Best ME in years??
 

What do you guys think of this years event so far....Down to the final 27, with four "name" players in the top 10 including the defending champion....How does this years event stack up to previous MEs??

I've followed for 3 or 4 years and I don't remember being this intrigued this late in the tourney...

Re: Best ME in years??
 

I am glued to Cardplayer. It's a little unhealthy.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

i am also glued, i did not really get into poker until november 2004..so yeah..blah blah, i sit here all day refreshing the CP page and the 2+2 discussion thread...i need help

Re: Best ME in years??
 

I only really paid attention to the ME 2003-2005, this is by far the most interesting tournament.

I am also glued to cardplayer and I can't believe that Greg Raymer, Phil Ivey, and Mike Matusow are all in the top 5-6 chip stacks heading into the final 27...

Re: Best ME in years??
 

HTS, because we've only had wall-to-wall coverage like this for a couple years, but considering the record huge field & the extraordinary performances so far by the defending champ, the "top seed"(Ivey), and one of the two main "love 'em or hate 'em" guys in the poker world(Mouth), its been great.

Dunno if we'll get something like Moneymaker bluffing Farha this year, and its a shame TiffWill is such a sundial, but a Greg-Ivey-Mouth final would be unreal.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

TiffWill? No, sir. Please: it must and always will be H-DOG.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

I seriously hope Raymer, Mouth, and IVEY make it to the final table and the girl Tiffany.....

If Tiffany were to win or at least make the final table......... then every housewife across America will be playing internet poker and I'll be a better person for that.

Phil Ivey just shows greatness, I mean honestly, who can compare to him...... he is hands down one of the best....

Raymer..... who wouldn't love to see a repeat champion this year....... every clown across America will see that poker is not primarily a game of luck but a game of skill.... and this can help poker out in more ways than one..... maybe legalization of poker rooms across the states.....

Mouth...... I love Mike....... he's funny, and hands down one of the most entertaining poker players for Television..... He is also one helluva card player.....

I honestly think this year's WSOP ME will be by far the most talked about event in the history of poker until Next Years.... I can't wait until they air it.....

For all the players I've mentioned...... I would have to say that the player I would like to see most make the Final Table and is RAYMER...... it will be the best thing for poker.......

Re: Best ME in years??
 

Actually, I coined "The Sundial" last night and that's where I'm stayin'. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Re: Best ME in years??
 

I gotta vote for The Sundial myself.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

I'm also glued to the coverage. I can't stop thinking of how great a final table with Ivey, Matusow, and Raymer would be. I honestly expected there to be 27 people I've never heard left at this point.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

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I gotta vote for The Sundial myself.

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Too late.

H-DOG shall be her moniker, now and heretoforevermore.

Besides, "Human Delay of Game" gets extra points when you remember, as so many 2+2ers do, that she IS a dog*.





*Kathy Liebert is still uglier [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Re: Best ME in years??
 

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I only really paid attention to the ME 2003-2005, this is by far the most interesting tournament.

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Interesting but we have yet to see how it will come out on tv. The 2004 ME on espn was half as good as the 2003 ME on espn in terms of entertainment value. If it wasn't for Marcel Luske the 2004 ME on tv would have been very bad. The 2003 ME had helmuth vs grizzle, farha, moneymaker and overall more interesting players.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

I ain't gonna do the work to prove it but I'm 99% sure I got Sundial up before H-Dog. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

Re: Best ME in years??
 

Vahedi comes to mind, and his bluffs.

MM bluff is possibly the best TV poker moment ever.

Man, but wouldn't you love to see Raymer, Ivey, and Matusow at the final table together? That'd be great TV, and very good poker.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

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I can't stop thinking of how great a final table with Ivey, Matusow, and Raymer would be. I honestly expected there to be 27 people I've never heard left at this point.

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Agree on both counts, and Minh Ly is also a name. Prolly an even money bet that a multi-bracelet guy like Matusow would make it this far, but for the defending champ & the number 1 seed to also make it is just unreal.

Defo gotta hope for a Greg-Ivey-Mouth-Sundial final four.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

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I only really paid attention to the ME 2003-2005, this is by far the most interesting tournament.

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Interesting but we have yet to see how it will come out on tv. The 2004 ME on espn was half as good as the 2003 ME on espn in terms of entertainment value. If it wasn't for Marcel Luske the 2004 ME on tv would have been very bad. The 2003 ME had helmuth vs grizzle, farha, moneymaker and overall more interesting players.

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$1 says ESPN skips over the absurdity...

They'll mention she "took her time to think out the hand" (aka stall like a rag), and skip over her multiple suckouts with the worst hand, only to focus on her play tomorrow and Friday.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

I think Raymer winning it will be terrible for poker. if people realize that poker is more a game of skill than luck, they'll be less likely to gamble when they do play... and they might actually start studying poker.

doesn't that thought send a chill down your spine?

plus, it'll be a cold day in hell before poker is legalized everywhere. players have won events in consecutive years before, and it hasn't seemed to change anything. (I know the field size is much larger this year, making it more of an incredible feat of skill to win twice. do you think the average politician knows/cares about that?)

(yeah, I posted at 5:30 in the morning. what of it?)

Re: Best ME in years??
 

This ME's pretty awesome. You've got your villians (Raymer), you're heroes (Matusow), and the best player in the world (Tiff, although Ivey could give her a run for the money).

Re: Best ME in years??
 

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I think Raymer winning it will be terrible for poker. if people realize that poker is more a game of skill than luck, they'll be less likely to gamble when they do play... and they might actually start studying poker.

doesn't that thought send a chill down your spine?

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Don't be ridiculous. Everyone already knows that poker is more skill than luck and that they are awesome at poker and they don't need books to be a good player and they can beat any book player because they're so predictable but it's the bad opponents who they can't beat. If Raymer were to win, it wouldn't change anything in this regard.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

Why doesn't ESPN do more TV-broadcast final table coverage? I'm sure we'll see less than 20 hands from the final table, 16 of which involve all in confrontations. The players wouldn't want their intricate playing secrets revealed? Surely there's a market for it...As interesting as it can be, there still can't be many who watch the National ArmWrestling Championship, the WORLD Double Dutch JumpRope Competition and I personally think the Strongest Man Competition is lame-o...It's just a bunch of strong guys who look alike from countries wherever in Scandanavia lugging/pulling/pushing/squatting rocks/barrels/cars/contraptions....

Re: Best ME in years??
 

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I think Raymer winning it will be terrible for poker. if people realize that poker is more a game of skill than luck, they'll be less likely to gamble when they do play... and they might actually start studying poker.

doesn't that thought send a chill down your spine?

plus, it'll be a cold day in hell before poker is legalized everywhere. players have won events in consecutive years before, and it hasn't seemed to change anything. (I know the field size is much larger this year, making it more of an incredible feat of skill to win twice. do you think the average politician knows/cares about that?)

(yeah, I posted at 5:30 in the morning. what of it?)

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Nothing that happens will be "terrible" for poker, barring Greg pulling out a gun at the final table and shooting all the other players dead. That would be fairly good for publicity, fairly bad for reputation.

The potential to boost poker by having yet another amateur win is pretty tapped out. Having a woman win would be pretty helpful, though, and that's true even if it was one of the female pros. Frankly, if I could pick, I'd say the winner should be some granny who just wandered over from the slot machines. That's a demographic we haven't tapped into much.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

If I was to make a dream player to put at the final table, I would choose a local celebrity who started playing on the internet.

Tom Sartori, you better build that stack back up today. I'm counting on you boy.

He's a singer/songwriter from Buffalo who plays local bars. If he makes the final table than Buffalo will see a poker boom.....and I'll have a very, very profitable year. I'm drooling at the thought of the interviews in the local paper and on the radio, and hundreds of thousands of people in the region thinking "this poker game seems like a cool way to make money."

Go Tom!

Re: Best ME in years??
 

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I think Raymer winning it will be terrible for poker. if people realize that poker is more a game of skill than luck, they'll be less likely to gamble when they do play... and they might actually start studying poker.

doesn't that thought send a chill down your spine?


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I think this ME is perfect in the sense that you have a diverse mix of top regarded pros (Ivey, Matasow, Raymer) sharing the leaderboard with self-proclaimed "luckboxes" who somehow find themselves one of the last 27 people in the tournament (Steve Danneman (read the article in another thread) and Tiffany Williamson). This showcases that poker has skill but it also reinforces the fantasy that anyone can win given the right cards.

If you have all pro's at the end then people think there is too much advantage. All nobody's and people view it as a complete toss up and it becomes less interesting. What makes poker great right now is complete unknowns will be batteling with top of the line pros for LARGE amounts of cash. Who doesn't dream of flopping a set and taken down a big pot from Ivey or Raymer...

With Ivey (people love wathcing Ivey), Raymer(defending champ run, always a great story) and Matasow (ever entertaing) at the top most of the way they are going to have great TV. Throw in the group of wildcards they have they have endless angles to shoot with Tiffany(amature woman, this has never happened before, only pro women have made this kind of run), Daneman (seems to be quite the character, kind of a Ellix Powers who uses unorthodox techniques to tilt his table).

Re: Best ME in years??
 

I'm from the Buffalo area as well...Amherst to be exact. They've mentioned him half a million times on local radio already. It would definitely make a good "hometown hero" kinda story. Granted, if he wins the whole thing, he'll have more money than all of Erie County.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

Sundial vs H-dog: this calls for a POLL. Both good ones

Let the people decide. This isnt Russia, Danny. Show em what we go to war to protect

Re: Best ME in years??
 

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This ME's pretty awesome. You've got your villians (Raymer), you're heroes (Matusow), and the best player in the world (Tiff, although Ivey could give her a run for the money).

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I'm sorry, please tell me I'm a donk and my sarcasm meter is broken, or my head will explode trying to figure out if you really believe this.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

The truck/bus pulling thing is kinda cool.. and that weird monster-tire-flip thing.

I agree tho, would also be nice if ESPN provided a little more context -- how many hands played between actually televised ones.. Even the blinds/antes. General beef at all TV coverage

Re: Best ME in years??
 

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but a Greg-Ivey-Mouth final would be unreal.

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I think I saw this match in the final episode of TILT. Just kidding but I hope this translate to TV the way all the updates and such have read.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

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This ME's pretty awesome. You've got your villians (Raymer), you're heroes (Matusow), and the best player in the world (Tiff, although Ivey could give her a run for the money).

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I'm sorry, please tell me I'm a donk and my sarcasm meter is broken, or my head will explode trying to figure out if you really believe this.

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You're a donk and your sarcasm meter is broken.

(Glad I could help.) [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Re: Best ME in years??
 

A lot of posts lately have talked about this person or that person winning and how it would be "good for poker" or "bad for poker" based on who it will draw into playing poker. I think that's the wrong way to look at it now. As far as I can tell, there's enough people playing poker already - does anyone here really have a hard time finding a game? What I am looking at now is how to bring more people into WATCHING poker, live or on TV (TV seems easier with holecams/etc). Look at how big the prize pool is for the WSOP - now imagine NBC dumps another $20million into the prize pool on top of that for TV rights. THAT is dead money. Imagine the WPT having an invite only freeroll for all the top table finishers from the season, with payouts bigger than the WPT events themselves. At the very least, the next TV deal for the WSOP should replace the juice paid out of each prize pool (it won't, but IMHO it *should* if it's anywhere near as big a deal as I suspect it will be).
How does this happen? Steadily improving coverage of poker events...and players that fans can root for. That means the top pros need to *win*. From that perspective, Ivey or Raymer winning would be the best. Of course, there will almost always be an unknown weekend warrior type that makes the final table and some serious $$, which keeps hope alive for all those thinking "that could be me someday." And I think the general impression of Raymer is that he's also just an "internet qualifier"; and don't realize the extensive poker background he really had before winning the WSOP, so he's still someone that the average joe can "aspire to become someday".
To me, significantly increased veiewship is the next level of the poker explosion. I doubt it will happen; poker isn't quite marketable enough for that. Nothing that can't be shown live is going to ever reach that kind of popularity, and IMHO tournament poker is just not watchable enough for the average joe live. I would compare it to the Tour De France; with Lance Armstrong's success, the Tour is extremely popular (at least in Austin, TX) right now...but almost no one wants to watch it live. 4-5 hours of riding a bike? That's not interesting. Who won the stage? How far ahead/behind is Lance now? Those are the questions people ask, and that's the end of the interest. Much like with poker...Who's still in? What's the chip counts? Who just busted? Then show the highlights later. No one is going to watch a 12 hour poker day, especially 12 days in a row. It's also tough not having any kind of idea of the time commitment to such an event - I think TV programmers hate that.
Although...people watch Nascar, and will sit around for a weekend watching a major golf event like the Masters. These are pretty long events; and I think racing has a few major moments and a lot of downtime. Maybe live coverage of the WSOP will someday happen; at least the final table. Perhaps other people have some ideas on how to make live poker watchable for the masses - I think the experiments with live poker so far are a good start to work out the kinks. I suspect the first live poker event on a major network will be a specifically designed for TV event, with some additional technology/process improvements to help deliver information on stack size/bet size/pot size/hole cards even more quickly and accurately.

Argh. This went from being a short post with a simple point to a rambling post with perhaps not so clear a point at all. Oh well.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

paragraphs. for gods sake. paragraphs.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

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I think Raymer winning it will be terrible for poker. if people realize that poker is more a game of skill than luck, they'll be less likely to gamble when they do play... and they might actually start studying poker.

doesn't that thought send a chill down your spine?

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Don't be ridiculous. Everyone already knows that poker is more skill than luck and that they are awesome at poker and they don't need books to be a good player and they can beat any book player because they're so predictable but it's the bad opponents who they can't beat. If Raymer were to win, it wouldn't change anything in this regard.

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haha, touche about people saying they can't beat bad players. plus, I overstated the effect of Raymer winning twice in a row. it wouldn't be terrible for poker. I'm just saying it can only be bad, because the players who do think poker is all luck (and there are many, as you know) will see that it clearly isn't. and that's bad.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

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paragraphs. for gods sake. paragraphs.

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You're right; that looks a lot worse than I thought it did when previewing. There's some line breaks in there, but there should be some blank lines inbetween as well. Apologies.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

Best ME in years? How about best WSOP in years!

Doyle and Chan both win # 10!
Cloutier, Ivey, Sidel and Greenstein all take one down.
Some cool stories including the Todd/Doyle father-son wins, Seif's two wins in a week, Arieh and Ferguson heads up, Hollywood's Jennifer Tilly wins an event and Cunningham's amazing series long play.

Raymer making a crazy run at back to back titles, Ivey and Juanda going deep into the ME.

Truly a fantastic WSOP based on the reports, I can't wait to see it on TV.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

I'm just saying it can only be bad, because the players who do think poker is all luck (and there are many, as you know) will see that it clearly isn't. and that's bad.

I still disagree because almost everyone thinks they are better than average at poker, they'll continue playing. The number of players who will leave the game upon discovering it is a game of skill will be far outweighed by the number of bad players who decide to enter the game thinking that maybe it's not all luck and they'll see if they can outplay people.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

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I'm just saying it can only be bad, because the players who do think poker is all luck (and there are many, as you know) will see that it clearly isn't.

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A few people have won the lottery more than once.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

If Tiffany were to win or at least make the final table......... then every housewife across America will be playing internet poker and I'll be a better person for that.

You aware that she's not a housewife?

Re: Best ME in years??
 

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This ME's pretty awesome. You've got your villians (Raymer), you're heroes (Matusow), and the best player in the world (Tiff, although Ivey could give her a run for the money).

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I'm sorry, please tell me I'm a donk and my sarcasm meter is broken, or my head will explode trying to figure out if you really believe this.

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You're a donk and your sarcasm meter is broken.

(Glad I could help.) [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

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Figured [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

I think this has been the best WSOP in years as well. Lots of neat stories. I hope Raymer, Ivey and Mouth all make the final table, if only for the education it would provide.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

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I'm just saying it can only be bad, because the players who do think poker is all luck (and there are many, as you know) will see that it clearly isn't. and that's bad.

I still disagree because almost everyone thinks they are better than average at poker, they'll continue playing. The number of players who will leave the game upon discovering it is a game of skill will be far outweighed by the number of bad players who decide to enter the game thinking that maybe it's not all luck and they'll see if they can outplay people.

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Exactly. The people who THINK poker is all about luck, think that because they KNOW they're better then the people they play against.

Raymer winning would be good for poker. He's a great spokesman for the game.

Re: Best ME in years??
 

Well, there goes one of the three players I'd love to see at the final table. Bye Fossilman.