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Daniel Negreanu multi-tabling to success at the WSOP

Four final tables were spread out across the Rio on Friday and three champions, Mitch Schock, Fabrice Soulier and Mikhail Lakhitov, claimed their first WSOP bracelets. The fourth event, Event 38, the $1,500 no-limit hold ‘em event, reached the hard stop time during heads-up play. Arkadiy Tsinis and Michael Blanovsky will return to the felt on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. ET and determine which one of these two talented players will earn the biggest title of their careers.

Tsinis will have the edge with 7.1 million in chips to Blanovsky’s 2.7 million. The Las Vegas native now has 11 career WSOP cashes with a best previous finish of 11th in a $1,500 event in 2009. Blanovsky, from Staten Island, NY, only has one earlier WSOP cash which took place during the 2009 Series. Both players will earn the biggest paydays of the lives in this event with first place earning $540,136 and second place earning $336,253.

Entering play on Friday, the biggest story from this event was the possibility of an open-event female champion, but those hopes were extinguished with the elimination of Melanie Weisner in 14th place. This was her fifth WSOP cash of the year.

Here’s a look at the other tournaments currently in progress:

Event 40: $5,000 six-handed no-limit hold ‘em

Only 20 players remain and among them are many familiar faces. Leading the field is Justin Filtz, who according to the Hendon Mob, already has a third-place WSOP finish to his name. He has five career WSOP cashes and a number of deep runs in other events, but this event could produce his biggest live score yet. Filtz’s lead is a significant one and with the blinds at 4,000/8,000 he has a stack of two million in chips, nearly double the second-place stack of Massimiliano Martinez. Matthew Jarvis, who entered Day 2 as the chip leader, spent the 10 levels battling and ended Day 2 action in third place.

Fourth place belongs to Kevin Iacofano, the sixth-place finisher at the 2011 EPT Copenhagen. Iacofano has nine previous WSOP cashes including one final table. Also in the top 10 are notables Jude Ainsworth, Matt Vengrin, Greyson Ramage and Hafiz Khan.

The bottom half of the field doesn’t get any easier and features two of the game’s most well-known players, 2010 WSOP main event champion Jonathan Duhamel and poker icon Daniel Negreanu. After a rough WSOP so far, Negreanu is looking to make his first final table in his second cash. Duhamel, who made a deep run in Event 8, is one of the shortest stacks remaining and is hoping to become the first player since Joe Hachem in 2006 to make a WSOP final table the year after winning the biggest bracelet around. He is also now one cash away from qualifying for the Federated Sports+Gaming poker league.

Event 41: $1,500 limit hold ‘em shootout

The first round of the shootout has been completed with 60 players winning their tables and advancing to Saturday’s Round 2. Among the survivors is 2011 bracelet winner Eugene Katchalov, Victor Ramdin, Al Barbieri, J.J. Liu, Hoyt Corkins, Brock Parker and now six-time 2011 WSOP casher Kirill Rabstov.

Each player who made it through their first table has earned at least $4,118. Round 2 will be played six-handed so that a final table of 10 will be set for Sunday’s conclusion of the event.

Event 42: $10,000 pot-limit Omaha

For one of the first times during the 2011 WSOP, a $10,000 event grew in participation. The $10,000 pot-limit Omaha event attracted a field of 364 players, up from 364 in 2010, and less than half the field would bag their chips at the end of the night.

Manny Jo is the chip leader after Day 1, but lurking in the top 10 are two stars of the game, Tom Dwan and Vanessa Selbst. Dwan, fresh off his fifth-place performance in the $10,000 HORSE world championship, was back in action on Friday and build up a fifth-place stack that according to him on Twitter, includes 1.5 percent of all the chips in play. Selbst, playing a full WSOP schedule for the first time in years, only has one previous cash this WSOP, a 18th-place finish in the $5,000 six-handed pot-limit Omaha event won by Jason Mercier. There will be no back-to-back Omaha bracelet for Mercier as he was eliminated early in Day 1 action.

The interesting story in this event is once again Negreanu who was playing this event as well as Event 40. Negreanu admitted on Twitter that he was going back to the pot-limit Omaha event during the breaks and was playing rather fast, but still managed to build a stack. Negreanu will have a 30-minute grace period to focus on the $5,000 six-max as play begins in that event at 5:30 while the pot-limit Omaha event stars at 6 p.m.

In every world championship $10,000 buy-in event, the fields are always extremely tough and some of the game’s most talented players were unable to advance to Day 2. Some notable eliminations from Day 1 include Scott Clements, Patrik Antonius, Annette Obrestad, Bertrand Grospellier, Sam Trickett and Huck Seed.

The big picture

The two events that begin on Saturday at the $1,500 buy-in no-limit hold ‘em Event 43 and the $2,500 buy-in razz Event 44. A field of nearly 3,000 players is expected in the first of the two “Weekend Warrior” events this weekend and it’s no surprise at all that it will be another busy weekend out in Las Vegas.

Just a quick thought on live multi-tabling of WSOP events. Online, it’s basically standard for someone to be playing more than one table at a time, but live, it’s anything but easy to pull off. This year we’ve seen a number of players attempt to play more than one event at a time and usually it doesn’t result with a player having a huge smile on his face. Negreanu, playing in the two aforementioned events, is most definitely the exception with his success thus far. For any player to attempt a live multi-table at the WSOP, they need to move from event to event during breaks (or whenever they choose) and that might mean making the couple-minute walk from the Amazon Room to the Pavilion Room.

Personally, I think it’s incredible, and potentially incredibly dumb, that players take this route. When there is so much on the line in every event, wouldn’t you want to focus all your energy and ability in just one and then worry about the next event after a final result? Sure, these guys are trying to give themselves as many chances as possible to win a bracelet, and with bracelet bets and other accomplishment-oriented wagers on the line, it makes sense they’d do whatever they can to try and win. Running back and forth and playing 15 minutes of one event before running back to another table just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. In Negreanu’s case he was basically playing a $10,000 buy-in for 15 minutes (ok, maybe a little more) at a time.

The bottom line is that it’s the player’s choice and his money. If they believe they are capable of pulling it off, then why not give it a try? If this is the best way they can think of spending their bankroll, then they’re making a decision that they believe is in their own best interests and if a player wants to proceed in that fashion, I can only wish them good luck and observe silently as they try to make WSOP history.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 25th, 2011 and is filed under Gambling Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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