ESPN Inside Deal: Phil Ivey Takes Flight in the WSOP Tournament of Champions

While Laura Lane is on vacation, Bernard Lee takes hold of the Las Vegas event together with ESPN Poker Editor Andrew Feldman.  The news that was featured in ESPN.com is casted by PokerStars sponsored player, Barry Greenstein.

Going to the Phil Ivey issue of heading the leaderboard, Greenstein commented, “I haven’t even talked to Phil about it. I would guess he would play. What he was probably concerned about was the way they had it set up initially, it was going to conflict with him playing in events and he has a bunch of side bets.”

Other things that headed recently on the ESPN “Poker Edge” podcast Phil Gordon who speak to Feldman and listeners, “I heard that Phil Ivey is not even going to play. I was told that because there is a bracelet event the same day as the TOC, Phil isn’t going to play the TOC… You might be seeing Ivey running back and forth from the TV table.”

Speaking of WSOP Tournament of Champions, there were 25 bracelets winners and the two qualifiers, as Greenstein commented, “Some people were complaining, ‘Hey, why didn’t we get some of the newer, younger players?’ This is really more like an all-star game and is based more on the career you put forward, so I’m happy that people consider me in the top 20 most popular players.” All in all, Greenstein gathered down 9,800 votes, on the other hand, Daniel Negreanu and Ivey settled with more than 16,000 votes.

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Poker is Recession Proof - The Number Counts In The WSOP

It’s true that the number of entrants in the WPT have been down this year. Almost 25% fewer compared the previous year. However, the numbers don’t lie, poker is still an in demand commodity. Let’s just look at the WSOP events. Three events are already sold out from the first 9 events that passed. And it only signifies one thing; lots of poker players really want to join the events but the slots are only limited.

You can see the statistics in the Main Event throughout the years. In 2003, there were more than 800 players, and then at 2004 we saw 3 times the number of entrants in 2003. The field increase in 2005 with a number of 5,619 entries and at 2006 the field jumps to its highest at 8.773. While the number of players decrease at the following years; only 6,358 and 6,844 entrants in 207 and 2008.

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