The fifth season of the World Poker Tour wraps this week with the $25k buy-in WPT World Championship at the Bellagio. About 600 players are expected for what would be (…doing math) a shitload of money.
The championship event had its official kick-off Thursday night at Light with the WPT Player Appreciation Party (watch as Rich Belsky enthusiastically asks everyone if they’re drunk here. He really wants to make sure people are drunk. Seriously, he’s into it.) All the big players showed. Free booze flowed. We spent the first part of the night screaming at the top of our lungs over the ridiculously loud Light music talking with the lovely Michele Lewis from Pokerati and her husband. Great party by WPT. Expect a bedlam ensuing trip report in the coming days. It’ll make the Bodog/TAO party from last year look like a four year-old girl’s stuffed animal tea party.
Some things to look out for at the WPT World Championship:
:: WPT POY Race. Last year, Gavin Smith won. This year, it’s all about the spectacularly breasted J.C. Tran, who is currently in front with 2,000 points. Only two men can catch him. One is WCP fave Joe Pelton. He has 1,600 points and would need to finish fifth for a tie or fourth or better to win. Daniel Negreanu has 1,300 points and would need to finish second to tie or first to win POY honors.
:: Live blogging from WCP faves. The WPT has signed on the aforementioned Pelton, plus Isaac Haxton and Paul Wasicka to post before, during, and on breaks while playing the championship event. And if anything crazy happens at their table during play, they’ll tell the WPT blogging team about it for an update. Check the blog regularly once the event starts here. One special request to the WPT…can you get Davidson Matthew involved in this?
:: The 100th Episode. Final note, the WPT World Championship will be the 100th broadcast episode (set to air for early August). For the top 100 WPT hands of all time, go here.
Tagged as: isaac haxton, j.c. tran, joe pelton, live blogging, paul wasicka, wpt world championship
The 2006 WSOP has its first event winner!
Editor’s Note: Let’s keep it real, the employee tournament, while special in its own way, doesn’t really count. Also, our enthusiasm with the exclamation point (!) is mostly feigned. We’re excited, sure, just not “exclamation point excited.”
Brandon Cantu has won the 2006 WSOP’s first [real] title by bagging Event #2 ($1,500 NLH). This is Cantu’s first major tournament cashing, and let’s just assume that he’s swimming in all that money you see right about now in his newly upgraded hotel suite. And trust us, what Brandon is feeling at this moment is hard to top. Big king-sized bed, money sprawled out in a sea of green, three beautiful Asian women wearing nothing but baby oil squirming around in it. It’s a feeling everyone must experience at least once. Brandon Cantu, enjoy it while you can.
However, there is a greater question than how Brandon Cantu is enjoying his newly acquired $757,839. And that question is this: Can anyone at Poker Pages take a damn photo that doesn’t look like the photographer was smacked upside the head with a mallet when the lens snapped? (Evidence at left) Do they use a camera that has a "Blur Only" feature? We could hold a camera in our mouth while shivering from hypothermia and take clearer snaps then this.
Brandon Cantu bested Mark Ly heads-up for the title. Ly will take home $416,816. The big name pro at the final table, Carlos Mortensen, was the first to go. See how much richer Mortensen and the rest of the final table got over at Card Player.
Also, Event # 3 ($1,500 PLH) will wrap later today, and we’ll throw all journalistic integrity out the window by saying we’d really like to see Tiltboy Rafe Furst pull this one out.
However, it won’t be easy.
Rafe, who sits third overall with 222,000, will have to deal with the likes of John Juanda (147,000), Burt Boutin (140,000), Day 1 chip leader Can Kim Hua (122,000), and current chip leader Eric Lynch (455,000), among others.
A Furst victory truly has some mega-tilt implications, as Rafe would win his first WSOP bracelet before everyone’s favorite 6′9 presidential candidate, Phil Gordon. How can two Tiltboys own bracelets (Perry Friedman being the other) before Phil Gordon? We believe the word you’re looking for is “preposterous.”
But it could happen today. Final table play kicks off at 2pm PST. Check Card Player and Poker Wire for the updates.
* Photos from Card Player and Poker Pages, respectively.
Tagged as: 2006 WSOP, brandon cantu, live blogging, Rafe Furst, Tiltboys, wsop tournament reports
Intro: BJ Nemeth is working backwards. Many serious bloggers launch their site, then get their dream gig writing for one of the pubs out there. BJ already worked that “dream” gig, for Card Player magazine, no less, when he launched their live tournament blogging initiative. Now, free from the constraints of publication affiliation, BJ’s got his own blog up, providing his unedited insight and opinions to the poker community for the first time.
WCP: When did you get your poker blog up and running?
BJ: Using Apple’s iWeb software and my existing .Mac account, I put up the beginnings of my website in late April. I started by posting my online portfolio, compiling some of my work (articles and photos) from my time reporting for Card Player magazine. That let me get comfortable with the software for about a week, and start my site with more content than just a few blog posts. (I’m a big believer in the Ted Turner theory that "Content is king.")
The website was ready for primetime when I posted my first blog entry on Sunday, April 30, 2006. I wrote an introduction to my blog, which was basically my mission statement.
WCP: You were with Card Player for awhile right when the poker boom was taking off. How’d you get hooked up with them and what were your responsibilities?
BJ: When the 2004 World Series began, I was unemployed…
[click to continue…]
Tagged as: American Idol, Bellagio., BJ Nemeth, card player, Katharine McPhee, live blogging, McPheever, Pirates of the Carribean, Taylor Hicks, world series of poker
The championship event had its official kick-off Thursday night at Light with the WPT Player Appreciation Party (watch as Rich Belsky enthusiastically asks everyone if they’re drunk here. He really wants to make sure people are drunk. Seriously, he’s into it.) All the big players showed. Free booze flowed. We spent the first part of the night 
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