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Poker News Round-up: Week #11 Layne Flack With 64 players having already been selected by event organisers to take part in the NBC national heads up championship in Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas, Pure (the nightclub within the casino) was the setting for the draw party on the eve of the tournament. The following day though it was not the same 64 players who had been drawn out of the hat who sat down to play. Missing from the diamonds quarter of the draw was Layne Flack who had to be replaced by last minute substitute David Oppenheim. Initially producer Mori Eskandani stated that there had been a car accident which prevented Flack from taking his seat but it soon emerged that he had spent the night in the cells after being arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. A statement released by Flack confirmed that after he was stopped by police for driving 21mph faster than the statutory speed limit, he refused to take a breathalyser test – seldom a good line for the innocent to take. He was then held for a further six hours at the station, but despite this he maintains that he had not touched a drop of alcohol and that a police test confirmed as much. He would presumably not have been that keen then to subsequently find out that Andrew “Good2cu” Robl’s blog made significant mention of their evening at Pure – “I was admittedly quite drunk and somehow convinced the legendary Layne Flack to take shots of tequila with me. I was not thinking straight, so it was not the most responsible idea to convince someone who has had his battles with his vice demons to jump back into the hell of temptation. We ended up getting quite drunk and I went home to get some sleep while his night continued. This afternoon, I was alerted to a 2+2 gossip post that revealed that Flack was arrested for a DUI and had to forfeit his tournament entry. I feel pretty guilty about it” So guilty in fact that Robl has now erased that blog entry from his site. But getting back to the NBC heads up tournament for a moment, day one was not especially kind to the WSOP main event winners in the field, who have traditionally fared well in this event. Of the twelve past and present world champions, seven fell at the first hurdle including defending champion Chris Ferguson who succumbed to Gabe Kaplan. David Oppenheim fared well as Flack’s replacement and eventually went out in joint 5th after being eliminated by Huck Seed, who then went on to beat Sammy Farha to make the final.  NBC heads up champ Huck Seed Over on the other side of the draw Vanessa Rousso just kept getting handed tough draws in every round but she impressively saw off Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey, Paul Wasicka, Daniel Negreanu and Bertrand Grospellier to join Seed in the final. There the single elimination format changed to a best of three affair, and Rousso found Seed one great player too many as the 1996 world champ claimed a 2-0 victory. Despite only having 64 players the first prize was still a meaty $500,000 due to the $25,000 buy in, giving Seed his biggest cash since that main event win. With the start of the WSOP just over two months away online registration has now begun for the 57 bracelet events, and Harrah’s has also released their tournament rules for this summer’s events. Sponsors’ logos come under the spotlight this year, with extra wording to specifically disallow any branding on temporary tattoos, adhesive strips for the skin or sticking plasters. There will also be a ban on the same logo being sported by more than three players at the same feature table. Should one sponsor be fortunate enough to have four or more runners seated together (not inconceivable at the $50k HORSE) the players will have to decide who gets to wear the patches, potentially leading to a clash of egos over who is most worthy. If no agreement can be reached, tournament directors will take matters into their own hands and use high card procedure to decide as with racing off the small chips. There is also more focus on player etiquette this year with punishments such as forfeiture of chips and/or prize money for those who do not display the “civility and courtesy” expected of them at the table. Last year profanity was punished (or not in the case of Phil Hellmuth) if it was directed at an individual although not if in frustration at a bad beat, but the rules are harsher in 2009 – “Harrah’s prohibits the use of obscene or foul language in any public area of the casino at any time. Any player who uses such language or makes a foul, profane, obscene or vulgar statement, or speaks abusively or in an intimidating manner to another player, a dealer or a tournament staff member, will be penalized.” Even walking down the corridor to your room at the end of the night you can earn yourself a penalty for the next day. To prevent stalling at the end of the day’s play a new procedure has been introduced which will come into effect with ten minutes left on the clock. A player picked at random will be asked to draw a card between ace and nine and that will determine the number of further hands to be played at each table before bagging up chips. Finally, there will be no more blueberries for Jamie Gold or Red Bulls for Hevad Khan as now the only item of food or drink allowed at the tables will be a capped bottle of water, but this sounds like it is a rule that is going to be broken over and over again. There have been other rules introduced in the past such as the maximum size of a lucky mascot which just don’t get enforced and this seems likely to be one of them. It would come in handy to put a stop to Scotty Nguyen’s impatient requests for cocktails though. There is also some news on the structure of the tournaments for this year’s WSOP and on the whole players will be able to get more play from their stacks. The starting stacks will now be three times the cash buy in equivalent, and in some cases new levels have been introduced to slow down the escalation of blinds. That means 30,000 chips for the $10,000 main event, although the blind structure will remain the same as in 2008. The greatest difference seems to be in the lower buy in tournaments such as the $1,000 stimulus special which will start at 25/25 and have 75/150 inserted as the new level four. The larger buy in events, whilst still having the bigger stacks, also have increased starting blinds e.g. the $50,000 HORSE has 150,000 stacks but starts off at 400/800 which seems like a bit of a pointless excuse to plonk millions of chips on the table. Similarly the 40th anniversary $40,000 event starts with 120,000 chips but 200/400 blinds with a running ante of 50 right from the start. And finally, after learning last week that the WPT was expanding to take in Morocco next season, there is now further news that the tour is actually starting to live up to the global event its name would suggest. In May the tour will visit Italy for WPT Venice which will host several tournaments culminating in a €4,000 main event. The tournament will not be televised which can have a detrimental effect on attendances, but there will be an online webcast hosted by partner site bwin. Televised or not though, it’s good to see the WPT venturing a little further than North America for a change, and the buy in is a little more affordable than its EPT counterpart.
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