2. Steve Sung has quietly proven himself to be one of the better all-around players in the game.
The first time I met Steve he was playing a late night Chinese Poker game with Nam Le, JC Tran, and Danny Wong in Reno.  Steve has several final table appearances in the last six months, including two $100k+ cashes in December.  He placed 12th and 23rd in the main events at Foxwoods and Mandalay Bay, with an elite eight appearance in the Mirage Heads-up event in between. Steve's game seems to closely resemble Nam's, but he might actually be the best all-around player of the four (at least currently). 

Steve has already made a final table in the $1,500 7-Card Stud event this summer, placing third.  Today, he will be one of the players standing in Doyle's way at the $10,000 PLO final table.  He's entering play as the short-stack, but you can never count out this quiet and unassuming pro because of his strength: patience.

3. Robert may be the best player of the Mizrachi brothers
Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi has definitely earned the respect of his peers with back-to-back WPT victories last season.  Youngest brother Eric has yet to break through.  But Robert (like Sung), has quietly had a great career as a professional poker player.  To the casual observer, Robert may still be in Mike's shadow, but no one on the tour thinks so.  Robert has a number of big scores (including two cashes in the $500k range) in no-limit holdem,  but his mixed-game ability has turned the heads of more than a few people.

He already has four cashes this summer including Omaha 8OB and Omaha 8OB/Stud 8OB.  He made both the $2,500 and $5,000 HORSE final tables.  He's now at his third final table of the series.  He has just over 1m chips and will begin play in 2nd place in the $10,000 PLO World Championship. 

4. Michael Craig has played his way to another final table
Michael has not played in many events, but now has three cashes and two final tables under his belt.  He is an incredible student of the game, and it looks like his work on the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide has paid off.  After finishing seventh in the $1,500 Mixed Holdem event, I'm sure Michael will be fighting it out until the very end in the $1,000 SHOE.

Fred strikes me as poker’s everyman.  He’s a quiet, non-demonstrative player who always seems to be hanging around the late stages of a tournament.  Fred lives in Florida where he builds and renovates homes for a living.  Poker has been a part-time hobby for Fred, but over the last year we have seen more and more of him.

He cashed at both Bellagio WPT events last fall, just missing the final table of the Five Diamond in 11th place.  In March, he was (in my opinion) the best player remaining in the last few tables at Foxwoods.  After making the TV final table, he was busted in 4th place when his pocket jacks were all in preflop but lost against a ragged ace.

Fred's greatest assest is his table image.  He blends in well, letting other players battle it out while quietly picking up the small pots.  When he does play a big pot, if he doesn't have the goods he's convincing enough that most players will give him the benefit of the doubt and stay out of the way.  That tight table image gives him the needed room to maneuver in the late stages of an event.

With one final table and four cashes already under his belt at this summer’s WSOP, Fred took his seat on Day 1 in an event that featured a game he had never played before--limit holdem (the mixed event is thirty minutes of no-limit holdem followed by thirty minutes of limit holdem). 

There’s nothing like learning as you go.

(Watch an interview with Fred from Foxwoods)

By anyone, I mean players like Ciaran O’Leary of Seattle, WA.  According to the Hendon Mob database, he has a lifetime cash total of $727,012.  Which came in one event—the first of several $1,500 No-Limit Holdem WSOP tournaments.  O’Leary’s first place finish has become a common theme at the 2007 WSOP.

Take Jason Warner from Vancouver, for instance.  He won the $1,500 No-Limit Holdem event 12.  Warner now has exactly one cash.

David Stucke has also cashed one time.  For a bracelet in Event 27, another $1,500 No-Limit Holdem tournament.

Dan Baruch’s (winner of the $1,500 NL Shootout) total cashes: One. 

Mike Spegal defeated Gavin Smith heads-up in the $1,500 Pot-Limit Holdem event.  He also has—you guessed it—one cash.

On the eve of every $1,500 holdem event, you can find a registration line of dream-chasers winding it’s way outside of the Amazon room.  Eavesdropping on their phone calls to a buddy from the home game reveals everything that’s wonderful about the World Series of Poker:

“Yeah, I’m still standing in line…oh, wow, you won’t believe this.  I just saw The Grinder.  Yeah, he was talking to Erick Lindgren…wow…@#$!…they could be at my table.”

Over the next few hours, those phone calls will begin to slightly change in tone as they gain confidence along with their chips.  “Dude, I just doubled up with aces!  I’ve got like, I don’t know, forty thousand now! We’re almost in the money…”  After winning a few races and making it through Day 1, the dreams begin to fade as reality sets in.

Anyone can win a bracelet.

Looking for a pro at the beginning of a Day 2 field in one of these events is akin to playing “Where’s Waldo?”; familiar faces are hard to find in a sea of newcomers.  There’s plenty of fish still swimming in this sea; I witness an open-push of thirty big blinds with pocket eights and an overcall by ace-jack.  The winner of the hand is irrelevant as they are both just trying to make their first cash The Big One.

It’s unfortunate that the new blind structure make luck play even more of a role than normal at this stage.  Unfortunate for the post-flop pros, that is.  Luck levels the playing field even more for the player who went from asking Chris Ferguson for his autograph to wishing Jesus well after sending him to the rail.

For everything that Harrah’s has done wrong, they have made one of the world’s greatest games easily accessible to the everyman.  I understand why some pros argue that churning out bracelets at an assembly line pace actually detracts from their value.  But try telling that to Jason Warner. Or David Stucke.  Or Ciarin O’Leary.  Imagine what that final phone call to the home-game buddy must have sounded like to them…

I hesitate to say I agree with anything that comes out of “The Mouth,” but the outspoken pros are right—the new structure offers more play in the first few levels but turns the late stages into a shove-fest. Players have the freedom to splash around a bit more in the early going, but have little room to maneuver when the chips matter the most.  

The levels that have been removed in the $5,000 No Limit Holdem event were: 25-25, 2.5k-5k, 12k-24k, and 25k-50k.  The smaller events have other levels missing.

The problems with taking the levels out really begin to show on Day 2. By the time they are down to four tables a standard raise usually pot-commits the average stack. If you want to see where the greatest discrepancies lie, look no farther than any final table.

After writing about Mike Binger’s quick start to this year’s WSOP, I began following his play through the final sixty players of the $5,000 No-Limit Holdem event. By the end of the night, Mike had made the final table (albeit as the short stack) along with several other good players.  

The next day I found a seat outside the media center at the Rio to watch the one-hour delayed final table on the big-screen TV. I was anticipating a final table that would demonstrate some great end game play. 

If I were a betting man, I would’ve placed money on Nick Schulman to win. It’s a good thing I’m not, because Nick made an appearance by the TV while he was still on it. Confused? So was I, because Nick had a ton of chips on the big screen, and it was only a one hour delay. As it turns out, play was an all-in fest from the time the cards were in the air.

Last year’s $5,000 event had a field of 622 and a star-studded final table (Phil Hellmuth, Marcel Luske, and Eugene Todd, bro to name a few). Play began just after 2:00 PM and lasted until just after midnight. Take out the dinner break and they played for 8.5 hours.  

As a spectator and poker fan, I was horrified by the rapidity of eliminations at this year’s final table. After whittling down the field of 640, it only took James Mackey 48 hands to claim his bracelet. They played for about 2.5 hours. In no way do I want to take away from the bracelet-winning efforts of “mig.com”, but the disparity in times must be pointed out.

Second place finisher Stuart Fox played exactly one hand before he was heads-up with Mackey. One hand. He then folded the next three before he was all-in and lost. Two hands equals second place. 

When Jon Friedberg captured the $1,000 No Limit Holdem bracelet in the 2006 WSOP, it took him 122 hands. With double the starting stack, this year’s first $1,500 No-Limit event took less than half that many hands to finish—only 59. Brandon Cantu’s victory in event #2 last year lasted nearly 10 hours; Ciarin O'Leary’s took less than 5.  The final blind level for Cantu was 20k-40k-5k, for O'Leary 60k-120k-15k. 

After two and a half hours, the final blind level was 30k-60k-5k for Mackey.  After ten hours, Cabinillas defeated Hellmuth with blinds at 25k-50k.  Even though the average stack for the final 9 may be doubled, the missing levels have clearly impacted late stage play.  While it's possible that some players may be playing faster, almost every no-limit holdem final table has finished in half of the time.  I find it hard to imagine that the difference lies in the players and not the structure.

WSOP officials have shown a bit more willingness to make changes on the fly this year, and I hope they can see a problem when players begin describing the end of tournaments as a “crap-shoot.” I’m not sure what changes the Nevada Gaming Commission allow to structures once they have been posted, but something needs to be done about the late stages of these events.  

An immediate solution would be rolling back the blinds once players reach the final table. Officials could make an easy decision based on X# of big blinds for the average chip stack (50 would be ideal; 35 seems more likely). Yes, events would last several hours longer, putting that much more of a strain on tournament staff and the media…but we’re not the ones playing for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In the words of the not-always-articulate-but-usually-insightful Mike Matusow, “We can fix it.”

...but can the people on the other side of those bets really be considered suckers?  It's difficult enough for many tournament pros to make it out of the first level, much less emerge from three days of poker with a victory. 

In the last several years, the common philosphy has been that "tight-aggressive" play gets you in the cash;  playing "loose-aggressive" brings home the most trophies.  Phil Hellmuth's two bracelets in the last two years indicate otherwise.

While many players come out firing in the early stages, we all know Hellmuth doesn't even bother showing up until late in the second hour.  For Hellmuth actual significance lies in what most would dismiss as a gimmick; he simply waits to play until the chips mean something.  A loose-aggressive player who happens to be running well may win one event; the poker brat has remained at the top for a lifetime.

While his risk-averse style of play makes him a target early in tournaments, winning the small pots ensure that he sticks around long enough to capitalize on his opponent's mistakes.  Combine his patience with his own patented brand of incessant table chatter and you have a formula for continually frustrating opponents.

A few players emulate this style of play.  WPT players of the year Erick Lindgren and Daniel Negreanu both encourage small-ball poker while relying on their reading ability; 2005 WSOP champion Joe Hachem has enjoyed an incredible two-year stretch of success. 

But Phil Hellmuth's staying power brought him not only a record 11th bracelet, but a title only the godfather of poker can bestow: The Greatest.