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Well what can be said about the mai event this year. It wasn't the largest field. It didn't offer the biggest pay out for the lucky bugger that scoops the most coveted braclet and title out there, it didn't even allow for any streamed footage or delayed coverage. What it did offer is over a weeks pure engagement of the poker community through a modern day social medium. Twitter was taken over by railbirds all getting behind one player, that was of course @realkidpoker Daniel Negreanu.
As a poker addict I found my regular online grind replaced by my desktop being locked on WSOP's official chip count updates whilst grasping my Iphone manically watching, and engaging in the twitterfest fueled by Kid Poker's majestic deep run. If you consider the lack of any real coverage it amazes me that so much of my late nights and early mornings were dominated by looking at Twitter on my phone and my auto refreshing live chip count feed on my desktop. As sad as it sounds, you know what? I loved every moment of it!
For me Negreanu is by far my choice pro to follow and watch. Catch him on a TV table and he is capable of being simply hilarious whilst play fails to thrill. He demonstrates an amazing ability to look deep inside the souls of opponents and find impossible shoves and folds when needed. His run in this years big one was epitimised by a relatively old skool, maybee conservative approach compared to online trends with an amazing ability to control pots. An understanding that post flop equity is a much better edge to exploit than pre flop brutality. In a time when younger maniacs types will potentially five bet fold, he undersands that in a deep stack structure taking a relatively cheap flop in the right spot rather than the adolescent 4/5 bet allows him to exploit his reads and post flop skill set. The small fact that he is also the face of pokerstars doesn't hurt his popularity, but it is humility and spirit that impresses me the most (look up his charity work, and Negreanu vs Justin Schwartz).
Back to the final 11 situation that saw his demise. He actually got somewhat shafted by two main factors. Firstly the fact that he was stranded on a small island surrounded by great whites by being on the feature table. He, Alexander Turyansky, Frederico Butteroni and Joshua Bekley were left as the smallest 4 stacks left hovering between 5.5 - 10 million chips at their peak in this stage of play. To make matters more precarious for these four the other player on their table was Joeseph Mckeehen who was peaking at around 40 million chips. For most of this stage of play he held 75% of the chips on this table.
Now imagine this scenario online in the late stages of a tournament it doesn't look to bad. Typically the big pay jumps don't come in until the final table is formed and it's down to 7 players. The significance of this is that as one of the micro stacks you would play the short stack bullishly and look exploit the fact that pay structure offers little reward for sitting on your arse. This year in the main event however, the situation was switched on its head. Previously the payout for 12-10th had been equal. This year the pay jumps between 12th and 9th were steeper than the jumps between 9th-7th. As a shortstack, your actual value per chip is considerably higher than a medium stack anyway, meaning that the impact of losing a pot, even small dramatically hurts your tournament equity. Add $150,000-$200,000 pay jumps into the situation and each chip in your stack retains an even higher value. Allowing Mckehen a prime opportunity to exploit their plight.
The detrimental impact of the new payout structure affecting play for Kid Poker and Co was two fold. By nature of the 4 smallest stacks being lined up against Billy Big Bollocks mega stack, meant that you had a 6 strong (that extra hand out of the blinds makes a real difference) table with stacks ranging from $15-28 million chips. It was apparent from watching the live chip count that they were literally playing no pots, that retarded lack of table balance meant that table two literally went into the 'Nit Zone', and why not. You have four micro stacks against the runaway chip leader. Jesus if I was on that table I would literally put a long arsed Mozart piece on the Ipod and shut my eyes behind the mirrored raybans until one of them got unlucky, snoozing my way to $1million gaurenteed.
Negraneau, was by far the bravest player on the feature table. His tweets were enough to suggest that he had no intention being pounded into submission and scraping into the November Nine. This attitude ultimatley lead to his tournament demise when he flopped an ace with his ace rag against Mckeehen, only to get it in vs a flush draw and loose to running cards to a straight. However, he was clearly playing to accumilate and wanted to play up towards the tournament average to give him his best chance of taking the table apart as he did previously at the WSOPE in London a few years back. When the queen hit to make Big Mac's straight, the life was literally sucked out of the tournament, and this was clearly demonstrated by Kid Poker literally dropping to the floor, and the poker world felt his pain!
So what did that bust ut mean for poker then? Sadly in my opinion probably the biggest loss in equity it could ave suffered at this point. Negranau for the reasons outlined above is one of the most popular faces in Poker. The impact of the media coverage, marketing potential and even political sway could have been the best thing snce the collapse of Full Tilt and to a tempory extent Pokerstars on Black Friday. Negraneau and other Stars Pros were about to go onto an extended tour of live poker and PR to help persuade the local government to leagalise online poker within California again. No doubt this could have been the first domino into igniting the flame of below average US recreational players accross global sites again, pumping money into the pockets of Nits accross the globe. They may well achieve this goal but their impact would have been so much stronger had he had November Nine status.
The Final Table would have been covered on a level that we have nver seen before had he had made it, who knows we may have even had global delayed streaming for the next legend that almost lives the dream next year for us all to enjoy. I strongly believe his skill edge, disregard for the money involved and ultmate ability and experience would have seen him fare well at the final table, and I'm telling you now had he won it, it would make the money maker effect feel like a mouse's fart. Instead when he fell onto the ground, it felt like this years big one was dead!
As a closing word, Daniel Negraneau, you were a pleasure to rail, all be it through a chip count feed and geeky 100 character random tweets, be very proud of what you have achieved and come back stronger
If you enjoy my Blog shere it! I write because I enjoy it!
If you enjoy my Blog shere it! I write because I enjoy it!
