Poker's 2007 Odyssey

The year 2007 was another incredible one for poker. Fueled by global expansion, it was likely the first year that owning a passport was an absolute necessity for serious tournament poker pros. And when they got to places like London, Manila, and Sydney, they sat shoulder to shoulder with teenagers, trained via millions of hands on the Internet, who made their mark on the game by powering through several high-profile tournaments. But here in the States, several established pros played with the consistency of champions from January to December, and millions of dollars came their way.

Because poker is ever-changing, we were introduced to many players who made 2007 a banner year. Annette Obrestad, Jonathan Little, Scott Clements, Bill Edler, and Jared Hamby, among many others, all made their mark.

Records were broken both live and online, personal achievements were many, and no fewer than 43 players won $1 million or more during the year (down from last year's total of 51).

This is the first of a two-part journey through poker's historic 2007 events. Part II will appear in the next issue.

Young Guns Dominate Early
The first major tournament to take place in 2007 was the World Poker Tour PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, one in which at least four of the players looked like they should get carded every time they go clubbing. Ryan Daut, 22, beat out a final table of Isaac Haxton, 21, Robert Ford, 22, Jonathan Little, 22, Robert Mizrachi, 26, and Frank Rusnack, 24 (ages at the time), to win more than $1.5 million.

By far the youngest final table in WPT history, it would serve notice that 2007 would be the year that baby-faced players made a push to the top of the pack. It started here, and Little would continue to dominate in several key tournaments to put himself right in the thick of the Card Player 2007 Player of the Year (POY) race.

Another young player would also approach greatness on the other side of the planet during the Aussie Millions. For about two weeks in January, the Crowne Casino in Melbourne, Australia, was invaded by many pros, including just about the entire Full Tilt Poker team, who spent much of their time wagering thousands of dollars on their questionable golf games.

The Aussie Millions featured both a $100,000 and a $10,000 buy-in event, which were won by big-time pros Erick Lindgren and Gus Hansen, respectively.

The $100,000 event attracted 18 players, including John D'Agostino, Daniel Negreanu, John Juanda, Phil Ivey, and Erik Seidel, who finished second for $550,000. There may have been more entrants, but many of the pros said they didn't know the event was scheduled. Negreanu even had to get the casino to credit him the money. Lindgren earned $800,000 for winning the intense one-day event.

Hansen would come back from being severely chip-challenged to win the $10,000 championship event and its $1.2 million prize. The player who gave him such a headache was Jimmy Fricke, who was 19 at the time. He earned $800,000.

Meanwhile, Bodog decided to sever its ties with 2006 World Series of Poker Champion Jamie Gold. Gold was released by Team Bodog for reasons undisclosed, but they may have had something to do with Gold's ongoing lawsuit with Crispin Leyser, who sued Gold for half of his $12 million WSOP championship prize, claiming that Gold promised him half of his winnings. In February, a half-year after Gold won the title, the suit was settled.

U.S. Tournament Circuit Kicks Off
Immediately after the Aussie Millions, players jetted back to the States to play in the WPT World Poker Open at the Gold Strike Casino in Tunica, Mississippi. Bryan Sumner outlasted 293 players to win almost $914,000. Daniel Negreanu won $500,000 for a second-place finish. J.C. Tran (sixth), Kido Pham (fifth), Gary Kainer (fourth), and Young Cho (third) also made the final table. This finish made Tran the Player of the Year front-runner, a position he held until late summer, when several players strung together great finishes and surged ahead of him.

A week later, the WPT headed to the Borgata Winter Open, where 571 players showed up to try to get some face-time on TV. Two-time WSOP bracelet winner and notable high-stakes cash-game player John Hennigan would be the last player standing, earning $1.6 million.

A passport was a must-have for any professional poker tournament player and the people who covered them in 2007. Although the European Poker Tour had a great 2006, 2007 would be its most successful yet. Its third season featured an event in Copenhagen, which attracted a capacity crowd of 400 players. Magnus Petersson of Sweden won it, along with $711,000. This would be the first of nine events of the PokerStars-sponsored tour.

February started with CardPlayer.com unveiling Card Player TV, poker's first daily video programming. The multimedia suite included daily news programming, strategy lessons from top poker professionals, live coverage from the world's largest poker tournaments, and much more.

Also, in February, Bill Edler began his strong 2007 run. With fantastic play the entire year, Edler would put himself right in the heart of the POY race, and he started his run at the Crystal Casino first-annual $10,000 World Heads-Up Championship. The event attracted 64 solid players, including runner-up Barry Greenstein, Gavin Smith, 2006 POY winner Michael Mizrachi, Ted Forrest, and Hasan Habib, just to name a few.

Edler earned only 288 POY points for the win, but the $215,000 in prize money surely satisfied one of the nicest guys in poker. This won't be the first time Edler will be mentioned in this "year in review."

February also saw one of the first popular poker sites go offline when Paradise Poker was shuttered by its owner, SportingBet. Paradise Poker customers were shifted to SportingBet's server, but the company does not do business with U.S. customers, so it was an end of an era for many.

DoylesRoom.com, the online poker room good enough to carry the name of one of the greatest players in the history of the game, Doyle Brunson, also decided not to accept U.S. players. The company said it was leaving U.S. customers until the federal government clarified its stance on the legality of online poker rooms in the U.S., according to a company official, but the site would return to U.S. players eight months later as part of the Microgaming Network.

The California and Nevada Tournament Swing
From late January to early March, L.A.'s Commerce Casino held the L.A. Poker Classic, a 30-event series capped by the $10,000 WPT event. Thousands of players participated in its events, including an astonishing 791 in the championship event. Local player Eric Hershler took home more than $2.4 million with his victory, and J.C. Tran finished as the runner-up (earning $1.1 million).

For those who couldn't afford a $5,000 or $10,000 buy-in, The Venetian tried out its first Deep-Stack Extravaganza series. The DSE, which went on into March, featured 19 tourneys with buy-ins of mostly $300 to $500. The structure of the tournaments gave players more starting chips and longer blinds levels than usual. It proved to be wildly popular with 4,600 entrants, generating a combined prize pool of more than $1.6 million.

In the back of the Caesars Palace poker room, Paul Wasicka proved that his 2006 WSOP runner-up performance was no fluke in March. Wasicka bullied through six matches at the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, earning $500,000 and a lot of respect. He didn't have an easy route to the title, either. He defeated Eli Elezra, Joe Hachem, T.J. Cloutier, Nam Le, and Shannon Elizabeth (who fought to within one victory of the championship match) before sweeping Chad Brown in a best-of-three series.

On the fight for online poker front, poker got a cigar-chomping, charismatic ally when the Poker Players Alliance wrangled the services of former New York Sen. Al D'Amato. He immediately boosted the PPA's credibility and provided a voice in Washington. He sings the gospel that poker is as American as baseball, and should be protected as such. He's a tough-talking, life-enjoying, boisterous guy, and he's made many appearances debating with others about online poker.

The poker world lost one its good guys in March when Tom Jacobs, 1992 WSOP main-event runner-up, died. Here's what Russ Hamilton had to say about this 61-year-old poker player who cashed in more than a dozen WSOP events: "Tommy was so much fun just to be around. He was always trying to help his friends and family. I played many hours of poker with Tommy and we had many great conversations about life. He was instrumental in changing my life from the poker tables to going out in the business world and being successful. I will always remember Tommy and that great smile he had at the poker table as he raked my money in. I speak for everyone in the poker world when I say, Tommy, you will be missed."

Meanwhile, no fewer than five major poker tournaments took place in the month of March: the Wynn Poker Classic, Bay 101's Shooting Star, the World Poker Challenge, and EPT events in Germany and Poland.

The Wynn Poker Classic attracted 198 entrants to its $10,000 event. A guy named Zachary Hyman won $729,000 by outlasting the many Vegas pros who entered. Big-name players who ended up in the top 10 of this tournament included Johnny Chan (eighth), Michael Mizrachi (seventh), Scott Fischman (sixth), Mike Matusow (fifth), and Ted Lawson, who finished second for $384,000. Lawson already had cashed three times for $56,500 in 2007, and would go on to cash another nine times during the year to break $1 million.

Ted Forrest bested 450 players at the WPT Shooting Star championship and banked $1.1 million. He had to beat a very tough final table in a tournament in which many star players played with a literal target, in the form of a $5,000 bounty, on their backs. Forrest had to beat James Van Alstyne, J.J. Liu, Bill Edler, Vince Shaw, and Amir Shayesteh at the final table en route to his best finish in 2007.

International Action Heats Up
Overseas, the EPT held two events in March on the eve of its April championship. First, the Polish Open attracted 284 players and was won by Peter Jepsen of Denmark. Two weeks later, 493 players took part in the German Open, which was won by Norwegian Andreas Hoivold. And no, he never played center for the Detroit Red Wings. The players then spent the first week of April in Monte Carlo, the land of the $20 Red Bull. No matter, the EPT Grand Final flooded Monte Carlo with 706 players, generating a prize pool of more than $8.8 million. At the end of the week, American Gavin Griffin would hoist the giant crystal championship cup over his fluorescent pink hair (dyed for breast cancer awareness, not for a nod to punk rock).

His win was worth $2.4 million in prize money, and he would cash seven times in 2007 for more than $3 million.

The EPT Grand Final capped the third season of the PokerStars EPT series, and season four would start after the players spent a summer at the WSOP, held two-thirds of the way around the world in Las Vegas.

The WPT finished its fifth season with two events in April, the Foxwoods Poker Classic and the WPT Championship, which is always held at Bellagio. First, 415 players showed up at Foxwoods, where Raj Patel, whose largest previous cash was for $25,000 in 2004, won the whole thing and $1.29 million.

A day after Patel won the event, World Poker Tour Enterprises announced that it had come to a broadcasting agreement with GSN after the Travel Channel had chosen not to renew its contract. Season five would be the last to air on the Travel Channel, which, arguably, had as big a role in the poker boom as Chris Moneymaker did. GSN ordered 23 WPT episodes, and the show will move to the channel in January of 2008. It will follow High Stakes Poker on Monday nights.

April also saw the launch of CardPlayer.com's Online Zone, which includes an Online Player of the Year race, room reviews, and a large online player database. Matt "Ch0ppy" Kay basically spent the entire year cashing in large online events, and is clinging to the OPOY lead as we go to press.

Over in the UK, the search engine Yahoo! announced that it would launch a real-money online poker room to take advantage of the new, relaxed online gambling laws there. Yahoo! is easily the largest company to get into the online gambling business, and is another example of the U.S.' nearsightedness on this issue.

Staying in the same hemisphere, the PaddyPowerPoker.com Irish Poker Open celebrated its 27th year when 708 players headed to Dublin to try to win the largest poker event in the city's history. Irishman Marty Smyth ended up being the last man standing in the $3,000 event, and he took home nearly $900,000. Roland De Wolfe, who finished eighth in the 2006 POY race and racked up $1.9 million in tournament winnings, and online powerhouse Sorrel Mizzi finished second and third, respectively.

Back in the USA
Elizabeth, Indiana, has about as much in common with Dublin as Scarlet Johansson has with Rosie O'Donnell, but in March of 2007, they shared this distinction: Each city held a major poker tournament. The $5,150 WSOP Tournament Circuit event at Caesars Indiana provided poker fans there an extra special treat, because they got to watch a true poker legend win it. Men "The Master" Nguyen outlasted 153 players to take home more than $238,000. It was by far the largest cash for Men in 2007.

April also featured the $25,000 WPT Championship, one of the biggest events of the year. In 2007, 639 players participated, generating a prize pool of more than $15 million. Action-sports fan Carlos Mortensen, who spends much of his off-time speeding through the desert just outside of Las Vegas on high-powered motorbikes, won the WPT Championship and its $3.9 million prize. Kirk Morrison - who, if there was such a thing as comeback player of the year, would've won it in 2007 - finished second for a little more than $2 million.

Jared Hamby, a longtime online superstar, made the WPT Championship his own little coming-out party in May. He made three final tables in preliminary events, winning two of them for more than $522,000. He'd also go on to win a $1,000 event at the Mirage Poker Challenge, and in June he would finish second in the $10,000 WPT Mandalay Bay Poker Championship ($459,000). These few weeks catapulted Hamby right into the top 10 of the POY race, and he'd challenge the entire year.

About a week after the WPT Championship, J.C. Tran was named the WPT Player of the Year for season five, which extends back into 2006. Tran had great success in WPT championship events, but he also did extremely well in the preliminary tournaments that take place at all WPT events. He had three victories in prelim events, and made nine final tables at WPT events. His early 2007 success put him right at the top of the POY race, and for a long time it looked like he would run away with the title. He finally gave up the lead sometime in August, and at press time had yet to reclaim it.

Tran didn't have much time to rest on his laurels, because the first event of the sixth season of the WPT also took place in May. The Mirage Poker Showdown was won by Jonathan Little, the young superstar who also made the final table of a WPT event in January. He earned a little more than $1 million, as well as 1,488 POY points, for his victory.

Poker took a turn for the surreal when famed sports handicapper Wayne Allyn Root announced his plans to run for president of the United States for the Libertarian Party. Joining Root at his home in Las Vegas was 2004 WSOP Champion Greg Raymer, who said he was considering joining Root as his vice-presidential candidate.

Online, PokerStars celebrated dealing its 10 billionth hand of poker by giving away $1 million in prizes. The big winner was a 19-year-old Canadian college student who happened to be sitting at a 1¢-2¢ micro-limit table on that fateful Saturday. All of the other players at the table won $10,000.

What's amazing is that it took PokerStars more than five years to deal its first 5 billion hands, and then less than six months to deal another 5 billion.

The WPT squeezed another event into May when it held the Mandalay Bay Poker Championship (the final table took place during the first week of June). The $10,000 event attracted 228 players and was won by Shawn Buchanan ($768,000). Jared Hamby finished second ($459,000), and Danny Wong and David Levi made the final table.

Enter the World Series of Poker
With June came the World Series of Poker and all of its trappings. The world of poker outside of Las Vegas simply shuts off during the WSOP, which is still the big burrito of them all.

For about a month and a half, the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas becomes the center of the universe for all things poker. It's truly thrilling to walk into the Amazon Room and see thousands of people trying to catch a glimpse of their favorite poker player playing at one of the hundreds of tables. The 2007 WSOP didn't quite match the 2006 version as far as main-event attendance, but the entire tournament (after a few notable snafus) and pretty amazing crowds shined brightly.

The competition re-established some legendary players, broke a very important record, established yet another youth record, crowned a new champion whom, once again, no one ever heard of, and saw Freddy Deeb become king of the WSOP, if just for a day.

See CardPlayer.com for the entire list of bracelet winners, but there are plenty of highlights, which follow.

Let's get the big news out of the way first. Jerry Yang, a psychologist and social worker from Southern California (and refugee from Laos), outlasted 6,357 opponents to become the 2007 WSOP main-event champion and win $8.25 million. The main event's attendance was affected mainly by one thing: the inability of online sites to directly buy players into the event, as they did in 2006 when 8,773 players entered. Instead, they simply deposited the WSOP buy-in into players' accounts and hoped they would show up. Many did, but many did not.

The final table looked like a World Cup match at certain points. The countries of origin for the final nine players included South Africa (Raymond Rahme), Russia (Alex Kravchenko, who also won a bracelet in 2007 in a $1,500 Omaha eight-or-better event), Laos (Jerry Yang), Denmark (Philip Hilm), Vietnam (Tuan Lam), the United Kingdom (Jon Kalmar), and the United States (Lee Childs, Lee Watkinson, and Hevad Khan).

During the hours before the final table was set, the crowd in the Amazon Room was nearly delirious with the thought of being able to see Scotty Nguyen at another main-event final table. Many hearts were broken when, after a few stunning missteps, Nguyen went from being one of the chip leaders to handing his ticket to the valet parking attendant. He finished 11th, earning $476,926. He banked $1 million for winning the main event in 1998.

The crowds were also cheering for Kenny Tran, who got derailed in the 16th spot in the main event. Like Nguyen, it looked like he would be able to bulldoze his way to the final table, especially by the way he was reading cards. But it took only one misread to destroy the California pro's chip stack, and he would take home $381,000 from the main event.

If Tran had made the final table, it would have been his second of the Series. And what an exacta it would have been, because Tran also finished fifth in the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event.

Freddy Deeb became the players' champion in 2007 by winning the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event, a tourney that attracted 148 of the game's elite. Those who made the final table included Barry Greenstein, David Singer (for the second year in a row), Kenny Tran, Amnon Filippi, and Bruno Fitoussi, who was the runner-up ($1.27 million).

The start of the WSOP didn't go as smoothly as Harrah's had hoped. Even after seeing the obnoxiously large crowds in 2006, Harrah's did little to eliminate the incredibly long registration lines of the first few days. An electronic registration system was supposed to be in place, but it never really worked, and the new playing cards that Harrah's introduced were greeted with jeers and much worse (Mike Matusow should've gotten an f-bomb penalty after his diatribe). The cards were printed with the numbers in the corner tilted in a font that made it extremely difficult to discern between sixes and nines. Harrah's was forced to replace all of the setups. The cards were so bad that even WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack's name was misspelled on the back.

In the very first event of the 2007 WSOP, Steve Billirakis became the youngest player ever to win a WSOP bracelet, a record that has been broken no fewer than four times in the last two years. He was 21 years, 10 days old. The record would be broken later in the year, not at the WSOP in Las Vegas, but in London, where the first WSOP event outside the U.S. took place. The winner of that event was Annette "Annette_15" Obrestad, who won't be able to play live poker legally in the U.S. for another three years.

The youngest bracelet winner record used to be held by none other than Phil Hellmuth, when people thought 24 was young for a poker player. That was in 1989, and in 2007, Hellmuth broke a three-way tie with Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan: All three had 10 WSOP bracelets. Phil broke the tie when he won the 15th event of the tournament, a $1,500 no-limit hold'em competition that attracted 2,628 players. Very few got to see Hellmuth win the record breaker live, though. Harrah's tested a new "live" pay-per-view Internet broadcast that put the players behind thick black curtains. The crowd of people who showed up to watch were out of luck. Hellmuth also set the WSOP record for cashes with 63.

All in all, despite the drop in main-event participants, the 2007 WSOP generated the most entrants in its 38-history: 54,288. That includes 1,286 women in the ladies event (another record), and the largest field for a non-main-event tournament (event No. 49, a $1,500 no-limit hold'em tourney that attracted 3,151 players). The future looks bright for the WSOP, and it will remain the premier poker event of the year for as long as poker is played in a tournament setting. It's done more to expand the brand than the Horseshoe ever could, by bringing WSOP tournaments to casinos across the United States and beyond.

Poker's 2007 odyssey continues in Part II in the next issue. The second half of 2007 matched the intensity of the first half, with David "The Dragon" Pham making a push to win his second Player of the Year award, the Poker Players Alliance descending upon Washington, DC, Annette Obrestad becoming the youngest WSOP bracelet winner in history (in London), and Antigua causing severe trouble for the United States as a result of the U.S.' anti-online gambling stance.