WSOP 2011 Gossip

We’re about halfway into the WSOP 2011 Series, and so far, things are looking good from just about any angle. There is no denial that before the Series got rolling, the Black Friday events coupled with Phil Ivey’s boycott had cast a long dark shadow over the whole thing. Fortunately however, all those apparently negative things look like positive developments in hindsight, at least from a strictly WSOP perspective. The Black Friday fiasco, although it had effectively crippled the online poker industry in the US, has created a kind of hunger among players which pushed them to attend more events and to cough up more in buy-ins. Event after event broke its previous attendance records, some by only a few tens of players, others by thousands.

Gossip-worthy events, the spice of such Series, abounded as well. By this stage, Phil Ivey’s bail out move is seen as just that by many. Others will simple ask you Phil who?
Here’s a brief rundown of some of the most entertaining and controversial moments of the 2011 Series so far.
The Poker Brat always steals the limelight wherever he goes, and that is especially true for the late stages of WSOP events. This year, after a long drought bracelet or even close-call-wise, Phil Hellmuth almost managed to grab his 12th piece of WSOP bling. Now, I know people feared that Allen Kessler’s bracelet win would bring about the end of the world, but had Hellmuth won his 12th bracelet, in a non-Hold’em event no less, we’d all have preferred the end of the world to whatever that would’ve meant.

Hellmuth is no doubt a talented player, although there’s one thing he seems to be even more talented at: being obnoxious and out-of-this-world conceited, especially if he has solid reasons to be that. We have Full Tilt Poker’s John Juanda to thank for averting a disaster potentially much bigger than a Tom Dwan bracelet win last year, and that was no patty-cake either. Juanda bounced back from a 3-1 chip handicap to deny The Brat heads-up, so it’s safe to say it just wasn’t meant to be for Hellmuth.

Talking about major disasters threatening the poker world: apparently, legend had it that a WSOP bracelet win from Allen Kessler – known in online circles under the amiable moniker “Chainsaw” – would rip a nasty gash into the good-old space-time continuum, upon which the existence of the universe itself is supposedly reliant. Kessler came close to achieving a deed of a never-before seen significance for the entire universe in the $1,500 PL Holdem Event. Fortunately for the universe and for all living things in it, Kessler – like Hellmuth – got denied in the final phase of his devious plan, and finished second to pick up $140k, which wasn’t a bad payday, not even for someone hell-bent on undoing the effects of the Big Bang.

There is no denial that the 2011 Series has been especially rough with PokerStars’ Daniel Negreanu. The Poker Kid absorbed one nasty blow (read bad beat) after another, and even though he is definitely one of the most charismatic and upbeat poker playing personalities out there, apparently he isn’t immune to nervous meltdowns/blowups either after all.
His Hellmuth-moment came in the $10k Limit Holdem World Championship event, where he had been doing extremely well before he ran into a straight flush for the cooler, and then took another nasty beat. He knocked over his chair, ripped his headphones off smashing them on the floor.
He did regain his composure soon after though, and picked up a new pair of headphones to head back into the heat of the green felt battle.