Home / Poker News April 2013 / Ivey’s WSOP APAC Bracelet Criticized
Ivey’s WSOP APAC Bracelet Criticized
Posted by: Randy Williams - Thu, 2013-04-11 08:14
A couple of days ago, poker and
online poker legend Phil Ivey has secured his 9th WSOP bracelet, winning event #3 of the WSOP APAC at Melbourne’s famed Crown Casino. Although the historical significance of the accomplishment wasn’t lost on the majority of the poker community, some were quick to point out that the full value of Ivey’s newest
WSOP bling should at least be questioned.
Why exactly are these people not ready to admit that Ivey’s simply done it again? According to some of the critics, Ivey’s win in the $2.2k Mixed event was a bit “tainted” because of the small starting field, which had obviously radically increased his individual odds. The problems with this theory are quite abundant and they’re rather obvious as well: first of all, how can it be considered Ivey’s fault that only 81 players decided to cough up the rather substantial buy-in for the poker tournament? 8-game is extremely difficult to master and therefore one can pretty much bet that every one of the 81 registrants were above-average poker players. Having to master many different variants is just one side of the coin. The buy-in wasn’t exactly a minimal one either, so those who knew they had glaring holes in their games in at least one of the featured game variants, naturally chose to stay away from the tables. The makeup of the final table is quite telltale in this respect indeed.
Secondly, in past WSOPs, many events featured such (or even smaller) starting fields, and no one ever contested the validity of the bracelets awarded by those events. This point alone voids all the haters’ arguments.
Last but certainly not least, the whole poker world could witness that Brandon Wong, the player Ivey defeated heads-up for the title, was by no means a roll-over.
