I just returned on July 18 from a nine day trip in Las Vegas and Laughlin. To some of you part of this will be old news. I had the pleasure of getting to spend a couple of days at the WSOP main event this year as an observer. The main event had 6,494 players. The total prize pool for this year's main event totals $61,043,600. This amount will end up slightly higher since interest is added to payouts for the 9 remaining players. In November the final nine players will battle for a first place prize of $8.5 million. All of the nine are guaranteed at least $1 million for making the final table. I mainly went to watch Tommy Vedes from Laughlin Nevada. Tommy Vedes was Eliminated in 19th Place ($352,832). During the past several years I have played against Tommy in various tournaments. He had at one time 9.7 million in chips. His last bet was 1.9 million in chips. He flopped a set of threes and was beat by a set of sevens. Jordan Smith went out 10th place with pocket AA. He lost to a set of 888. The final table for November 2009 looks like the following.
Seat 1: Darvin Moon - 58,930,000
Seat 2: James Akenhead - 6,800,000
Seat 3: Phil Ivey - 9,765,000
Seat 4: Kevin Schaffel - 12,390,000
Seat 5: Steven Begleiter - 29,885,000
Seat 6: Eric Buchman - 34,800,000
Seat 7: Joe Cada - 13,215,000
Seat 8: Antoine Saout - 9,500,000
Seat 9: Jeff Shulman - 19,580,000
On Monday July 13, I got to talk with Joe Hachem's and got his signature. I watched Phil Ivey on the feature table on Monday sitting there very relaxed and eating an apple. I saw Jeff Shulman, Anton Esfandian, Dennis Phillips, Peter Eastgate, Joey Word, Adam Schoenfield, J. C. Tran, T.J. Cloutier, and Joe Hachem. I only talked with Joe Hachem, T.J. Cloutier, Adam Schoenfield and Dennis Phillips.
What is exciting as the WSOP events and main events are going on the cash games are great.
I read Doyle Brunson blog yesterday. Doyle:
“The good news is that the cash games at the Bellagio are really, really good. In fact, I haven’t seen games like the ones going on for years. There are millions of dollars on the two tables in Bobby’s Room every night. The high action games have even moved out into the main poker rooms because there are so many of them. I saw two 4-8 thousand mixed games, a 3-6k mixed game, a 2-4 mixed and a 2-4k blind pot limit Omaha going at the same time. There are lots of Europeans playing with the local players and huge amounts of money are being won and lost.”
Arcane51
Seems like you had a great time in Vegas. Wish i coulda seen the Main event on T.V. but my cable has been cut 'cause I didn't pay the bill on time, lol. Looks like Ivey is gonna win it this year. ;) (I can hope.) When you find out who wins make another blog, Don't think I'm getting my cable back in time to see the finish, lol. I'll see ya around.
Arc.