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Phil Hellmuth may be the most decorated WSOP Player in history, but is he the best player ever?

It’s an argument that has some teeth to it, and you can make a case.  This year’s World Series of Poker saw The Poker Brat make 3 final tables, and pit himself heads-up for career WSOP Bracelet Number 12 all three times.  However, in every case he fell just one spot short and failed to extend his record of the most bracelets in WSOP history.  Despite the lack of titles this year, Phil Hellmuth saw the most profitable World Series of Poker of his career in 2011 with the Main Event still pending, a truly remarkable feat considering all of his prior accolades. His incredible play at this World Series has made him the front runner for Player of the Year honors.  But do the achievements of 2011 combined with the list of unprecedented accomplishments from years past make perhaps the most recognizable player in the game of poker, the greatest player ever?  Now that is a question worth talking about. Read more…

November Niners Matt Jarvis and Champion Jonathan Duhamel headline the $5k NLHE 6-max event.

The two tournaments affected by the hard stops yesterday completed in relatively short time, and within about an hour of each other.  Fabrice Soulier polished off Shawn Buchanan (who came into the day with just 4 big bets) in just a few hands to claim the $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. Championship bracelet and collect $609,130 for the win.  And in the $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em, Mikhail Lakhitov started out on fire, and blitz-Krieged his way through his final 4 opponents, knocking out all but one of them.  Lakhitov scored his first career bracelet as well and won $749,610 in the process.

One other tournament complete yesterday as well as Mitch Schock completed the quest for his first WSOP Gold Bracelet and winning the $310,225 first place prize by winning the $2,500 Pot-Limit Hold’em/Omaha mixed event.  So, congratulations to Soulier, Lakhitov, and Schock.  Not exactly the names that make great headlines, but that happens in poker sometimes.

Here’s the action that will be underway at the Rio today: Read more…

Jonathan Duhamel's win in the 2010 WSOP Main Event makes him one of the top stories of the year.

Here’s the deal, if you win the World Series of Poker Main Event, you’re going to be one of the top stories of the year.  Years from now, when people begin to recount the championships that players have taken home, people will remember them by who won the Main Event that year.  It’s the tournament that matters most among poker tournaments, and it’s the one that gets the most attention every year.  As such, Jonathan Duhamel gets added to the list as one of the top stories of 2010.

Duhamel came out on top of the second largest main event field in the history of the event.  7,319 players put up $10,000 to play for the title, and he was the only one that avoided elimination long enough to be called champion.  From the hands that I saw him play at the Main Event this year, he wasn’t the most deserving player.  But often times in tournaments, the most deserving player doesn’t win.  That’s the luck factor.  Duhamel made several questionable calls that led to several giant pots being shipped his direction as things just worked out for him time and time again. Read more…

Matt Affleck's run in the 2010 WSOP Main Event was a story to remember

I had to be reminded of who Matt Affleck was on Day 5 of the Main Event of the World Series of Poker this year. I didn’t recognize him in any of the first 4 days of play, but the morning of day 5, his chip stack certainly caught my eye.  Each night, the seat assignments and chip counts were sent out, and I’d go through the list the next morning prior to the start of play to pick out significant names and chip counts for my photo-blog for the day.  On the morning of day 5, Matt Affleck’s name jumped out to me as he was 4^th in chips heading into the day as one of the few stacks that were over the 1 million mark.  Affleck’s story in the 2010 Main Event was of back to back deep runs, and this year, his story was a truly special one to watch unfold.

In the 2009 WSOP Main Event, Affleck was in a remarkably similar position.  Late in the tournament he held a commanding chip lead, but somewhere along the lines, he just began spewing chips until he finally went bust in 80^th place.  It was a whirlwind of an event for Affleck who dedicated himself to improving his play over the year, and focused himself on the opportunity to run up a stack again in the 2010 Main Event, and this time, not let it slip away. Read more…

2010 Main Event Champion Jonathan Duhamel just didn't move the ratings needle

The WSOP Ratings on ESPN came out this week and the final table numbers were bad.  I mean, really bad.  They were worse than 2007 (the year that Jerry Yang won the main event) which was the last year before moving to “The November Nine” concept, and have been on a steady decline from the 2008 year when Peter Eastgate won the event.   Last year’s table with Phil Ivey drew fewer views than I think most people expected, but this year’s numbers can’t be classified as anything other than a disappointment.

The reality is that Read more…