With WSOP round the corner betting on the Main Event is on in earnest. Many of the popular sports betting sites are offering odds on a variety of bets. The winner of the Main Event is the most common wager but there are several other interesting bets on offer.
At the time of writing William Hill put three players as favorites to win the new bracelet in the Main Event. These are Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen and Allen Cunningham. That the favorites have odds of 100 to 1 shows how open the field is. The next lot of players is at 150 to 1. These include Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Peter Eastgate and Scotty Nguyen.
The field is more fragmented when it comes to predicting who will make it to the final table. Paddy Power provides the following odds. Phil Ivey leads with 14 to 1, followed by Gus Hansen at 18 to 1 and Daniel Negreanu at 35 to 1. The record bracelet holder Phil Hellmuth is at 50 to 1 and poker legend Doyle Brunson is at 100 to 1.
This year is being touted as the Year of the Female and there is special interest in bets involving female players. In the Paddy Power list of making it to the final table Jennifer Harman leads the women at odds of 100 to 1. Annette Obrestad is at odds of 125 to 1. The surprise entry is Vanessa Rousso with odds of 150 to 1. William Hill is offering odds of 4 to 1 for a female on the final table and 40 to 1 for a female winner. Considering that only one woman has ever made it to the final table and no woman has ever won the Main Event these odds appear ridiculous and should be given a wide berth.
After Moneymaker won the Main Event the floodgate was opened for the younger breed of online players. Every year sees new stars on the horizon making it more difficult for previous winners to do a repeat performance. William Hill offers odds for previous Main Event winners performing well. Any previous winner on the final table carries odds of 7 to 2 and any previous winner winning the Main Event carries odds of 33 to 1.
The European Poker Tour (EPT) Season 6, which kicked off with the event at Kyiv in August 2009, ended fittingly at Monte Carlo.
The last event was the ETP Grand Final High Roller Event with a top prize of almost a million euros. This was won by the 22 year old German pro Tobias Reinkemeier who beat luminaries like Jason Mercier, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Barry Greenstein, Vanessa Rousso and Daniel Negreanu. Boris Becker provided the non poker celebrity value. This win was all the sweeter for Reinkemeier because it was the only Season 6 event to be won by a German. He said, “It’s an overwhelming feeling. The field was definitely tough but what do you expect for a €25,000 event?” Reinkemeier will be donating 2% of his winnings to the All4Kids charity.
Earlier Nicolas “niccc” Chouity of Lebanon won the EPT Grand Final with the €1.7 million top prize. Chouity had won his seat for this event in a $22 rebuy tournament on PokerStars. After winning the prize, Chouity said, “It’s a dream come true. I feel great. I had confidence coming into the final and I had the chip lead but you never know with poker and I was going for first, only first.” However those who were hoping for a repeat performance by a female poker player after Liv’s win at San Remo must have been disappointed.
There was the customary end of the season ETP awards announced. 22 year old Max Lykov from Russia won the Player of the Year. At the other end of the spectrum 68 year old Pierre Neuville won Online Qualifier of the Year. Neuville qualified for 10 of the 13 Season 6 events with the best performance of being runner-up at EPT Vilamoura. Exhibiting the exuberance of a teenager he said, “I’m simply the happiest poker player in the world. It couldn’t be better. It’s my best poker day in my life. With this award, I don’t mind if I have a bad beat forever.”
I have to admit, I usually find these poker player “lifestyle” type videos pretty cool and stumbled accross a new one today about David “The Maven” Chicotsky. If it wasn’t for his video training site, or the fact that I for some odd reason keep in the loop with what is going on with online players I probably would have no idea who this guy is. Regardless, David put together this video as most likely a marketing ploy to promote his training services or there is some connection with the new Victory Poker site which recently launched (as he is one of their pros shown on their homepage) on the Everleaf Network (yea, you’ve probably never heard of it because its one of the worst networks).
Firstly you can watch the video here (sorry, it doesn’t have an embed option), then read my review of it after.
Anyway, I digress… so here is my breakdown/coles notes of the video. The video starts off with David playing several tournaments on various poker sites at his home in Las Vegas including Absolute Poker for some odd reason. I guess he doesn’t mind trusting his money with sites known to cheat players. After playing for what appears to be a short period of time (I guess he busted out early or let his masseuse continue playing for him) he hits the gym to pump some iron get his body beach ready for pools. After this he heads over to Chop, the guy from the hit TV show King of Cars to get hustled into buying an over priced benz. Since this is a day in the life of The Maven, does that mean he buys an $80k car everyday? This is followed by him going to get an overpriced lunch at some Japanese restaurant. Once he finishes up there he heads to a poker degen session (where broke people go to try and strike it rich by becoming good at gambling) to promote his training. After he finishes up there where it looks like some guy who can’t afford to pay for his training is offering him sexual favours as he leaves to learn, he heads over to his life coach??? WTF is a life coach and who pays someone to tell them how to run their life? The life coach himself looks kind of insane and probably could use his own life coach, though he seems to be doing pretty good at ripping off morons. Next stop, he heads over to Antonio Esfandiari’s crib for what looks like a Victory Poker party. I have to admit Antonio is a pimp and his condo is full of smoking girls. Though aside from Antonio you really have to ask if these girls would even talk to most of these guys if they didn’t have bucket loads of money. For example, Andrew Robl (good2cu online) has to be one of the most akward people I have seen being interviewed before. The video ends off with “The Maven” heading to some party get together of like 7 people at the Palms. He sees some asian escort that he hired after a party at the Playboy Mansion, and the video ends off with him hiring her for her services again.
Ok, now that I am done ripping on this video, let me explain why I am hating on it so much. First off, sure, a lot of it is probably true of what he does on a daily basis, but the question is, how much of that stuff is complete BS to try and make him look cool. The car thing is just in there to show off a lot of the things though they do probably happen regularily, I can’t see him doing this every single day. Most of the big online poker tournaments are at night, so when is he sitting home for those 13 hour sessions to grind those games out. To become an online player of the year you have to be putting in some serious sessions I would think on a daily basis. Everybody knows the life of a poker player is far from glamourous. You really have to put in long sessions at your computer or a poker table to make the money to pay for the flashy lifestyle. I know many poker players that do quite well for themselves ($1 mil + per year) and even they spend a ton of time at their computers and rarely get out that much. And these are people with large social circles and lots of friends, not just people who’s only friends are other poker players. Finally, that last part with the asian girl looked sooooo staged. I am not trying to say that he couldn’t pick her up (I am pretty sure he used to have some smoking blonde girlfriend – not sure what happened to that) but don’t do retarded things like that just to try and make yourself look “cool” for a video. I really don’t see him as the type of guy that is out pulling girls home everyday. Sure, you are probably doing this because it is what you think people want to be / it looks cool, but just be yourself, the dorky looking kid that is really good at poker, and stop trying to pretend you are something you are not.
On another note, here is a good remake of The Maven’s video…
Phil Ivey recently made the cover for the popular cigar industry magazine, Cigar Afficianado. Though the magazine is more of a lifestyle magazine than just cigars, some readers had mixed feelings about him being on the cover.
On the CA Forums, one reader posted: “Who the hell is Phil Ivey and what good did he do for the world for being on the cover? What about George Lopez or Hugh Grant(non-smoker by the way) who got caught with a prostitute? Seems to me that some of the people featured on the covers are not the “role models” I got used to anymore.”
Others on the forum were happy to see Ivey on the cover. Some of the positive comments included: “There’s everything we gentlemen care about… cigars, golf, spirits, clothing, watches, movies and yes… poker… which has seated itself nicely into the realm of everything else listed above.” Another poster stated, “Yes Phil comes across as cool and a good guy unlike some in the poker world. I am glad to see him on the cover of CA.”
If you are a big fan of Ivey, and enjoy the occassional cigar definitely check out this month’s issue on newstands. Here is the cover image:
Phil Hellmuth is looking to change his image and no longer be referred to as the “Poker Brat”. According to Hellmuth in a recent interview with ESPN he feels that his image is causing him to lose more because more players are targetting him due to his evil reputation. In the interview he discussed how he played much better in 2006 when he wasn’t referred to as the “poker brat” and even though the TV editors love the way he draws ratings with his rants, he is making an effort to turn that around.
He recently tried this at a tournament where after getting sucked out he decided to just go over and shake his opponents hand instead of errupting. This was met with a round of applause by the audience.
Here is the interview with Hellmuth and ESPN where they discuss Phil’s new “kinder and gentler” image:
With WSOP round the corner betting on the Main Event is on in earnest. Many of the popular sports betting sites are offering odds on a variety of bets. The winner of the Main Event is the most common wager but there are several other interesting bets on offer.
