PokerStars WCOOP 2011 – Brits making up for lost bracelets [Editorial]
Friday, 16 September 2011
The Brits may not have won the “Most Bracelets Outside of the USA” title at this year's WSOP (damn you, France!) but we seem to be making up for it in the 2011 WCOOP. Matt Perry reports on a dominating online run from Blighty's finest.
At the 2011 World Series of Poker, Jake Cody, Matt Perrins and Darren Woods all brought a bracelet back to Britain – not to mention millions of dollars in prize money. Meanwhile, we had final table finishes from Chris Moorman (twice), Sadan Turker, Richard Ashby (twice), David Vamplew, Alexander Martin, Jon Spinks, Richard Trigg, Sidney Hasson, Zimnan Ziyard, Andrew Teng, Warren Woolridge, Peter Charalambous, John Shipley, Paul Nash, Tom Middleton and Matthew Ashton. Oh, and Sam Holden has made the November Nine.
It’s not a bad World Series for a country, by any stretch. By my rough count finished top three in bracelets and final tables for countries outside the US; only Canada and France have racked up as many flags on the Hendon Mob database for the WSOP 2011. However, it’s a little lacklustre after last year, especially with Jake Cody getting us off to a roaring start by winning arguably one of the toughest events and locking up the Triple Crown of WSOP/WPT/EPT titles.
Last year at the WSOP, there were five bracelet winners and over $8m in prize money taken back to Blighty after the Barmy Army descended on Las Vegas. Before the WSOP 2010 I predicted a stellar WSOP matching 2010, with the likes of Jake Cody, Chris Moorman, Roberto Romanello and Sam Trickett dominating tournament poker as well as the old guard of Neil Channing, Devilfish et al always being a good bet to do well in live tournaments. One out of six isn’t bad, eh? Plus I’m giving myself Moorman – he may not have secured a bracelet but he certainly had a profitable WSOP, unless he staked a bunch of losers throughout the series.
So, like I said, it wasn’t a bad WSOP this past year. Sam Holden has more than a snowball’s chance of adding another $8.7m plus bracelet to our total as well. That list of final tablers turned out much longer than I thought it was going to but I have my Editorial premise and I’m sticking with it. At a final table, luck comes into play far more than at any other stage of the tournament. A few turns of a card going the other way, perhaps an extra shuffle of the deck between key hands, means that we could have had sixteen bracelets. In theory. I’m going somewhere with this.
The PokerStars WCOOP is the WSOP of online tournaments. There are too many acronyms in that comparison but it holds – easily the richest and most prestigious online tournament series, the World Championship of Online Poker bracelets are coveted by any serious tournament player that has ever clicked a mouse. We may not have won our five bracelets and the “Most Bracelets Outside of the USA” title this year (damn you, France!) but we seem to be making up for it in the 2011 WCOOP. With “Horns_Halos” winning the No Limit Omaha 8 6-max event for $23,555 we have five WCOOP bracelets with the series only half done. Here’s how we’ve done in the WCOOP 2011 so far:
Event #2; $10,300 High Roller: DYBYDX (1st, $430,000), xraypies (2nd, $310,000), PokerNoob999 (6th, $100,000)
Event #4; $320 PLO: Jamie_KK (6th, $19,091)
Event #5; $320 NL Shootout 6-max: Mossop7 (1st, $50,379), 1_conor_b_1 (6th, $20,000)
Event #6; $215 NL Turbo Rebuy: 4kinghelll (9th, $10,946)
Event #7; $215 PL 5-Card Draw: soumi7 (9th, $2,167)
Event #8; $215 Triple Stud: mddgfc (2nd, $14,792)
Event #9; $1,050 NL: dean23price (7th, $37,110)
[Matt Perry wanders off to make another coffee, wondering just how many final tables we’ve bloody made and how long this list is going to take]
Event #12; $215 NL: rickv17 (1st, $75,616), crossybig (2nd, $40,032), jenbizzle (4th, $24,464)
Event #13; $215 PLO8 6-max 1r1a: Pandochat (1st, $42,408), Tlick777 (3rd, $22,878), jjsbryan (6th, $7,142)
Event #16; $215 PLO 6-max: superowl99 (5th, $15,304), PUCIPUCO (6th, $8,745)
[Matt Perry notes that ElkY final tabled the 2-7 NL event and he lives in London. Can we claim that one too?]
Event #18; $320 NL: sirtenzoe (3rd, $73,156)
Event #19; $109 NL: dreeniee82 (2nd, $117,410), spel91 (7th, $23,482)
Event #22; $530 NL: pvas2 (2nd, $218,732)
Event #23; $215 NL 4-max: claypole (4th, $21,658)
Event #24; $320 Stud: Bilybob88 (2nd, $14,407)
Event #25; PLO Turbo 1r1a: joejoe1337 (9th, $4,802)
Event #26; Mixed Hold ‘em 6-max: Goldenboys (6th, $7,569)
Event #27; $320 Limit Badugi: PUCIPUCO (4th, $7,008)
Event #28; $320 NL Omaha 8: Horns_Halos (1st, $23,555), midastruck (8th, $2,795)
Event #29; $530 NL Triple Shootout: adam eterno (8th, $8,063)
Event #31; $320 8-Game Mix: jokanavic (6th, $5,688)
Event #33; $320 PLO 6-max 1r1a: moonwatch79 (5th, $22,995), mddgfc (7th, $9,382)
Well, thank God that’s over. This article is just a series of lists that become longer than I anticipate. Anyway, I make that 32 final tables and five wins. Since that’s in a list of 33 events (as I write, Shane Schleger just won Event #34 but he’s in Canada so screw him) we’ve got an average of one UK player at every final table and a win every six tournaments. Not bad going – if we did that at the WSOP we’d bankrupt Vegas and bring back twelve bracelets.
So, I must ask – with the US out of the picture, are we the dominant superpower in online poker? It certainly seems so (small sample size of 33 events notwithstanding). The main poker-pwning countries now that the US has gone seem to be the UK, Canada and Russia. We all know the Russians are breeding a race of Ivan Dragos for the poker tables so the latter isn’t surprising.
This has run on too long now and I must wrap things up simply by saying that we’re doing good at the WCOOP. So that’s... good. Plus I’m probably going to win one or two myself so we’ll walk away from this with at least 7 bracelets. Not that poker is a team sport played country versus country but oh well, it’s nice for us to be good at some form of competition besides building empires and drinking tea. Bloody good show, chaps – keep it up.