WSOP Event #8: A Top Ten To Be Reckoned With

The tournament indeed has some very peculiar rules: being a triple chance event, everyone starts out with 2,500 chips and two special red chips, which he can be exchanged for another 2,500 chips each at any time during the first three blind levels. The single draw instead of the triple draw means that players can only exchange cards once after the first betting round - in general, this will make all ranges much broader and will thus create a lot of room for wild bluffs and horrible setups. Last but not least, the fact that the first player to enter the pot has to raise will be the catalyst to a lot of action. Sounds like fun?

A lot of renowned players apparently thought so, too, and it came as no surprise that the likes of Vanessa Rousso (pictured right), Mike "The Mouth" Matusow, Tracey "xTraCey" Nguyen, Huck Seed, Andy Black, Jennifer Harman, Erick Lindgren and Greg Raymer took their seats early to get ready for action. With so many notable names and only 118 early registered players, some very tough tables were also preprogrammed from the get-go. 

The consequences of the unusual rules quickly became obvious in two hands between John "The Razor" Phan (pictured left) and Jimmy Fricke: the former raised and the latter re-raised him all-in right away - twice. The first time, Phan let it go, saying, "let's gamble next hand", when laying it down; but when he raised from UTG following hand and Jimmy Fricke showed over his raise again, he decided to take a stand and called. Standing pat, he was sure glad to see Fricke draw a card, but in the end, his T9875 lost to Fricke's drawn 8 which completed his 9653 to a 9-low.

While the infamous Mike "The Mouth" Matusow (pictured left) seems to have trouble with online cash games, he shows time and time again that he is a real tournament specialist with his amazing reads. He 3-bet Mark Newhouse's raise from early position and an additional flat call, and Newhouse in turn moved in 3 starting stacks deep. Matusow studied him really hard and made the call, besting Newhouse's 98xxx with his 96542 - and was subsequently up to 25,000 chips.

Over the course of the tournament, more and more big names joined the action late, including, amongst others, Berry Greenstein, Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Allen Cunningham and Eli Elezra, thus further toughening the field. As the played variant is subject to very high variance, a lot of them had to take their leave quite fast as the blind levels progressed. Not all of them fell into the trap though, as Mike Matusow checked behind after drawing a single card and Tony G - who had been standing pat - showed him 75432 for the nuts.

After the expected hot action of today, only about a quarter of the participants made it through the first day, leaving the amount of players left at merely 35. Erick Lindgren, Freddy Deeb, John Juanda (pictured right), Erik Seidel and Barry Greenstein will be among those to come back to the tables of this memorable tournament tomorrow - and if the chip counts give any indication of the final table composition, we could be in for some serious fireworks: Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth, Mike Matusow and Tony G for instance read like a group that could stir up quite some action.

Tomorrow will also be the start of Event #9 - the Short-Handed $1,500 No Limit Hold'em tournament, in which Daniel "allanon85" Drescher - who has just recently arrived in Las Vegas and joined Team PokerStrategy.com - will try to finally land a cash, together with Tim "nazgul" Kahlmeyer and Tobias "pokernoob" Reinkemeier, for our team. As usual, we will keep you updated on their progress, so check back for more tomorrow.

World Series Of Poker Event #8 Standings
Place	Name	Chips
1st	Layne Flack	75,125
2nd	Raphael Zimmerman	60,750
3rd	Yan Chen	48,500
4th	Phil Ivey	46,700
5th	David Grey	46,025
6th	Rodeen Talebi	45,000
7th	Phil Hellmuth	41,150
8th	Mike Matusow	40,975
9th	John Monnette	39,650
10th	Tony G	39,250