| 2008: The Pros Strike Back |
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| From the Editor - From the Editor | |||
| Written by John Wenzel | |||
 2008: The Pros Strike BackLong into the future, 2008 will be remembered as the year the world’s top players recaptured the world of tournament poker. Or maybe it was just a last stand. Far, far out of proportion to their numbers, the world’s best players and biggest names did not just cash, but took home bracelets in this summer’s annual gathering of the tribe, The World Series of Poker. Household-name professionals who cut their teeth playing smashmouth live poker such as Barry Greenstein, Daniel Negreanu, Mike Matusow, David Benyamine, John Phan, Max Pescatori, J.C. and Kenny Tran, David Singer, Layne Flack and Erick Lindgren took home bling, along with other solid pros you have probably never heard of. In fact, the tally was pros 38, semi-pros 3 and amateurs 12 – a thorough trouncing by the pro players. Ever since Robert Varkonyi and Chris Moneymaker won the 2002 and 2003 World Championships and poker on TV and on the Internet exploded, amateurs and flash-in-the-pan pseudo-pros have made their mark on the World Series, flooding no-limit hold’em events in such numbers that most observers were saying that the world’s best players, despite their skill edge, would not win the Main Event ever again and would indeed have to “get lucky” to win any big-field tourney. Instead, the bracelets would be going to “random Internet players.” And in the last few years, that is certainly what has happened. This was one reason the higher buy-in world championships were instituted, especially the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event with a stratospheric buy-in and a mixed-game format that requires a wide range of skills, experience and knowledge, not just the no-limit hold’em favored by those who have taken up the game since 2003. It’s no surprise that in the $50k event’s first three years, it has been won by three of the world’s best longtime competitors: the late Chip Reese, Freddy Deeb and now Scotty Nguyen. Although 2004 Main Event Champ Greg Raymer and 2005 champ Joe Hachem are today respected pros, one has to go all the way back to 2001 (Carlos Mortensen) and 2000 (Chris Ferguson) before one finds a pro winning the Big One. No big-name pro managed to navigate the minefield of thousands and thousands of unpredictable players this year, but it should be noted that six of the “November Nine” list their occupations as “professional poker player.” Scott Mont-gomery has made a WPT final table, and David Rheem has one EPT and two WSOP final tables on his resumé. The Main Event final table is the youngest ever, so before I go, let me give due respect to some of the hordes of young players that are becoming a force at the WSOP, as they are online. They did well again in the hold’em events, and players in their early 20s walked off with a lot of hardware this year. What’s impressive about the pros’ performances, however, is that their success is way out of proportion to their numbers. After all, how many big-name pros are there? Fifty? One hundred? A hundred and fifty? How many can you name? Compare this to the 58,720 who entered the 55 WSOP events, and you’ll see my point. Still, 20 years from now we may look back on the “Year of the Pro” and see that many of 2028’s top players started out as “random Internet players” way back when. John “Johnny Quads” Wenzel Editor-in-Chief
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| Last Updated on Sunday, 17 May 2009 17:42 |
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