Before coming back home to Santa Monica for a few days of rest leading up to my next scheduled event (#45), I ate dinner at Bellagio's FIX with Jesse Martin, Ed Moncada, and Matt Szymaszek. We agreed to pony up $500 and draft seven players apiece for the $50K-buyin HORSE tournament. The team with the most money won in the event, wins.
I got first pick and nabbed last year's champion, Chip Reese, Matt took Patrik Antonius, Ed grabbed Phil Ivey and Jesse, last to choose but with two picks available, went with Barry Greenstein and Doyle Brunson.
When the action got back to me (David Benyamine and Daniel Negreanu having been scooped in the meantime by Matt and Ed), I didn't realize that it was my turn to make two choices--and was so elated after I scored super-champion Allen Cunningham as my first of the two--that I sort of flubbed my #3 pick, going with Pokerwire's own Thomas Wahlroos, unsure if he even played limit mixed games, but confident that his hunger for poker gave him a shot in the biggest-buyin tournament of the year.
Turns out Thomas didn't even play the HORSE event, presumably because Pai Gow wasn't in the mix this year.
I made a couple more speculative picks for my fourth and fifth horses, selecting Mike Wattel and Greg Raymer, but expertly rounded out my team with David Oppenheim and Bill Gazes in the final picks of the draft.
The teams came up looking like this:
Shane - Chip Reese, Allen Cunningham, Thomas Wahlroos, Mike Wattel, Greg Raymer, David Oppenheim, Bill Gazes
Matt - Patrik Antonius, David Benyamine, Gus Hansen, Erick Lindgren, John D'Agastino, Joe Cassidy, Jeff King
Ed - Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Greg Mueller, Nick Schulman, Chau Giang, Jen Harman, Kirk Morrison
Jesse - Barry Greenstein, Doyle Brunson, David Singer, Andy Bloch, Chad Brown, Minh Ly, Howard Lederer
***
Jesse, who also recapped the draft in his blog, made a point of calling me up on my way home to emphasize how drastic an oversight it was that no one picked Jeffrey Lissandro, who, Jesse said, might be "the best poker player in the world." He wanted to make sure I included that in this report, as well as his regret for not picking Lisandro...who wound up being the first player eliminated from the event.
***
Current approximate chip counts (cumulative per team):
Shane: 956K
Matt: 539K
Ed: 613K
Jesse: 813K
