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.

April 15 – Online Poker Will Never Be the Same

There’s little doubt that the events of April 15 2011, known henceforth as “Black Friday” in poker circles, have forever altered the online poker industry. Quite frankly, a move such as this has long been in the books though. I’m not going to play it cool and tell you that I saw all this coming. I was just as surprised as the next guy when I saw the news. However, in hindsight I remember hearing (and even writing) about PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker being left out of a potential regulation process as operators who were in direct violation of US law, more precisely of the 2006 UIGEA’s provisions.

The allegations against the 11 online poker executives who were indicted were not about that fact that they facilitated online play, or better put: they weren’t mainly about that. Rather, they were accused of money laundering and bank fraud. They had allegedly set up phantom operations which dealt in pet food and golf balls, disguising their clients’ transactions through these operations. One doesn’t exactly have to be a legal mastermind to realize these are very serious and indeed quite brazen offenses.

What’s done is done though and there’s no use crying over spilt milk, so the question is where to now? Is there a silver lining in online poker’s Black Friday? Does this mean that online poker will lie down and die? Hardly. All this commotion is really about the re-arrangement and the re-mapping of the power-balance within the online poker industry. There are certain interest groups which have been looking to bring down these online poker giants for a while and these interests are currently having a field-day. Look for them to swing into action soon. I’m not a good a conspiracy theorists but it’s kind of easy to see a pattern emerge here. US companies could never really stomach the fact that they were beaten to the online poker pie by foreign interests. From their perspective, sites like Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars were pocketing revenue off their turf. It has been obvious for a while that they would not idly stand by and watch the monies of the American online poker players siphoned away into some offshore account. They want to stick their hands into the cookie-jar, and with Full Tilt and PokerStars out of the way, they’re on the verge of doing just that.

In the US there are close to 20 million online poker players, many of whom are professionals. These guys are not going to go away. As a matter of fact, they’re probably looking to alternatives (such as Bodog) as you’re reading this. These guys are also more than willing to play in a legal and regulated environment, paying taxes on their online poker revenues. This is where the above mentioned interest group comes into the picture. Your best clue to seeing them in action will be the hurried passing of federal-level online poker regulations and laws. Once that stage of the operation is out of the way, companies that will be conditioned by licenses clearly meant to give US operations an unbeatable edge over everyone else, will emerge and they will begin to assimilate the PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker player base, stepping in and claiming the laurels assisted by none other than good-old Uncle Sam. Equal opportunities for all comers? Come on, you don’t believe in such gibberish, do you?

The bottom line is though that massive online poker rooms will re-emerge and players may be better off than they ever were before. Affiliates may be better off too and the industry as a whole will certainly be better off. Uncle Sam will be pleased too, his hand elbow-deep in the online poker honey-jar. It will be the second coming of the online poker revolution, and this time, nothing will be able to stop it.
How will PokerStars and Full Tilt fare? If Party Poker’s woes are an indication: not too well. Party Poker shouldn’t celebrate either though. They may be allowed back into the US market, but something tells me they will never regain their industry-leading status…

Learn to size your bets correctly in poker

The reason I decided to write this little piece about correct bet sizing is a simple one. Making incorrectly sized bets is quite probably one of the most frequent mistakes poker players make, and yes, it is more frequent than the playing of too many starting hands, and the chasing of draws way too far. The way to tell the difference between a good player and someone who is a decent TAG but not quite there yet is through the size of their bets. Beware of the player who always seems to make the right size bet in every hand in which he’s involved.

Now that you know what a plague incorrect bet sizing is: don’t fall into the same trap yourself. Here are a few tips to help you avoid losing money on incorrect bet-sizing, as well as ending up looking like a donk.

The most important thing when you’re about to make a bet is to know thy goal. That’s correct. You need to know exactly what you’re looking to achieve with that bet. Are you making a value bet or are you trying to make your opponent(s) fold. Sometimes a bet can be a probing move too, one meant to make your opponent reveal his true colors through his reaction. Weird as it may sound, most players think little in terms of goals when it comes to betting. Online poker interfaces make all those half-pot and ¾-pot buttons handily available, so all players have to do is to mash some buttons, which is exactly what most of them do indeed do.
Once you set your goals and establish the bet sizes you deem correct in certain situations, it is time to spare a thought or two on mixing up your game. Don’t focus so much on your bet sizing that you forget to mix things up a little. That’ll only make you easy to read and in the end: quite predictable.
Suppose your goal is to make your opponent fold. While you aim to be as intimidating as possible through your bet, you need to keep other things in sight too, like potential damage control. Your opponent may have a hand, in which case you will not be able to intimidate him regardless of the size of your bet. Therefore, the rule of thumb here is to bet as little as possible to get the job done. How much is just enough to result in a fold from your opponent? That’s your task to determine. Mind you, I’m not urging you to min bet every single time you intend to make someone fold. That would be the surest way of turning you into a fish. What I am saying though is that no matter how enticing that “bet pot” button looks, you may want to tone it down a little and hit the ½ pot button instead. More often than not, opponents who can be persuaded to fold will do so when faced with a smaller than full pot size bet just as well as they do when faced with a full pot-size one. By showing a little bit of restraint, you’ll save money when you do get called.
The other scenario is when you make a value bet: you aim to persuade your opponent call. This one’s a little more sensitive matter. Your goal here is to make the largest possible bet that your opponent will call. How exactly does this translate strategy-wise? In the long-run, you’ll be better off making bigger bets that get called less often than you are making smaller bets with a higher probability of yielding a call.

Your reading skills will be extremely important in this case. Some players find the pot odds offered by smaller bets impossible to resist. Others will always regard a large bet as a sign that the bettor has the nuts. Again, you are directly responsible for determining how your opponents will react to differently sized bets that you fire their way, and for making the right move based on your reads.
The weird thing about proper bet-sizing is that pretty much everyone knows the theory around it – which is far from rocket science anyway – yet people fail to put that knowledge to use time and time again. Knowing something is one thing, putting that knowledge to use is different. Think about it like this: all it takes to take your game to the next level is to spare a couple of extra thoughts on each bet that you make. That’s really not a whole lot of effort and it does indeed pay great dividends.

The complete story of the Bellagio robbery

You’ve probably all read the Bellagio robbery story in the news section of this website, and you’ve probably also read the piece about how the robber was eventually apprehended. What’s the full story behind these events though? Exactly what lead to the downfall of 29 year-old Anthony Michael Corleo, the son of a Las Vegas City judge? Here’s a deeper look.

When he jogged out of the Bellagio in December, with $1.5 million worth of casino chips, and – to quote Tony G – he got on his bike to ride off into the sunset with the dough, Anthony Michael Corleo must’ve already known that he just got a huge problem on his hands. Never mind the national attention that comes with the turf in this line of business: he hadn’t even completely pulled the caper, despite his Ocean’s eleven-like exit from the casino. He still had the not-the-least-bit tiny or insignificant problem of turning his haul into cash. Many experts and non-experts chimed in with various theories about how he could accomplish that, as the imagination of the poker and gambling world shifted into high gear. Unfortunately for Corleo, none of the floated theories offered him an easy and straightforward way to cash his chips in, and the sudden notoriety proved to be a huge problem for him ego-wise too.

After the robbery, he returned to his home town of Pueblo, Colorado where he started buying drinks to all his friends and generally being extremely generous with money he said he had won gambling in Vegas. The draw of Sin City proved way too hard to resist though, and he returned to the Bellagio, where he played and lost money, even on New Year’s Eve. His antics soon earned him high roller status and he once even stayed a week at the Bellagio by means of the comp points he had earned. The pressure of having to cash in the cranberries ($25k chips) got to him though and he started making mistakes. He first donated a chip to a Salvation Army bell ringer who later helped identify him. Then he took his chips online, and opened an account at one of the popular poker forums where he didn’t shy away from bragging about his caper. He befriended Matthew Brooks, a forum regular, and started exchanging private messages, phone calls and emails with him. As proof that he was indeed the “Biker Bandit” he even sent him pictures of two of the cranberries in his possession. He even admitted on one occasion that he was indeed the “asshole” who had pulled the heist.

Unfortunately for him, Brooks decided to share the information he obtained from him, and that’s what eventually led to his arrest.
The person with whom Brooks initially shared the information he had gathered on the Biker Bandit, was a Bellagio investigator. This guy set up a few meetings with Corleo, and the caper came full circle when he tried to sell some of the stolen chips to undercover LVPD officers.

Brooks took some flak on the forum for ratting the guy out, but he addressed such attacks in a statement in which he detailed his decision. He said he felt the need to share the information out of principle and that he wasn’t about to sacrifice the normalcy of his life for a strung-out junkie.

Corleo’s downfall wasn’t the first time a criminal plot got foiled by an online poker forum. Back when the UB cheating scandal was in full swing, it was an online poker forum post that raised awareness and that eventually prompted the right authorities to launch an actual investigation into the matter.

Make money in Limit Hold’em – Poker Advice

As NL Texas Hold’em poker tables become more competitive all the time, does it make sense for players to go looking for value in limit Texas Hold’em?
That kind of depends on whom you ask. If you ask a NL Hold’em poker maniac, he will probably tell you that not only is limit Hold’em a useless waste of time, it is also extremely annoying, and it is exclusively played by obstructive fish, going against whom for some reason is never profitable. If you ask someone with a solid knowledge about the game (kind of like Howard Lederer) he will tell you that while there are indeed obvious differences between the two betting formats, both games can be profitable for those who know how to approach them.
As a no limit Hold’em player, you will probably find it difficult in the beginning to adapt to the new style. Money is made very differently in no limit Hold’em and in limit Texas Hold’em. This is the issue from which most of the other differences stem as well.

In no limit Hold’em poker, you’re constantly on the hunt for big pots. Even though there are indeed small pot hands and big pot hands, your small pots are mostly aimed at controlling your losses. The big pots, where you can get an opponent or two all-in, are the real money makers. NL Hold’em is basically a waiting game: you lurk in the shadows trying not to lose too much money until the time comes when you can pounce and take down the kill. It makes absolute sense that this sort of thing is extremely exciting for players. The other side of the coin, limit Hold’em is about perseverance. Making money there resumes to sneaking in an extra bet here and there, and working your odds tirelessly. Successful limit Hold’em players are true grinders: they exploit their extremely small edges over and over so at the session’s end, all these small bets and check raises add up. There are no one-pot success stories here.
One of the most widely spread myths about limit Hold’em is the one about big pocket pairs losing a lot of value when compared to no limit Hold’em. Most of the players who advocate this idea base their assumptions on the fact that in limit Hold’em the player is robbed of the tools to protect his big starting hand. The truth is however that despite being deprived of the possibility to make large bets to protect a hand, pocket rockets or pocket kings still retain a lot of value, they just have to be played differently.
According to Full Tilt Poker pro Howard Lederer, when you take a peek at your pocket hand and you see something like pocket kings, your first thoughts should not be focused on stealing the pot. Rather you should set your focus on squeezing the equity out of the hand in the long run. What that means is that you need to be prepared to lose on your pocket kings.

Regardless of the fact that you may well lose on them though at any given time, you need to keep “milking” them each and every time you pick them up. If you do so, in the long run you are mathematically guaranteed to show a profit playing these hands. It just takes time and it takes a lot of patience, not to mention the ability to stave off tilting.

In limit Hold’em, poker players will call you if they have anything resembling a draw simply on account of the pot odds that they get – and not because they’re dumb. If you have the best hand, you have to expect a bunch of players to tag along. That’s okay though, that’s how you build the pot. As long as you’re fairly certain you have the best hand at the table, you need to keep stuffing that pot. The rest is up to Lady Luck, but if you do play all your big starting hands this way, the final word will belong to mathematics rather than luck. They key word here is “long-run”. Learn your lesson, keep your head down and do your job, and hope for the best.

Poker trash talk – How far is too far?

Since poker is a competitive game, bullying is never a stranger on the green felt. People bully their opponents by putting pressure on them through aggressive bets. People gang up on their opponents when there’s a short-stack at the table. In a word: it ain’t pretty. If you’re looking for compassion and the better side of human nature, you shouldn’t look for it at the poker table. People know all this and they know all too well what they can expect. Still, there are people out there who push the boundaries of what’s decent and what’s not. Since online contact is less direct and by simply turning the chat feature off, one can pretty much plug up a discontent opponent’s piehole, online confrontations rarely appear to be stretching the above said boundaries. Live poker events though, especially televised ones often offer an entirely different view of the scenery. Basically, there are two categories of “loose cannons” in live poker. Those who commit their verbal assaulting under the influence, and those who do it in a level-headed and premeditated way.

An obvious example for the first type would be Scotty Nguyen’s drunken rampage at the 2008 WSOP’s HORSE event. The guy obviously had a few too many beers and he let his guard down completely, simply spitting out everything that crossed his mind. While regrettable, his behavior could at least be explained through his intoxication, and while I’m not trying to use that as an excuse for the Prince of Poker, I understand it much better than the bullying some of the other highly successful and respected poker players resort to.
Without further ado though here’s the case in point:

Now then, if you watch that video, one thing strikes you from the very beginning: Tony G says to Robl: “…see if you’re a real man”. That short phrase there tells the entire story of the incident that follows. Tony G is perfectly aware of the type of opposition he’s facing, and make no mistake about that: the man knows he’ll escalate the situation further when he says that. He wasn’t about to cut Robl any slack from that moment on and sure enough – with support from Daniel Negreanu – it worked well. Posturing and macho chest-beating shoved aside, there are few people in the poker world today who would not be psychologically unsettled by the hellraising done by Guoga and Negreanu in the above bit.
There’s nothing spontaneous about it, it’s all premeditated and executed according to a shrewd battle plan. Sure, Tony G expressed regret over the incident later in his blog, and he’s apparently made peace with Robl since. If a court were to look at the above video as evidence though, I seriously doubt his apology would be accepted as a sign of true regret. This guy is a calculated, cool-headed monster at the table. He doesn’t “lose it” like Scotty does after a couple of beers. He knows what he’s doing and given the proper chance he’d do it all over again any day. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the fact that he verbally pressures his opponent. Throw out those couple of F-bombs and there’s nothing even offensive about anything he says. What really surprised me was the way he and Negreanu ganged up on the kid. Through his pissing and moaning, Tony G obviously created an advantage for Negreanu, who welcomed it all with open arms and even said thanks to Guoga for it. The assist may not have been intentional, but what gives?

Swearing and poker

Swearing has long been an enemy of the poker player. Just ask Mike Matusow how many times he was fined or hit with some kind of penalty on account of the frequency of the F-bombs he so generously dispenses. Until not so long ago, the mere mention of an F-related expression drew an immediate penalty at the WSOP too. What exactly is the psychology at work behind cursing though? Could a poker player learn a thing or two about taking a more in-depth look into why all walks of life seem to be dominated by swearing? Apparently yes.

Humans are obviously driven to swearing when placed under psychological pressure. Since poker is a game seemingly invented to play with participants’ nerves, there are few things out there more successful at driving people to swear. What is the scientific explanation behind swearing? It’s apparently a rather simple one: swearing is good for us. When we swear, we release psychological pressure, which induces a sense of relief, of newfound well-being. As such, people tend to return to swearing time after time, quite literally becoming addicted to the relief it brings. Another benefit in swearing is that by releasing psychological pressure and anger, swearing helps us avoid direct physical confrontation. The advantages of that are obvious at the live poker table. I’m pretty sure you’ve seen countless people swear at the poker tables and I’m also pretty sure you haven’t seen nearly as many conflicts end up in flying fists and knocked out teeth. Think about it like this: if you were a professional poker player, and you got into a fight, you could easily be banned from the tables for good, thus having your livelihood taken away from you. If you look at things like that, you’ll realize that swearing is a much better friend of yours than you ever thought it could be.

In online poker, resorting to physicality is obviously not an option. Destroying one’s computer screen isn’t nearly as psychologically vindicating as delivering a well aimed knuckle sandwich to an opponent’s face who just hit a runner-runner to relieve you of a huge stack of chips on the first decent hand you managed to pick up in hours. Since you can’t step onto the field of deeds in any reasonable way, what you do is you try to deliver that punch through the interface offered by your poker room’s software and we all know where that leads: tilting. So the bottom line is: go ahead and swear as much as you want to, just make sure there are no small kids around.

Even the WSOP has bought into the “swearing is good for you” idea lately. Empty venting, (as in swearing not directed towards a particular opponent) is OK these days and it should be. After all, live poker tournaments are not nun conventions and folks do need to keep their temper in check somehow. What IS forbidden though is singling someone out and verbally assaulting him/her, and that is fine too: it should be forbidden. If you want to bully someone around at the table, do it with your stack and not with your mouth. Exactly what counts as aimless cursing and swearing is not clear unfortunately, and there are many folks out there who still use the blurred border between the two “genres” to abuse and to bully their opponents. Some of the biggest names of the game do it. They’re not exactly garnering any fan support with their actions, but that’s probably not what they’re looking for either. Does a poker player need to have any fans at all?

Live poker and sunglasses

Do you reckon that wearing sunglasses should be accepted as a mainstream practice at live poker tables? Do you wear sunglasses when you play and if so why? The only reason I’m asking these questions is that shades may soon be outlawed at the live poker tables (I bet you’ll still be allowed to wear whatever type and color you like back home in front of your computer), because – according to many – they spoil the game by allowing some of the players to hide behind this wall of partial anonymity.
The whole sunglasses at the poker table debate was started by Daniel Negreanu in a blog post of his in which he expressed joy over the fact that PokerStars’ The Big Game would not allow players to hide “like chickens” behind shades, through a direct rule addressing the issue.

Negreanu went on to detail how none of the top players who rose from among the online ranks wore sunglasses in live poker events. Tom Dwan, Patrick Antonius and Phil Galfond do not resort to such trickery indeed, and neither does Doyle Brunson or Phil Ivey. None of the greats feel the need to hide their eyes from their opponents, but does that mean an everyday Joe should be denied the option too?
After all, Stu Ungar wore sunglasses and Greg Raymer’s reptile-eyes spectacles have become something of a trademark accessory for the big man.
In what ways do shades create an advantage for beginners? First of all: sunglasses boost beginners’ confidence. They feel like they’re not out there naked, faced with the adversity that some of the world’s biggest poker players can bring upon them. I can certainly relate to this view. Even those guys who get used to staring down Phil Ivey or Daniel Negreanu over time, would certainly appreciate the refuge offered by the shades in the beginning.

Others say that the shades prevent their opponents from seeing when they look at them. That can be important in light of the fact that this way, opponents won’t be able to tell when our man gets a read on them. They basically allow a player to be much more stealthy at the table, kind of like an online player. As uptight and intimidated as they may be early on, as soon as the novelty factor wears off (and we know that happens pretty fast in live poker) people tend to relax. They catch themselves daydreaming at the table waiting for that hand which warrants some chips being pushed in to the middle. Shades prevent their opponents from being able to tell they’re daydreaming. This way, they will not telegraph the fact that they’ve just picked up a play-worthy hand when they finally do.
The advantages that sunglasses offer some players are quite obvious. Sure, they’re not for everybody for sure. A guy like Phil Ivey or Daniel Negreanu, gains a lot more by letting their opponents know when they look at them than by hiding their gaze. Incidentally, it is these very guys who have a lot to gain from shades being banned, who are against it.

The question of whether or not sunglasses should indeed be banned from competitions boils down to whether or not they threaten the integrity of the game. Many an expert readily admits that having one’s eyes hidden from his/her competitors does in fact facilitate cheating. With that in mind, I suppose I’ll have to back the ban myself, regardless of how cool sunglasses look on some folks at the table. Sunglasses (especially when combined with hoodies) don’t make good poker TV at all – as Negreanu didn’t fail to point out, so if we throw that into the balance as well, the decision is a relatively easy one.

WSOP – a look back at the bracelet events that are no longer around

With the WSOP’s November 9 final table almost upon us, it is time to take a look back at the events that resulted in bracelets for the lucky (and highly skilled) winners, including those that have been banished from the schedule of the world’s largest poker series.
This year, a total of 56 events awarded gold bracelets to their respective winners, spanning a selection of Holdem, Omaha and 7-Card Stud, featuring different betting structures and tournament formats. Because the WSOP is a living, breathing entity rather than a heartless collection of poker tournaments, it has been on a continuous evolutionary process ever since its inception. Various events were added, others were dropped. Various formats have been tried for the Main Event, some of which resulted in failures, while others stuck around.
For the 2010 Series, organizers had once again come up with a few changes to keep up with the public’s needs. One of those changes was the replacing of the HORSE format with an 8-game mix for the Player’s Championship. In order to make some of the Holdem tournaments more accessible for the masses, buy-ins had been lowered for them.
Every year in recent poker history, the WSOP has seen some changes. The Series consisted of only 12 events back in 1986. That number had climbed to 17 by 1999 and it continued to increase every year since. Some events were also dropped in the process though, and there’s no better way to conjure up some WSOP nostalgia than to take a look back at them, so here goes.

The Ace-to-Five Draw event was first introduced in 1971, when Johnny Moss won it for $10k. Ace-to-five Draw plays a lot like 2-7 triple draw, with only a few minor differences. It too is a lowball game, but straights and flushes count, so the best possible Ace-to –Five draw hand is the A,2,3,4,5. The event has had a bunch of noteworthy winners through the years, including Chau Giang, John Juanda and Men Nguyen. The very last such event was held during the 2004 edition of the WSOP, when Norm Ketchum won it for a prize of $84,500. Ketchum bested a starting field of 184 players, the third biggest in the history of the event. 1987 was the year when the event saw the most entrants (216) but that could probably be attributed to the fact that the buy-in was only $1,000 that year.

Fixed Limit Omaha is an event which saw its WSOP demise in 2003. First introduced in 1983, the Limit Omaha event last saw the light of a WSOP day in 2003. The introduction of the event was an obvious response to the newfound popularity that Limit Omaha had enjoyed in the 80s. All that came to an end when PLO took over. The first ever winner of a WSOP Limit Omaha event was none other than David Sklansky, who picked up $25,500 for his efforts. Eduard Scharf was the last one to win a Fixed Limit Omaha event in 2003. He took down $63,600.

Five-Card Stud was one of the most popular poker variants back in the 70s, when the WSOP started, so it was obviously included on the schedule. Despite the relatively large following it enjoyed, 5-Card Stud only appeared 3 times on a WSOP schedule. First introduced in 1971, the event was won all three times by Billy Boyd. The weird thing about the Five-Card Stud event is that Boyd is listed as the winner of the 1973 event, but according to the same records, there was only 1 entrant in that event. Could Boyd have won a WSOP bracelet simply by having entered an event?

The 2003 WSOP Main Event Final table participants – where they are now

The 2003 WSOP’s Main Event was undoubtedly one of the greatest moments in the history of the game. A true turning point, Chris Moneymaker’s 2003 win sparked the online poker crazy and pretty much single handedly turned poker into the global industry we know today.
Besides Moneymaker, there were other players at that 2003 final table too though, and while finishing at the final table didn’t quite mean as much financially as it does today, the rewards were still nice and many of the players involved went on to continue their careers as top-class professional players.
Eliminated in 9th place, and rewarded with $120k for his efforts, David Singer would probably be extremely disappointed with that haul by today’s standards, back then however, it turned out to be a driving force for him, as he started spending more and more time playing in online and live poker tournaments. One thing led to another for this talented player and following his WSOP final table presence, he amassed close to $4 million in tournament winnings. He made no fewer than 5 more WSOP final tables and won a bracelet in the $1,500 PLH event in 2008.

David Grey was the one sent packing in 8th place. His reward was slightly better: he picked up $160k, still rather unimpressive by the standards set by subsequent Big Dances. Unlike Singer, Grey had already had a WSOP bracelet before his 2003 final table presence. In its wake though, he too ramped up his tournament schedule and sure enough, he scored a second bracelet in 2005 in the $5,000 NL Deuce to Seven Draw side-event. Grey had been a relatively steady tournament earner before his 2003 Main Event sting, and he became even more prolific afterwards: he added another $886k to his already impressive tournament tally.
Young Pak finished 7th back in 2003 and since then, he’s pretty much disappeared off the map of prestigious live poker events. His tournament winnings had been relatively modest before his final table presence too at $34k, and they haven’t exactly turned northward afterwards either. He only managed to add $47k more, and his best post-2003-final table performance was a 246th place in the Big Dance in 2005.

Of all 2003 final table participants, Amir Vahedi was the one who faired the worst. He took down a quarter million dollars then, and he followed it all up with $2.2 million in additional tournament winnings after the 2003 Big Dance, but unfortunately he passed away in January 2010 due to diabetes complications. Right before his death though, he was regarded one of the friendliest and most beloved faces the game of poker had ever had.
Tomer Benvenisti, the 5th place finisher, had not been playing professionally before the 2003 WSOP. He had had no official tournament earnings and he didn’t really become successful after his $320k WSOP feat either.
Jason Lester, bounced in 4th place, was a high stakes cash game player. Just like Singer and Grey, he started playing in more tournaments after his final table stint. In 2010, Lester has been on something of a roll, finishing deep in several high stakes live events.
Dan Harrington, 3rd place man in the 2003 Big Dance, needs no introduction. For a player who has never been a full time pro, Harrington has done extremely well. The very next year (2004) he finished 4th in the Main Event. He also has several WPT final table finishes to his name. Most importantly, he is the author of some of the most popular poker theories and books.
Sam Farha (2003 runner-up), is also an established poker pro. A millionaire businessman, Farha has no fewer than 3 WSOP bracelets to his name, two of which came after his 2003 final table stint. At the time, he had already had a bracelet.

Chris Moneymaker, the winner, is one of PokerStars’ in-house pros today. Though many have doubted his skills over the years, he has proved his worth in several live and online events since. Though he hadn’t had a single cent in tournament winnings before 2003, he’s amassed more than 500k afterwards.

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