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We all know the affable Norman Chad from ESPN's telecasts of the World Series of Poker, but Chad may have a shot at a bracelet of his own.

I want to do this daily, but I’m not making any real promises here.  Basically I was thinking about doing a quick little piece on the things that I’m interested in seeing in the upcoming day, but I don’t know that I’ll actually hold myself to a daily commitment of blogging.  After all, I’m not getting paid for it, and sometimes life (and er…um…motivation) gets in the way.  So when I do get to it, the piece will be here.  When I don’t….well….tough noogies.

First let me start by congratulating the people that won the 23 bracelets so far in the series.  You’re awesome.  I’m not.

I particularly enjoyed the story of John Juanda besting Phil Hellmuth to gain bracelet number 5 and prevent PH from hitting number 12.  I couldn’t take my eyeballs off the livestream…until what seemed to be the final hand of the event and they killed the broadcast.  I had to find out through twitter that Juanda took it down because the feed went down in the closing seconds, but the rest of the match was a slow painful grind anyway.  2-7 Lowball is one of the more painful games to watch, so it was hardly mesmerizing.  Juanda really tore up Hellmuth heads-up and overcame a more than 3 to 1 chip disadvantage to take home the gold.  He’s certainly worth of acknowledgment.

I also want to sent congrats to my buddy Tristan Wade for final tabling the $1,500 NLHE event. Read more…

Frank Kassela's Two WSOP Bracelet wins, and 3 final tables made him the 2010 WSOP Player of The Year

I’m hesitant to call Frank Kassela’s 2010 a “breakout year” because as it turns out, he’s been playing solid poker since 2003.  A regular at final tables in tournaments around the U.S. for the last 7 years, Kassela had his best professional year yet in 2010 and on the World’s biggest stage.  The Tennessee native has been at the World Series of Poker a number of times in the past, and is no stranger to WSOP final tables. In fact in 2005, he shipped in pocket Aces with 4 players remaining in the $2,500 Pot-Limit Hold’em event, and got a caller in Johnny Chan with Q-Q.  But Chan spiked the Q, and found a way to use those chips to collect his 10^th WSOP Bracelet as Kassela exited the tournament in 4^th place.  5 years later, Kassela started the WSOP strong as he finising in 10^th place in a $1,500 buy in Limit Hold’em event when his pocket tens failed to hold against Terrence Chan’s Ac-Jc.  But the final table bubble was just a precursor to the best WSOP performance of the year, and an important stepping stone to becoming the 2010 World Series of Poker Player of the Year. Read more…