Home / Poker News October 2009 / Will Ivey break the books at WSOP final table?
Will Ivey break the books at WSOP final table?
Posted by: James Carter. - Fri, 2009-10-30 08:16
The online poker world and the majority of the public are rooting for Phil Ivey to win the November conclusion of the
WSOP’s final table. There are no questions about that. Some root for him because he’s the only one from the final table they know, others are convinced his win will somehow miraculously contribute to getting the industry back onto the road to legalization. The idea is that Ivey’s win would offer indubitable proof that poker is indeed a game of skill and it should therefore not be subject to the provisions of the UIGEA. The fact that no lawmaker cares about whether poker is a game of skill or not, and that the road to having the game legalized probably won’t lead through skill game territory, is a different matter and probably material for a different article.
There’s one group out there though which roots against Ivey: bookmakers. Having any big name at the WSOP final table is always trouble for bookies, and Ivey is just about as big and bad as they come. In the beginning of the Main Event, books had him at 100:1 for winning the event and he’s currently a 6:1 favorite. The initial weak odds were justified by the fact that bettors love to back big names and thus he had to be made less attractive in order not to unbalance the system by attracting way too many wagers. Now at the final table, he has the bookies worried sick as they’re witnessing a worst case scenario slowly unfold right before their eyes.
Obviously, from bettors’ perspectives, the best time to place a bet on a possible Ivey win was at the start of the Series. After the final table had been set, bookies confirmed most of the money coming in on Ivey, which pushed the odds down quite a bit. So much so as a matter of fact that Bodog even has him listed at 4:1. Just to give you a measure of what his name means: PartyBets (
Party Poker’s bookmaking sister site) has chip leader Darwin Moon listed at 4:1.
For bookmakers, Ivey’s win would be a true disaster. If he gets eliminated, the collective sigh of relief on their part will no doubt be enormous.
