wouldn’t let me. Oh well.

The guy sitting to my left and I got to talking a bit. He was one of the many dentists out there, only he seemed to be fairly competent. I guess he used to play online quite a bit, but his wife made him stop when he would play tournaments until three in the morning and ignore her. He said after his online winnings paid for their $40,000 wedding and then some, she made him give it (for the most part) up. I guess he took down some Full Tilt $10,000 guaranteed tournament among many other smaller wins. Anyway, it sucked to be on his right, but by me being pretty nice to him, and him not having too much live experience, I think he avoided some confrontations with me when he probably could have taken me to the cleaners.

After winning a few more small hands, they made an announcement to the dealers to “please keep all the players at the table, someone may have won the bad beat jackpot.” After that, the entire poker room started applauding. At the Station’s Casinos they have a bad beat jackpot that starts out at $150,000 and requires four sixes (I think) to be beaten by a straight flush. The loser of the hand gets $45,000 and the winner gets $30,000. Everyone else at any of the Station’s Casinos poker rooms gets to split the remaining money. So I had to fill out a form along with all of the other poker players. Each player ended up with $327 for just being there. Not bad. The play obviously started loosening up after that, but I was exhausted and decided to call it a night. I ended up winning $546 in just under an hour and half that. One of my coworkers was contemplating playing, but he ended up chickening out and was he ever pissed when I told him how I did.

After that my work obligations were over and I got a room at Treasure Island (TI). The rooms weren’t as nice as the Red Rock, but they were perfectly adequate and really, all I was doing in the room was sleeping, showering and checking the occasional email. Being that it was a weekday afternoon, there were no cash games going on at TI so I walked on over to Harrah’s. I played there for a couple of hours and was just completely card dead and lost $60.

That night, my boss took me and a few cowokers out to some fancy steak house down at MGM called Craftsteak. It was pretty good, but for the money – even though I wasn’t paying, I guess I expected a bit more. We got there by taking the Monorail. What a complete waste. From TI it was probably a mile walk just to get to the monorail. Then it’s $5 each person and for five of us, that’s twenty five bucks. We could have taken a cab in less time and for less money. I felt really bad for my boss, just as we were getting in, he started feeling sick, and he ended up not eating a thing. Needless to say, we took a cab back, and I played my $10 in free slot play and turned it into $20 on the video poker machine after hitting a couple of full houses and quads then went to sleep.

The next day, there was still no cash games going on at TI so I went to Imperial palace, none there either, so I went back to Harrah’s for another beating. The table was about half cowboys (there was the big rodeo show going on) and half locals. I swear, I have never gotten so many second best hand losses in my life or had my cbets get raised and my legit bets get folded. For example, in a 77726 board, I’d have pocket 8’s and lose to pocket 9’s, that sort of thing. I started getting on monkey tilt a little bit. The last straw was when I had Kd Qd in a raised pot with me calling on the button. I had about $80 going in. Flop was Ad Td rag. Well, there’s a royal flush draw where the royal pays I think like a $5000 bonus. It checked to me, I bet like $30 and the raiser pushes. I have no choice but to call especially if I hit my royal. He tables AK like it’s the nuts and I whiff the next to streets and walk out down $400 I then went back to the hotel and took a nap.

I woke up, grabbed dinner at the Jewish-type deli at TI where I can highly recommend the barley bean soup. The tuna salad sandwich wasn’t too bad either. Then I entered the TI $125 bounty tournament. More about that experience in the next installment of my Vegas trip report!

-Darryl

Apparently, WSOP Champ Joe Cada is heading to Capitol Hill today to meet with law-makers on a trip organized by the Poker Players Alliance (PPA).

Before getting into this, let me first say I’m a big Joe Cada fan. I played with him in a preliminary event in last year’s WSOP, followed him on the Main Event leaderboard from the time he arose to day one chip-leader all the way to his victory, bet handsomely on him and interviewed him before the final table. I like the guy a lot and am reluctant to say anything critical about him, but I don’t think I can hold my tongue on this one.

Is he really the face the PPA wants to put in front of Congress? Keep in mind that a big reason the UIGEA got support was a result of it being promoted as a way to protect minors from underage online gambling. Minors like Cada who were playing online long before they should have been according to the law. In Cada’s case, it obviously worked out. He bought himself a house with his online winnings at age 19.

But does putting a baby-faced 22 year old on Capitol Hill as the “Face of Poker” send the right message to law-makers? It seems like a questionable move on the part of the PPA. Just because you won the Main Event does not mean you are automatically therefore a good ambassador to the game of poker. Cada’s persona is fine for Letterman appearances and interviews on ESPN’s SportsCenter, but is he really fit for Capitol Hill? He might be the first to tell you that he’s not. He admitted himself in that article that he’s “still trying to get used to all of this.” Yea, I’ll bet! A year ago he was a college-dropout grinding online poker with his friends who weren’t old enough to buy alcohol. Now he’s meeting with Congressmen and Senators!

In all likelihood, Cada will do fine in this mostly unimportant visit to Washington, but it does make you question the PPA leadership for just grabbing the latest guy to run hot in a tournament and make him the “Face of Poker” rather than sticking with proven ambassadors like Greg Raymer, Annie Duke and Howard Lederer who are probably far more fit to be mingling with politicians on behalf of the game. Then again, I could be wrong. Maybe Cada’s youthfulness will work in poker’s favor. After all, he’s going to stand out bigtime in a room full of Washington lawmakers and lobbyists.

If you haven’t heard (or seen) already, Joe Cada was on the Late Show with David Letterman earlier this week to discuss his win at the 2009 WSOP Main Event. You can watch the video here:

I thought Cada did a good job and seemed pretty composed and relaxed for a 21 year old. It’s unfortunate that Letterman was too busy joking about poker being shady business to give Cada more opportunities to speak. But I suppose mediocre mainstream poker exposure is better than no mainstream poker exposure.

Nice work, Joe!

For anyone interested, Bluff Magazine is hosting live audio commentary of the WSOP. They’ve had kind of a rotating group of commentators except for David “TheMaven” Chicotsky who seems to be always in the booth. He’s a little bit on the self-absorbed side which can be annoying since he keeps talking about himself, but otherwise it’s a hell of a lot better than reading live updates.

Other commentators have been Annie Duke (surprisingly good), Phil Hellmuth (always entertaining to listen to), Justin Bonomo (nerdy and overly-technical, but not terrible to listen to), and quite a few others.

Play is down to 7 at the moment after Akenhead and Schaffel busted. Odds are it will take several more hours before they’re down to heads-up.

In sports-betting, a bubble will occasionally materialize that presents savvy bettors with an opportunity to make some cash. In the 2007 NFL season, the New England Patriots became the first team to go 16-0 in the regular season. There’s no question that the Patriots were very good – the best in the league for sure – but over-enthusiasm for them on the betting market created an interesting opportunity. At the start of the playoffs, the New York Giants were listed at 70:1 to win the Super Bowl. Seventy to one even after they had already secured a playoff spot!

This author put a c-note on that line and enjoyed the Super Bowl of a lifetime after deciding against hedging the wager. Our resident TwoGun bet quite a great deal more than that and also neglected to hedge. Everyone knows the rest of the story: David Tyree makes the greatest catch in Super Bowl history which helps lead the Giants to a thrilling victory thereby spoiling the Patriots near-perfect season.

Right now in poker, there are some similar betting opportunities that involve fading a dominant entity. Phil Ivey’s presence at the 2009 Main Event final table has created these opportunities. What happened in the NFL in 2007 is that bettors were piling on the Patriots so much that sports-books were forced to list teams like the Giants with very long odds in order to entice action away from the Patriots. Ivey’s presence at the final table has created an identical scenario.

Take a look at the WSOP betting odds at Pinnacle Sports. You’ll see that Ivey is currently +504 (risk $100 to win $504) to win the Main Event. With roughly 5% of the chips in play, he should be a +1900 longshot to win the tournament if he were viewed as having an average skill-set. But Ivey isn’t viewed as having an average skill-set. He is viewed as having a super-human, unbeatable, best-player-in-the-world set of skills. For that reason, his odds of winning have increased all the way to +504.

While it’s true that Ivey is probably the best poker player in the world, there is way too much optimism regarding his chances of winning this tournament. Remember, the other eight players at the table aren’t total slouches. They navigated through a field of 6,494 to get to where they are and have now enjoyed four months to polish their play for the final table. The over-optimism regarding Ivey’s chances has resulted in some great value in placing a wager on others at the table.

For example, I made a bet that 21 year-old Joe Cada will win the event at odds of +1537 (which moved the line to its current listing of +1300). Cada has about 50% more chips than Ivey but was considered nearly three times less likely to win the tournament! Preposterous, I said.

The youngster Cada has been crushing poker since before he was supposed to be playing it (not unlike Ivey as a young man) and has booked a six-figure victory in an online poker tournament during the break before the Main Event final table. Cada was one of the chip leaders after day one of this tournament and essentially went wire-to-wire with a formidable stack to make this final table.

At odds of +1537, Cada was being given a 6% chance to win the tournament despite having a little more than 7% of the chips in play!. That’s the Ivey factor for you. Normally on a proposition of this nature, the vigorish taken by the sports-book would make it nearly impossible to find any shred of value, but thanks to Ivey, great players like Cada are graded at having less of a chance to win than the percentage of chips they possess.

Other players with similarly good betting value are Kevin Schaffel (who showed he’s no fluke by finishing 2nd in a WPT event in August) at +1558 and chip-leader Darvin Moon at +381. Moon has 30.2% of the chips in play but is being given just a 20.8% chance of winning the tournament at those odds.

Bubbles like this don’t come around often. At the start of last year’s NFL playoffs, the longshot team was the Arizona Cardinals at 40:1. During the Patriots bubble from the year before, no less than five teams had longer odds than that.