It’s kind of scary to think that we’re less than a month away from this year’s World Series of Poker. Yeah! You forgot didn’t you? It’s been nearly three years since the last summer-time WSOP, and even if you did remember, you probably were wondering why rooms at the Rio All-Suite Casino & Hotel were so damn cheap compared to last time. That’s because the WSOP isn’t there any more, stupid! This time around, the whole thing’s happening on the Strip, at Bally’s and Paris Las Vegas, and, as Firesign Theater used to say: Everything You Know Is Wrong. It’s not just that you’re not going to know where anything is any more (really, did you ever figure out which room was Brasilia and which one was Amazon?) but the people running things are going to be confused, too, so this has the potential to be a right shitshow, as they say. Anyway, here’s some maps, just in case they might help. In both cases the ballroom areas at the top of the map are on the east side of the buildings, away from the Strip.
One. Million. Dollars.
Forrest Auel posted on the NW Poker Facebook group that a cash at the Wildhorse Spring Poker Round-Up will put Joe Brandenburg over the $1,000,000 lifetime earnings mark (he was just over $999,000 after cashes at Chinook Winds in March) but the results haven’t been posted to Hendon Mob as of this evening!
Big Move
Not too long before “press time”, The Final Table Poker Club posted a notice on Facebook that they’re going to be moving from their long-time location at SE 122nd & Division to SE 82nd & Powell. No specifics as to the location yet. One change that’s already made is that the club is now open to 18 and over, as it was when it started out back on NE Glisan.
WSOP Team Event
There are going to be some determined teams out in the field this year.
PNW Poker Leaderboard
No results from Wildhorse yet, but plenty more Canadians moving up. I ran the numbers before the WPTDeepstacks at Thunder Valley the other day, so those results aren’t here yet, either.
Lacombe, Alberta’s Malcolm Buller was runner-up in the Deerfoot Inn Spring Super Stack #5 NLHE Deepstack on 12 April. Buller goes from #2827 to #2096. Regan Duong was the winner (out of Calgary) and picked up a biggest prize ever in the 293-entry tournament, gaining more than a thousand points, to #1902.
Himmophoom Bounthinh continues to grind away in Vegas, coming in 2nd at the Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza #9 $20K GTD NLHE Monster Stack, a 137-entry event. Nu goes from #293 to ##279.
Johnny Dai from Surrey, British Columbia was the winner in a field of 63 at the Coyote Creek Golf Club Die Hard Poker League Season 16 #11 NLHE. It was a C$670 buyin, with a total prize pool of nearly C$41K. Dai moves eighty places, to #639.
Deerfoot Inn Spring Super Stack #8 NLHE Superstack
I love that tournament directors can use the same combination of words in an event title in different combinations, don’ you? Anyway. David Howat of Calgary came in 7th in this tournament, enough to propel Howat fifty places up the Leaderboard to #556. Takuma Bergeron from Coquitlam, British Columbia took 4th (surprisingly, coming in just ahead of a British pro Jack Hardcastle, a name I did not expect to run across in a Calgary event). Bergeron goes from #758 to #584. Douglas James of Vancouver picked up 3rd for their biggest-ever cash, jumping nearly four-hundred and fifty spaces to #824. Edmonton’s Jaspal Brar was 2nd, moving up four places to #65. And—also from Edmonton—Colton Yamagishi won the biggest pot of ther career, in a field of 307 entries, where the prize pool was nearly C$400K.
Deerfoot Inn Spring Super Stack #2 NLHE MegaStack
This event had 263 entries and a C$125K prize pool. Calgary’s Aidan Klingbell had their biggest-ever cash in 4th, with a jump of two thousand places to #2893. In 3rd was Jordan Banfield, also of Calgary, who vlimbs five hundred spots, to #1559. Another Calgarian, Kim Pham, came in 2nd, also for a career high cash, and bumps up from #4420 to #2347. Event winner Gurdeep Parhar completed Calgary’s sweep of the top 4 places. Parhar combines the win (and biggest cash) with 6th in Event #8 (above) to climb from #998 to #683.
Maxwell Young holds at #25 on the Leaderboard after winning the Prime Social Texas Poker Championship #22 NLHE Big Bounty Turbo at the end of March, in what looks like a 3-way deal out of the 37 entries.
Samuel Scheidecker from Marysville, Washington came in 20th out of 1,213 in the WSOPC North Carolina #12 $1M GTD NLHE Main Event. Scheidecker moves more than three hundred spots, to #1164.
Sebastian Crema out of North Vancouver gains almost seventy spots (#474) with a 5th place finish in the Wynn Signature Series $400K GTD NLHE Mystery Bounty (reminder for this and Max Young’s standings, Hendon Mob stats do not include bounties earned by players). This event got 1,247 entries.
Vancouver’s Wei Min Hou took 1st in a 3-way deal at the Deerfoot Spring Super Stack #6 PLO Superstack. There were 55 entries, and Hou’s success takes them exactly nine-hundred and ninety-nine places up the Leaderboard, to #1820.
Dylan Linde took 4th out of 86 in the WSOPC Bally’s #12 NLHE High Roller, but since Linde’s already #6, there’s no move. Anchorage’s Andrew Rodgers got the Circuit Ring with the win, and also gains two-hundred-and fifty places on the Leaderboard (#424).
Woody Christy went from Renton to Amsterdam to cash big at WPTDeepStacks Amsterdam #4 NLHE Main Event. Christy took 8th in a field of 757, and leaps from #3352 to #1892.
Another out-of-country experience took Edmonton’s Pawan Braich to St. Maarten, where they competed in WSOPC Caribbean #10 $200K GTD NLHE Main Event against 255 other entries, to come in 6th. Braich moves up twenty-three places, to #258.
George Wolff was among the 232 entries in the WPT/Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown # 49 $5000K GTD NLHE Deep Stack. Wolff placed 10th and holds at #17 on the Leaderboard.
Also down in Florida, Scott Eskenazi moves up four places to #102, with a 6th-place finish in the 345-entry WPT/Seminole #34 NLHE Deep Stack.
Tacoma’s Peter Lynn came in 6th of 643 in the Prime Social #9 $500K GTD NLHE The Big Texas. Lynne is at #664 after moving two-hundred and forty spots.
Edmonton’s Nohad Teliani had a couple of good weeks. Teliani won the WPT/Seminole #10 $50K NLHE Big Stack 6-Max — a field of 151 — then popped across to Dublin for the record-setting 2,040-entry Irish Poker Open #13 NLHE Main Event, there they came in 21st. That was good for two-hundred and twenty places on the Leaderboard; Teliani is now #579.
James Romero was the runner-up at the Prime Social #21 NLHE 6-Max out of 49 entries. The winner of the event is listed as “Unknown Player”, with a Ukrainian flag. Romero holds at #5.
Adam Hendrix is another of the top-of-the-Leaderboard players who cashed but didn’t move (#18) with a 17th-place finish in the WPT/Seminole #36 $2M GTD NLHE Championship. There were 2,010 entries, and the prize pool went over $6.4M, with a 6-way even chop at the final table.
And in 2nd out of 19 places at the Super High Roller Series #9 NLHE Short Deck, it’s Seth Davies, our perennial #1 on the Leaderboard!