Des Wilson says...

Des' WSOP Report 2008 (21)

July 7th

The headlines:

• 6,844 play in Main Event – top prize over $9 million
• Henning Grabstad in the lead after all four Day Ones are completed
• Majority of Ladbrokes players through

Day One of the 2008 World Series Main Event is over. Altogether there were 6,844 entrants and at least 3,650 have survived to Day Two. This had generated a prize pool of $64,333,600 and a first prize of $9,119,517. Altogether 666 will make the money.

Today (Monday July 7th) is a rest day, then Day 2 is spread over two days and the event continues until Sunday-Monday when the final table emerges. It will be played out in November.

A number of major names began to emerge from the pack yesterday, including Gus Hansen (105,000) and Phil Hellmuth (75,000), but here’s a thought: Spain has just won the European Cup at football and the Wimbledon men’s tennis title. Could it be about to score a hat-trick with the World Series? Former winner Carlos Mortensen has 109,000 chips and this is a man more than capable of besting even this huge field.

Big names out yesterday included: Todd Brunson, Phil Ivey, Andy Bloch, and Layne Flack, as well as three former world champions: Doyle Brunson, Chris Ferguson and Noel Furlong.

Team Ladbrokes has got the majority of its players through. Having lost skalie, GirlWonder and Nebuchad during Day One C, yesterday saw the departure of a number of top players including Andreas "_Theah_" Hoivoid, former 12th place winner John "yobenike" Magill, and Thomas "Inoriiss" Tyszkiewicz from Sweden.

But on the whole the Team Ladbrokes performance over the four Day Ones has been impressive, with some outstanding individual performances, not least from Johan "Berga" Berg from Sweden and Eetu "Peteth" Vehvilainen from Finland.

Further details and Team Ladbrokes chip counts can be found here.

Note: There is no play today, Monday July 7th, so there will be no report tomorrow. Next report: Wednesday July 9th.

From the Ladbrokes Lounge

Ladbrokes Team chief Nigel Blower found himself with a nightmare on Day One D when seven Ladbrokes players found themselves on one table, with five on another. He made a urgent plea to the tournament director to make these the first ‘break’ tables but it feel on deaf ears.

This is the first black mark on Harrahs this year. With a bit of flexibility they could have addressed the issue, but the tournament director and his team just didn’t care enough to make the effort.

As was pointed out to them, this was a unique situation calling for a unique response but the flexibility was not there.

Anyway, Nigel put up a fight for his team and its members made the best of it.

During the day Noel Furlong called in to the lounge. Padraig Parkinson was also there, and another who put his head in the door was George McKeever. This reunited the three Irishmen who made the final table together in 1999 when Furlong won.

Some Quotes from the fallen:

Jon "skalie" Kalmar (out Day One C)
"I took it steady to begin with, got used to the table, and opened up on Level Four and got to about 50,000 chips and got involved in a big pot with one guy; he had raised it from late position – very aggressive player – and I called with a pair of twos and the flop came Ace-2-3. I tried to trap him on the flop: he raised, I called. The turn card comes a Jack and he raises 10,000 so I got all-in with 37,000. The pot was about 100,000. He asked if I could beat two pair; I talked him into calling, and he got a 3 on the river for a full house. If I had won that I could have finished the table for 140,000 on the day, the way the table was going; as it was, I was gone."

Thomas "Inoriiss" Tyszkiewicz (out after 3 hours, Day One D)
"I got a bit out-drawn, but I did not play well. It all went wrong. When I had a good hand no-one wanted to play with me, and when I had a bad hand they were always in the pot. I got out-drawn when someone hit two pair on the river, and then I had a set beaten by a straight and I think I over-reacted to being out-drawn all he time and let my game go. It was just not my day. I was really disappointed because I have been looking forward to it for a long time."

Des’s Diary

Busy Sunday. Spent time in the lounge and the exhibition, did a television interview, met a publisher and finised the day off by having dinner with Tony Holden at Caesars Palace in the evening.

Tony told me an amusing story about how, for his birthday many years back, the famous poker personality Eric Drache gave him two tickets to hear Frank Sinatra.

He took Al ‘The greatest game in town’ Alvarez with him.

After a few songs Sinatra announced that somebody in the audience was celebrating a birthday.

Tony couldn’t believe it. Could Eric have really fixed this?! He clutched Alvarez’s arm and waited for his big moment.

Then Sinatra announced it was his grand-daughter’s birthday.

Ah well, you can’t win ‘em all.

Not that Tony is not a winner. He survived the first day of the Main Event (thanks entirely to me refusing to buy him another glass of wine at the break) ...who knows where it will lead?

Today (Monday) I intend to re-enter the poker arena with the 25,000-chip stack ‘mega’ event at Caesars Palace. Hope to put my Main Event debacle behind me and re-establish the game that stood me in good stead for many hours in the Venetian deep-stack events.

For everyone else, a rest day.

Des Wilson, Ladbrokes' Poker Ambassador