$10,000 No-Limit Hold'em Championship, Day One:
By Lee Munzer

Well folks, after a record breaking 38 days of preliminary events, we have arrived at the doorstep of the championship event.

You're reading my words because the world's best poker tournament reporter, Andrew N. S. Glazer, has decided to take on the world's best poker players in our flagship event. I'll be providing coverage until Andy gets bored playing (just joking) or is eliminated.

PREDICT ALONG WITH ME
Just for fun, I'll tackle the impossible by picking a number of entrants (my $1 wager with Mark Napolitano is riding on 666) and a final table:
Jeff Shulman (winner): Phil Ivey, Phil Gordon; Richard Tatalovich; Casey Kastle; Layne Flack; Kathy Kohlberg; Men "The Master" Nguyen; and Young Phan.

MY WATCH LIST
Let's take a step back before moving forward. Along the way Binion's Horseshoe crowned a hearts victor (40 days ago), gave a trophy to a gin rummy champ, and adorned the wrists of each poker champion with a priceless gold bracelet (not to mention the huge first place prize money). My watch list includes our newest rising star. The low-keyed, soft-spoken Phil Ivey became the media darling and the man to fear early on. The aggressive Atlantic City player enters the final event with six cash outs from five final table appearances. Incredibly (because the fields are large and comprised of expert players), Phil won three events.

The gregarious, good looking Layne Flack outscored Ivey at the cashier's cage by hauling in $573,460 from two victories in his specialty, No Limit Texas Hold'em. He will be on everyone's watch list as long as he lasts in the main event, which may not be too long. Did you raise your eyebrows? I respect Layne's game, pick him in my final table nine, and like him very much as a man, but he and I know that a no risk, conservative style of play will not get him to the final table. While he will not play recklessly, he will be taking risks in an effort to build chips that will allow him to do what he does best, dominate a table.

Pretty Jennifer Harman captured her second gold bracelet defeating a very tough final table (Allen Cunningham, Humberto Brenes, Freddie Bonyadi, Mimi Tran, and my good friend "Q" to name a few).

Exactly one week later Cunningham returned to the NL deuce to seven final table to extend his wrist, smile for the camera, and pick up $160,200.

Dealer Mike Majerus might be ready for a career change. He took a first and a third in the only events he played taking down $407,120 in the process. I'm not sure if Mike will dance in "the big one", but if he does his strong right arm might carry him through several days.

Kathy Kohlberg AND CYNDY VIOLETTE (it's a watch list, need I say more?)

I'M OFF TO BINION'S
Well, I'm 20 minutes from downtown by tricycle and it's noon, so I should get going. Matt Savage and Steve Morrow have conscientiously and flawlessly directed these events, thus the drawing for seats ritual and pre-tournament announcements might be concluded by 1 p.m. The first thing I'll be looking for is the final number, so, don't peek below and make your guesses now. Then I'll be squeezing through the tables to note interesting pairings and see if I can catch some key, early hands. At the end of the first day of play, I'll list the chip leaders and provide the number of players who will be in action when day two begins. Oops, I see Andy will be doing that (it's Las Vegas, renowned for two-fer-ones).

Format: The championship event at the WSOP costs $10,000 to enter. The prize pool is comprised of $9,400 per player with a $600 entry fee. Did you say, "Huh"? Yes, previously the entire $10,000 went into the prize pool. Times are tough, so the free lunch is over, folks. Each player receives $10,000 in tournament chips. Players compete for five days (as long as they have chips). The game will be "The Cadillac of Poker", No Limit Texas Hold'em. Action will be stimulated by blind bets and antes (the latter beginning on Tuesday). Play will begin with comfortable antes (a small blind of $25 and big blind of $50). Limits will escalate every two hours. Here's another guess: I estimate the blinds will be $15,000 and $30,000 with $3,000 antes (level #14) when play begins at the final table Friday afternoon. So, players will be trying to build their stacks in proportion to blind comfort while keeping pace with the average stack sizes. Andy and I will provide more on chip counts and 'relativity' as we move along.

Strategy: The following suggestions are a compendium from the best players who answered my question: "What are your objectives during day one?"
· Survive, baby - just get to day two and don't get stupid.
· Watch everything - your strategy is player and stack size dependent.
· Take from the poor and timid.
· Don't tangle with a bigger stack when you hold a coin flip hand.
· Stay focused and don't give anything away.
· You can't win the bracelet on day one, but you can lose it.

HERE WE GO
The official number of entrants is a record 631 (613 last year). I counted 19 women (that would be a record), but might have missed a few. The prize pool is bursting at the seams with $2 million going to the winner and $50,000 slotted for the 17th place finisher. Wow, in the events I play I could be the winner 17 times and fail to clear $17,000. Players will be seated at 70 tables (upstairs and downstairs will be utilized for the first day).

LYLE BERMAN AND THE POKER HALL OF FAME
Each year a player is inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. Established in 1979, the intent is to honor those who have had an extraordinary impact on the game, have played against acknowledged top competitors, have played for high stakes, have consistently played well, have the respect of their peers, and have maintained this standard of excellence over a long period of time. Lyle's credentials are impeccable and the ceremony (T. J. Cloutier presiding) was touching.

LYLE BERMAN AND THE WORLD POKER TOUR
I perceive Lyle as more than a player. He has extraordinary business acumen and vision. He is currently involved in a project known as The World Poker Tour, a venture that I believe will bring poker to a higher level. In a nutshell, he and television producer Steve Lipscomb will team to produce a televised poker tournament season. For a full review (and tentative schedule) of the project please see Wendeen H. Eolis' excellent article on pages 58-63 of the current (issue #12) Poker Digest.

HEY, COME BACK TO THE GAME
Twenty minutes into play and after a dealer cries out, "I need a floor on 32!" I scurry over to be informed by Men Nguyen (playing at an adjacent table) that the player in seat #8, table 32 raised all in with pocket kings. He lost the hand (to pocket aces) and left the building. But, after a count down it was determined the losing player had more chips than his opponent (by $475). Steve Morrow alerted Matt Savage by walkie-talkie. Matt made the appropriate announcement, but it was too late. The player's chips will be blinded off and a valuable lesson will not be learned (unless he reads these words, of course).

POKER AND SPORTS
When the Super Bowl begins the action is ferocious. Baseball, basketball, tennis, and that Canadian game are played at a relatively consistent pace (albeit a bit more energy expended at crunch time). In contrast, when Tyson is not fighting and biting, most championship prize fights begin with a feeling out process. Combatants measure each other with a jabs and feints. I equate the first level of NL poker to the first round of a boxing match between two thinking pugilists. So, it didn't surprise me to see some feints (raises) and weaves (backing away from re-raises). It did surprise me to see Andy on the downstairs canvass at 11 minutes of level two. I'd rather save that tale of woe for the Poker Pundit himself. At the time I was watching my friends Jonathan Kaplan, Richard Tatalovich, and "Q" Knopow who were seated at different, challenging tables.

TOUGH TABLES ARE A DIME A DOZEN
Kaplan draws a seasoned, excellent grouping of the inimitable Phil Hellmuth Jr., solid Ron Stanley, great Yosh Nakano, and highly accomplished Matt Lefkowitz. The saving grace is Jonathan has position on all excepting Lefkowitz. Alas, position is not enough for the likeable stock trader as JK leaves us just before the dinner break.

Q resides in seat #1 smack in the middle of the room. He is sandwiched between two of the most aggressive players in the game, World Champion Carlos Mortensen in the nine seat, and the hottest tournament player in the game, Phil Ivey, behind Q in the three seat. To add to Knopow's discomfort, the accomplished Steve Z. (Zolotow) is seated in number seven. During the second break the normally confident Q tells me his position is similar to playing a hero in a silent movie who is hopelessly between two giant buzz saws bearing down on him. He will have to be content with one WSOP final table in 2002 as he survives the dinner break, but is home for the late night news.

Former U. S. Open winner Tatalovich also draws seat #1 at a downstairs table to the far left of the room and sits to the right of one of my favorite players to watch, Phil Gordon. The former business owner turned independently wealthy world traveler finished fourth in this event last year and is a threat to build chips early. As I watch the engaging, charismatic Gordon attacks relentlessly. As if Phil G. isn't enough trouble, Layne (back-to-back) Flack draws seat #4 at this table. The vivacious and talented (five WSOP final table appearances) Phyllis Meyers resides in seat #8 and Alan Goehring is playing the cards dealt to seat #9 (the name should be familiar since he finished second to Noel Furlong in this event in 1999). Richard, chipless at 9:09 p.m., is winging his way back to Arizona as I type.

A CHAMPION TAKES A BEAT
Four nights ago I watched Mike Matusow capture his first bracelet in 2002 (second overall) in a stunning, come from behind performance over Daniel Negreanu. They were playing Mike's best game, Omaha hi-lo. Of course, Mike is no slouch in NL Hold'em having cashed $239,765 for his sixth place finish in this event last year. When I arrived the dealer was scooping up the cards and Mike was hammering the table (just once). He was describing the bad beat (in Hellmuth style). After Mike departed the players told me the victor held kings and Mike held aces. The winner put Mike in on the flop. Then a king turned. The two-outer drove Matusow to the rail. I couldn''t help recalling what Mike had told Daniel on Thursday night. All smiles and holding a big chip lead, he good-naturedly ribbed his close friend by saying, "Daniel, you can't change destiny." What comes around, I suppose.

A CHAMPION TAKES A BEAT
Poker Million champ Kathy Liebert went all in after flopping a set. She was unexpectedly called by a player holding ace-eight … represented top pair and top kicker. Alas, her opponent won by hitting two running clubs for a flush (normally, a 22-to-1 chance made even worse by the fact that two of the clubs give Kathy a full house).

530 at 5:30
Coincidentally, at exactly 5:30 p.m. there are 530 players left. Since there are 6,310,000 chips in play an average stack would be 12,000 (in round numbers). Players with 16,000 are doing fine, but players with 4,000 will have to commit to a hand soon or run the risk of not getting enough value for their big hands, not being able to force others out, and the worst fate of all (becoming a spectator)

MATT SAVAGE GIVES ME HIS TIME
On his busiest day, the young tournament director, took time out to answer this question: "Matt, can you give our readers a line or two on directing your first WSOP?" He responded, "Sure, first and most of all, I'd like to thank the players for their attitude and behavior. They came here with the expectation that they would get a good tournament and I think we met their expectation. They've received a lot of play each day, the tournaments have started on time, and there has been no abuse. I believe Steve and I have provided the players with events that are run correctly and fairly. That's what we hoped to give them and that's what I think we've accomplished."

283 ELIMIMINATED - 348 REMAIN
You'll read more about this, find out who's at the top of the leader board, and get Andy's insights below (yes, I know he said I didn't have the info, but he underestimates my insomnia problem). It's been fun watching the event (if you're ever in Las Vegas at this time, the Mirage Volcano, the battle of the ships at Treasure Island, and the WSOP are great shows and free) and I had fun writing this report. I hope you enjoyed it. Now, heeeere's Andy:

The title tells you what I didn't want to tell you: I'm out, and because of a bad play, not a bad beat. More details on that to follow, as there are some lessons to be learned, but on the off chance that my good friend Lee Munzer wasn't sleepless at 3:00 a.m. when the chip leader sheets went up, I figured I'd add something more interesting than my own pain and frustration.

As Lee reported, we started with 631 players. 348 remain. A list of the 20 chip leaders follows, as well as a few notes about players of interest who are still in or out:

Rank Player Chip Total
1 Boston, Alan $65,075
2 Gardner, Julian $64,675
3 Eskimo Clark $60,900
4 Feter, Michael $59,350
5 Cozen, Glenn $56,125
6 Hadden, Gilles $51,775
7 Perry, Rafael $51,550
8 Vaswani, Ram $50,075
9 Booth, Douglas $49,950
10 Badimansour, Faribouz $48,950
11 Kramer, James $48,950
12 Flack, Layne $47,250
13 Melton, Steve $47,375
14 Hellmuth, Phil $46,400
15 Benelli, Otto $45,525
16 Demetriou, Harry $43,700
17 Spino, Robert $43,000
18 Inashima, John $42,350
19 La, Meng $42,100
20 Jordan, Jerry $41,725

I italicized a few players because of past or recent achievements. Julian Gardner might be the youngest player in the tournament, a terrific British player who still has a long, long way to go, but who could break player #14's record for becoming poker's youngest World Champion. Glenn Cozen is remembered because he was the fellow who got the $210,000 ladder climb with virtually no chips when John Bonetti went to war with fellow chip leader Jim Bechtel (Bonetti had A-K and Bechtel 6-6 and the flop came with both an ace and a six.

Vaswani gets mention not merely because he's another British star, but because he's a member of The Hendon Mob, the four Brits (including Joe Beevers <64th>, Ross Boatman <54th>, and Barney Boatman <roughly 290th>) who are all friendly and who have done a nice job of both playing well and marketing themselves here. Nice to see all of them still in action.

HOW ABOUT THIS FOR A REMATCH: FLACK, CHAN, AND HELLMUTH

As Lee mentioned, Flack has already won TWO no-limit tournaments this year, and while Hellmuth has not had a big Series thus far, with only one final table, he is also in the finals of the Bracelet Winners Tournament, in a yet-to-be played rematch of his final opponent from his 1989 World Championship, the red hot Johnny Chan (who is 22nd in chips!).

If Hellmuth beats Chan, he'll tie Doyle Brunson for most bracelets in a career, with eight, but if he wants to re-take the all-time money lead he took last year, he'll need to do something in the Big One also, because Cloutier re-passed him on the first event of the tournament and Chan then passed both of them with the very consistent Series he had (five final tables, although no wins yet).

WELL, IT'S LESS THAN A BILLION-ZILLION TO ONE, BUT…

The odds against it are insanely unlikely, even with their immense talent and early strong chip positions, but a final three of Flack, Chan, and Hellmuth would be poker's variation of a triple-double rematch, and it would be so much fun to watch that I would donate a major hunk of my writer's fee from poker.casino.com to charity.

Chan and Hellmuth already have that rematch from 1989 set up in the Bracelet Winners final, and Chan and Flack each made the final three of a major no-limit hold'em event in 2001-2002. In 2001, in the $2,000 No-Limit, the final three were Cloutier, Hellmuth, and Flack, with Hellmuth winning, and in the 2002 $1,500 No-Limit, the final three were Cloutier, Chan, and Flack, with Flack winning.

Hey, as long as I'm dreaming, why not have Phil Ivey as the fourth guy left in that final four…although I have many poker friends I would love to see in there, especially John Juanda, who "finally" (he's awfully young for a "finally," but he's awfully talented) got his first bracelet the day before the Big One started, in the Lowball Triple-Draw event. It would be awfully tough for John to get there, because he starts Day Two with only $3,950 in chips. I'd list some others but there isn't supposed to be any rooting from the press box.

SOME OTHER NOTABLES NEAR THE TOP

Players 45-51 feature a few rather well known names. In order, they are "Miami" John Cernuto, Dewey Tomko, David Sklansky, Samuel Arzoin, Minh Nguyen, Allen Cunningham, and Phil Ivey. Should Ivey win, he would grab a record fourth bracelet one year and clearly own the finest World Series ever put together by one player. Tomko has finished second in this event twice, including last year, and Cunningham, at 25, could win 20 bracelets in his career if he chooses to stick with poker that long (I've a feeling he won't). Ivey could do the same, although he will probably have to expand his range of games to do it, because Cunningham plays all the games well and Ivey is more of a stud specialist.

Jim McManus, the superb novelist who became the Y2K miracle when he made the final table after coming here to cover the event for Harpers Magazine, is 68th, so maybe it wasn't such a miracle.

A BAD DAY FOR THE RECENT CHAMPIONS

It wasn't a good day for recent World Champions. Amongst those who did not make Day Two include 2001 Champ Carlos Mortensen; 2000 Champ Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and his final opponent, T.J. Cloutier; 1999 Champ Noel Furlong; 1996 Champ Huck Seed ('97 Champ Stu Ungar is deceased and I don't know if '95 Champ Dan Harrington entered - Lee says no). Other 90s champs who didn't make it include Mansour Matloubi, Russ Hamilton, Brad Daugherty, and Jim Bechtel. Hellmuth may be the most recent champ to still be in the tournament, and his win was in 1989, proving just how hard it has become to repeat in this event and how much stronger the average player in the field has become.

AND FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF IRONY DEPARTMENT (A SUBSIDIARY OF THE DEPARMENT OF REDUNDANCY DEPARTMENT)

My starting table offered some oddball coincidences. Seats three and four were occupied by Jennifer Harman and Annie Duke, and seats five and six were Mark Napolitano and me. It was a pretty strange "next-to-next-to" combination. We also had actor/comedian Gabe Kaplan, who very nearly made the final table in the $5,000 Limit Hold'em event won by Harman, "Crocodile" Bill Argyros, a super Australian player with whom I'd become friends at this tournament, and someone who violated one of my most basic poker principles.

I didn't know the gent's name, but we hooked up (that's for you, George) on a hand relatively early when I flopped something pretty good, bet the flop and got called, and then on the turn, with me still holding a pretty good hand, my opponent bet out, and I stared him down for about a minute, trying to get a read. I finally decided that certain as aspects of his body language meant he had something monstrous, and passed, and he turned over K-Q, which, with the nine that had hit the turn, gave him the stone cold nut straight.

Why someone should want to tell me that I could read him correctly (especially in a situation where it was extremely clear that I was trying to read him) I don't know, but I was happy with the information. Unfortunately for both him and me, he busted out about 20 minutes later, rendering the information worthless. His mistake wasn't anywhere nearly as bad as the one I made when I busted out, but I'm not ready to go into the details of that one yet. I will eventually.

AN APOLOGY TO O'NEIL LONGSON

One player who is still alive is O'Neil Longson, whom I believe I wronged in my report on the 2002 Deuce-to-Seven tournament when I described the events that surrounded his knocking out Huck Seed. Watching that event, I saw Longson take an extremely long time deciding whether or not to call Seed's last $35,000 all-in raise when the pot had $95,000 in it and Longson still would have had $55,000 even if he lost with his extremely powerful hand, an 8-7 low.

It seemed inconceivable to me that Longson could need that much time to call with such a strong hand, and Seed's anger as he departed helped convince me that Longson had "slowrolled" Seed, a breach of poker etiquette, and I reported that.

Several readers, including my friend and lowball expert Michael Wiesenberg, wrote to me to explain they were pretty sure I had it wrong. They believed that Longson took that long to disguise his hand's strength, because Seed still had a decision to make: whether or not he wanted to break up a made hand.

If Seed held something like a 10-7, for example, Longson would certainly want him to stand pat on it, and not draw to the seven low. So in the same story, honor dictates that I both apologize to Mr. Longson and admit I'm out of the 2002 Big One because of a mistake I still can't believe. I guess my diet is going to have to wait a while, because that's one large piece of humble pie for Mr. Glazer to eat.

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