For the last five weeks, the Rio has been bubbling like big pot of poker goulash as players from all around the world have vied for the bracelets in tournaments that are capable of defining a poker player’s career. But the biggest one — the bracelet worth the most money, prestige, and worldwide fame — is still locked in a jeweler’s display box in the Rio.
The marathon for the main-event bracelet starts today with the first of the four day ones. Officially known as the $10,000 world championship of no-limit hold’em, it’s simply the largest event of the year in terms of both entrants and prize pool.
Last year, 6,358 players played in main event, and Jerry Yang was the one who won it and its $8.25 million top prize. The year before, it was Jamie Gold who was the last one standing in the high-watermark field of 8,773 players, winning a record $12 million.
The main event starts today with the first flights of players. The Rio can handle around 3,000 players in each of the four starting days, which run until Sunday. Play will go on all day until level five is over, when the blinds are at 200-400 with a 50 ante. After the four days are completed, the remaining players get a day off on Monday.
The next day, the players remaining from the first two starting days (days 1A and 1B) are combined and play another five levels. The players remaining from days 1C and 1D will do the same on Wednesday.
The next five days, the entire group will play poker’s most lucrative version of the last man standing, but unlike in past years, we won’t know who that will be until November, thanks to the dramatic change to this year’s main event that delays the playing of the final table for more than four months.
By the end of July 14, poker fans will know who the final nine players will be. Then, everything gets packed up and put away, and the players go back home with ninth-place money in their pockets and a ticket to the most desired final table of the year.
Then, on Nov. 9, the players will return to the Rio, where they will play down to the final two. The heads-up match begins late the next day and should be over in the early morning hours of Nov. 11. That evening, the entire final-table episode of the main event will be broadcast during a three-hour special starting at 9 p.m. ET.
Stay tuned to CardPlayer.com for complete coverage of the main event by our poker tournament reporting team.
POSTED ON: Jul 03, 2008
In the guise of innovative, stimulative marketing, this has been engineered so that, in the Year of the Pro, a pro's chances of winning the main event will increase. I don't know why that is a desirable thing. While only one pro will be made very happy, and the pros at his side who help break down the other players' games will gain some satisfaction and reward, the allure that 'anyone can win' will be diminished. If this schedule were in place in '03, Harrington, Farha, et al., might have solved Chris Moneymaker. In '04, Annie Duke would have shared that tell she had on Raymer with someone who was still in it. Hachem might have won anyway, or perhaps he would not have, but would Dannenmann have survived that long? Dannenmann was great for poker. Would Jamie Gold have had the <turn your head and cough, please> to win with the dark cloud of litigation hanging over him? Perhaps. Jerry Yang might have won anyway since the gear he trotted out had not been exposed, but would Jerry Yang have even thought of playing the main event without poker's history played out as it was? The 2008 WSOP proved that you don't need to crush the hopes of the rookies and producers (money sources, in this sense) in order for pros to perform better in the Series than in the last few years. All that any pro needed to do, it turns out, was to lose one's arrogance, get down and dirty in the online primordial soup from which new players constantly emerge, get into the new players' mentality, regain a certain self-control, and adjust one's game as the situation requires. The pros who did that do not need the 17-week study hall period in order to win the big one. Those with tournament experience, the availability of helpful fellow professionals, and access to unbroadcasted ESPN footage on the other players will have a much larger, unprecedented, and therefore unfair advantage over the final table newbies. Also, could ESPN please do a much better production job than last year (e.g. individualize each show's intro filler - last year's standardized intro was boring, a step down from '03-'06)? Stylistic tweaks like the 'Chips Behind,' 'Pot Odds,' and color-coded line-graph leaderboard graphics shown on ESPN360 were great and should be carried to the main broadcasts. Since hardcore poker fans will be following the big one closely, anything that adds to what we already know (which will be considerable) would be appreciated. Excellent production values will (a) generate the positive word-of-mouth that this revamped schedule is shooting for and (b) be needed to counteract the conceptual flaws of what is being done here. Unlike reality shows, people will have access to the final outcomes of every televised event except for Event 54, so ESPN should at least make each show stimulating and entertaining. I'm not sure how much ESPN's coverage alone can make poker more popular and mainstream, which should be the longterm goal of any changes of format. And we can do without Norm Chad's ex-wife references.
POSTED ON: Jul 03, 2008
What happens if a player qualifies for the final table dies before the play resumes 4 months later ?