World Series of Poker Europe Main Event

A friend of mine, Tablecleaner will be playing in London today, in the 1b-field. This is one of the most prestigious tournaments there is, with a buy-in of 10 000 pounds, and a sky-is-the-limit first price. The tournament began yesterday and will continue well into the coming week, until ten players reach the final table and will play for the highest payouts, and a prestige that can’t really be measured. I have long since congratulated him for qualifying to this one through satellites, which is extremely hard to do, and want to wish him good luck tonight and subsequent nights. He will need it, in an extremely professional and hard field. There is precedence for fairly unknown players going deep in these tournaments, though. This was, for instance the tournament Annette Obrestad won last year.

Tablecleaner is fairly well known on the Norwegian and European circuit, and his taken name is very accurate. May he set London on fire…

Experience

There were a lot of new, unknown players going deep in the WSOP this year, too, also in the Main Event. I talked about it with a friend and fellow player, and we agreed. It was an epiphany not really an epiphany at all, but common sense.

People play there for the first time the moment they turn twenty-one. They usually start playing poker on the web when they are eighteen, and often before that, too, on the parents’ accounts or similar. During those three years or more they gain more experience, play more hands than Doyle Brunson did in a lifetime.

When Justin Bonomo claims he has played far more hands than Brunson, he isn't bragging. When Annette Obrestad won WSOPE Main Event last year she beat a lot of the those coined as the best players in the world.

And so on. The time when established players could just sit down by a given table or join a given field and dominate is long gone.

It's a brave new world.