BLOG - The $50,000 Players' Championship and the 2010 WSOP

BLOG - The $50,000 Players' Championship and the 2010 WSOP

Sunday, 30 May 2010

The most often-changed event at the World Series of Poker is, oddly, the one that has only been running for four years; the recently redubbed $50,000 Players' Championship. When the late Chip Reese won the inaugural tournament, it was HORSE until a No-Limit Hold 'em final table. It was then changed to pure HORSE when Freddy Deeb and Scotty Nguyen won and now it's become totally different.

The tournament is now an 8-game event, playing the following in
succession:


Limit 2-7 Triple Draw
Limit Hold 'em
Limit Omaha Hi/Lo
Razz
Stud
Stud Hi/Lo
No-Limit Hold 'em
Pot-Limit Omaha
The final table will be entirely NL.


Since they don't have an acronym for the game they invented there,
it's now officially titled the $50,000 Chip Reese Players'
Championship. I like it.


A lot of people complained about the HORSE event having a NL final
table, hence the change to the format in 2009. However, the fact that
Stud isn't really a TV game plus certain antics led to ESPN dropping
the tournament. So now they've reached a compromise: eight games
including NL throughout until an entirely NL final table. To borrow
the words of Daniel Negreanu; the mistake they made was to call it
HORSE in the first place. It wasn't horse in 2006; it was a show of
all-round poker prowess in mixed games then NL.


Of course now it's a far more thorough roster of poker ability with
eight games to play through and the most common variant as the final
table. This means only someone who excels at both rotating fixed limit
games and big pot games (PLO and NL) can make it to the final table,
where they will have to be a great NL player to take the win. ...
Ivey's going to win this every year, isn't he?


Another event I'm looking forward to railing is the $25,000 6-max NLHE
event. Possibly the only event where we'll see a final table dominated
by online players. Daniel Negreanu needs to get in on the high stakes
PokerStars action if he wants to keep up there.


Wait... no, Ivey's going to win this one too, isn't he?




Tags: Poker News, BLOG, -, The, $50, 000, Players', Championship, and, the, 2010, WSOP