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he Guardian Poker Column |
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Victoria
Coren |
Wed 21 Jul 2010 |
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Who are the 'November nine'?
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We now know
the makeup of the final table of this year's World
Series
We have a
"November nine". The final table of the 2010 World Series of Poker (WSoP) has
been decided; the weird new system remains in place, where the tournament will
be finished five months after it started.
There is no pretending that
this year's final lineup is as exciting as last year's, which featured a Brit
(James Akenhead), a journalist (Jeff Shulman), a woodcutter (Darwin Moon), and
the world's greatest tournament player (Phil Ivey). |
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The 2010 names are mostly unfamiliar, with
one notable exception. Michael Mizrachi, otherwise known as "The Grinder", is a
widely respected tournament pro, with one bracelet and $8.6m in tournament
winnings to date. He has two famous poker-playing brothers (Eric and Robert),
both of whom also cashed in this year's main event. But the most intriguing
brother seems to be his third, Daniel, who is a professional magician. Shame he
didn't play.
Alongside The Grinder, we've got two experienced live
tournament professionals (John Dolan and John Racener), both like
Mizrachi from Florida. The chip leader, Jonathan Duhamel from Canada,
turned pro about a year ago. There are two more online pros (Jason Senti and
Joseph Cheong, both American), a single European pro (Filippo Candio from
Italy) and Canadian Matthew Jarvis who was a business student but recently gave
that up to "concentrate on my poker career".
So far, so professional.
The new, slower WSoP structure is good for poker, as it increases the skill
factor against luck, but I can't help feeling wistful for those random chancers
who used to fluke the final table. A corner of my heart is reserved for the
sole amateur this year, Vietnamese-American Soi Nguyen, not least because
several websites have described him as "the old player at the table", at an
elderly 37. |
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