Day 3 WSOP Update and Dropping the Hammer

481 People remain at the close of Day 3 of the WSOP. This also suggests the bubble has burst and we’re in the money in the World Series of Poker Main Event. Daniel Negreanu is the player who was on the roller coaster ride today dropping down to nearly 20,000 chips and back over 100K.

Notable WSOP Chip counts

1. David Chiu 650.000
2. Kyle Bowler 600,000
99. Joe Hachem 180,000
109. Hoyt Corkins 163,000
113. Annie Duke 156,000
127. Ted Forrest 138,000
135. Daniel Negreanu 104,000
145. Tom McEvoy 80,000
161. Cyndy Violette 45,000

Dropping the Hammer…

The Promotional CheckRayz-Celeb $500 freeroll is in the record books. The monstrosity of a poker player screen named reelcrazy11 took down the tourney. In case anyone is keeping score, this marks four months straight now that reel has won every CheckRayz event he’s entered. Said another way, the guy’s not losing in CheckRayz events. He went four for four in Q2, went on to take down the Shootout and capture the Q2 crown, and then the $500 freeroll. Wow.

Your’s truly was last in chips. Norman limps UTG, I peak down and see “it“… I know what I must do. Bam, I raise all-in. Reel folds. To my surprise, Norm calls (for some reason I have this belief that my all-in bluff moves never will get called for some reason). Norman turns over pocket threes. I am struggling to get to my paint program to screenshot my busting out with the hammer, when a seven decides to show up on the turn. I forget that I am looking for the paint program as I am both laughing at my luck and feeling bad for Norman who was actually playing while I was being a clown.

Dropping the hammer is an art form though. We’ll take a look at some historical hammer dropping. As you can see, it’s no easy task:

Hammer being dropped in the WSOP Main Event by a poker blogger while April is covering it (this is money),

The 2005 Hammer Photo Challenge run by Bill Rini at Bill’s Poker blog,

Another Bill Hammer Photo.

OK, enough obsession with the hammer.

Norman went on to take third place, and of course, I took second. Sweet cashes for all of us in a really tough field. Reel and I kept joking about the min raise. Occasionally, he’d taunt me with this min raise. Other times, I would throw one in on his BB. Additionally, I’d make it a point to fold and announce I respected his raise when he would do a more “standard” raise, such as 3x.

Overall, great tournament, lots of CheckRayz Tournament Leaderboard points and your’s truly is 2/3 in making a “final table” this quarter, only missing out at the 32 red freeroll, which I was the chip leader for quite some time.

That reminds me, I forgot where I was… and no Buddha , I was not referring to “well, this is Prima” either. Not saying what I am referring to, however, I will say that I forgot for a second that one “may” in fact be likely to play a hand such as queen eight to a seemingly substantial pre-flop raise. I refer to Buddha, because he had suggested that Gary was a transparent player and easy to read. Additionally, cited that Gary’s over betting was going to get him into trouble. I believe it was Gary who eliminated Buddha, however. And I look forward to seeing them show it down later on at a “not prima” tournament site.

Well, that’s enough for now. If I am not mistaking, I’ve written every day this past week. This would be a recent record. That should continue to be the case. I am seemingly over my writer’s block, and back “donking” it up on the virtual felt. I’m trying to teach myself PLO8. It’s a challenge, as I am not a fast learner, I have no respect for my teacher, and honestly, I’m just a horrible student! But, I think I’ll be ready to advance to PLO8 for second graders here in a few short days, where the title of the second grade course is “they really pay a low hand?”

Mike



Poker News
Poker Tournaments
CheckRayz Announcements