So I started doing some digging around forums, and saw crazy rumors that included everything from Flack being a Walmart greeter to a post that said he was broke and strung out on drugs. Well Flack must have pulled himself out of the back alley he was shooting up in because I saw that he was amongst the chip leaders in the Bat 101 Shooting Star tournament. Flack was sitting fifth in chips when the first day ended, and he made a decent run at cashing until busting out as the bubble boy.

The tournament wasn’t a total loss for Flack though as he managed to earn $5,000 in bounties, which is $5k more than he made in 2010. The Bay 101 was like a who’s who of former players who used to be considered top live tournament players as Kathy Leibert, Mike Matusow, and Mike Sexton are all among the last 24 players left. Kind of makes me feel like it’s 2007 again.

In any case, the chip leader at this point is Joris Springael (1,477,000 chips), while Vivek Rajkumar looks poised for another big WPT tournament run since he’s third with 1,076,000 chips. Rajkumar placed second in the LA Poker Classic last month after getting beat by Greg Brooks in heads-up play. Rajkumar certainly wasn’t a loser though after earning over $908k for the finish.

The $1 million payday was his third largest cash to date, trailing behind his Five-Diamond World Poker Classic II and Borgata Poker Open WPT wins for $1,770,218 and $1,117,400, respectively.  From the turn of the century ESPN broadcasts showing his mom making him lunch to his eventual $14,131,104 in tourney winnings he’s accumulated over his lifetime, Negreanu has come a long way.

The four-time bracelet winner and poker natural has made dents across all major tourney circuits not seen in size since cannonballs hit the USS Constitution, with deep finishes riddled throughout the WSOP, the WSOP Circuit, the World Poker Tour (WPT), and the European Poker Tour. He saw his banner year in 2004-2005 when he received not one but three Player of the Year accolades from the WSOP, Card Player Magazine, and  WPT. With books, video games (it’s plural because only two people bought Stacked on the Xbox), and endorsements so far up his ass he’s breathing dollar bills, Kid Poker could live the rest of his life off of royalties alone. But his career hasn’t all been smiles and memories.

If I may piss on Negreanu’s parade here for just a moment, for a man who seems like he has won it all during his tenure on and off the felt, he has a severe Achilles’ heel: cash games. He is down close to $2 million dollars across the six seasons of High Stakes Poker, an astronomical amount considering he’s playing the game he built his empire on. If you waltzed on out of a cave and knew nothing about him, you would never be able to tell the difference between him playing and the producers giving a Vegas vagrant a $200k bankroll to squander. While cash tables are certainly a different mentality than tourney tables, the greats of the game are capable of sustaining themselves across the adversities of both. Albeit he still has millions of dollars to show, it is safe to assume that he has blown considerable amounts off the television cameras as well and that his chip stack hemorrhaging would be cause for concern if it weren’t somebody who wasn’t so well-received, well-endorsed, and the face of every product branded with the livelihood of poker.

All things considered when comparing Negreanu to the track record of the man he just recently inched passed, Ivey still sits higher on a grander scale, up tens of millions of dollars across all aspects of his play. But at the end of the end, and for the time being, Negreanu can toot his own horn as he rides the Tourney Express to Cashmoneyville.

Like somebody still wearing a Member’s Only jacket, it’s a rare to see somebody’s name that isn’t Phil Ivey reaching incredible heights in the pokersphere. This year, two people were a product of World Series of Poker (WSOP) greatness: Michael Mizrachi and Frank Kassela.

After an early start to 2010 that saw IRS woes for “The Grinder”, he made up for his over $300,000 in back taxes like their auditing department had a gun to his head and said, “Play for your life.”

Someone who is no stranger to top finishes, 2010 will undoubtedly be the crowning year of poker in Mizrachi’s lifetime. A man that made his name and millions of dollars on the World Poker Tour has spent 2010 breaking out of his WSOP tournament shell.

To beat a dead horse, after he headlined and the final table of the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship event with brother Robert–which as I had previously reported was only the third time siblings made the same final tables–he would go on to final table three other events after his $1,559,046 victory. He placed 6th at the $10,000 7 Stud Championship and 8th at the $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship. All of these cashes are but a speck in the sun with the money he stands to win when the Main Event resumes in November.

On top of his November Nine finish, this is the first time in WSOP history that an entire family cashed the Main Event. Brother’s Robert, Eric, and Danny would place 116th, 718th, and 345th, respectively. Michael’s fate has yet to be told, as he currently sits in 7th place with 14,450,000 in chips.

It has taken Mizrachi a lifetime to achieve all he has this year and it may take him another lifetime to do it again. What’s sick is that after all of it, he still has to WIN the Main Event to tie Frank Kassela as 2010 WSOP Player of the Year.

Kassela was a virtual unknown before he took a sledgehammer to the obscurity at this year’s WSOP. He won his first two bracelets in the $10,000 Seven Card Stud Hi-Low Split-8 or Better Championship and the $2,500 Razz Seven Card events. As if winning two bracelets in a year wasn’t enough, Kassela would go on to place third at the $25,000 No-Limit Hold’em Six- Handed and cash 36th in the $2,500 Mixed Game event, 10th at the $2,500 Limit Hold’em event, and 674th in the Main Event. All told, he has won $1,255,314 in 2010 and shot so hard for the stars he landed on the moon, with the odds in his favor and Mizrachi playing catchup to his Player of the Year standings.

Will Mizrachi do the inconceivable, winning the Main Event, the Poker Player’s Championship, and the Player of the Year all in 2010?  Only November knows the answer.

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A name synomous with the World Poker Tour (WPT) earned the recognition it deserved on Saturday. Kathy Liebert played in her 100th WPT tourney over the weekend at the 2010 Legends of Poker event at the Bicycle Casino in L.A. Liebert becomes the second player to join the 100 tourney milestone, an achievement christened by Erik Seidel last month at the Bellagio Cup. It is certainly not one for the weak of heart (or bankroll).

The Bike has been a momentous destination for Liebert’s career, having been both the home of her first WPT final table and her first WPT tournament. It’s only fitting that she returns back during an event titled “Legends of Poker” to claim the 100th notch on her belt, having made six WPT final tables, 15 WPT cashes, and having accumulated $1,727,443 in career WPT winnings.

Aside from the WPT, Liebert is poker’s winningest lady, having won $5,339,173 over the course of her career. To her credit, she has won one World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet–a 2004 $1,500 limit hold’em shootout–has 30 WSOP cashes, and has finished 17th in the Main Event in both 1998 and 2000. In a game dominated by males, Liebert has broken down barriers with her raising hand, then bench pressed the rubble.

The best part about this 42-year-old? She’s single. Eat your heart out Paula Poundstone.

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For starters, he became the all-time leading tournament money player last year, edging out Daniel Negreanu after a storybook year at the Aussie Millions and World Series of Poker (WSOP), sitting currently with $13,531,757.

Secondly, the graph of his tracked cash game play looks like a waypoint set from Texas to New England. In just over three years at internet poker’s highest stakes, Ivey has won $19,044,447. These numbers don’t factor in the little known heads-up desecration where he filleted Texas billionaire Andy Beal like an Angus steer.

Beal was a man who struck it rich in banking and real estate. He was a certifiable mathematical genius and had a sweet tooth for poker. Between 2001-2006 at the Wynn in Las Vegas, he played limit hold’em heads-up matches with The Corporation, a syndicate formed of some of some of the greatest pros to have played the game: Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, Todd Brunson, Ted Forrest, Jennifer Harman, Howard Lederer, Gus Hansen, Barry Greenstein, Chau Giang, Johnny Chan, Minh Ly, David Gray, Hamid Dastmalchi, among others. On May 13th, 2004, Beal earned what has been reported as the largest single day score in poker cash game history, winning $11.7 million from Reese, Harman, Hansen, and Dastmalchi. The battle was far from over.

Beal would return in 2006, claiming the entire $10 million stake The Corporation assembled from the Vegas community.  Much like a pool hustler pulling out a custom cue from its case after bombing his first couple games, The Corporation went to their bags and pulled out Ivey. The edge Beal brought to the games was agreeing upon limits that even the biggest name pros had rarely seen, leaving some of the most seasoned players unnerved. Starring into the face of $30,000/60,000 limits, which were later raised to $50,000/100,000, Ivey barely blinked. He would go on to take $16.6 from the billionaire, winning back The Corp’s initial $10 million and seeing himself well in the black. The end result was that of a JV basketball team taking on the Harlem Globetrotters. Beal has since to return back to Vegas.

Cash games aside, his tournament accolades are equally stunning. Ivey currently owns the record for most World Poker Tour (WPT) final tables, having made nine final tables out of his 11 cashes. To anyone else this would be a miraculous feat, but it just leaves you thinking “Pshhh…that crazy Phil Ivey!” His streak of seven final tables without a victory would come to an end in 2008 at the L.A. Poker Classic Championship, when he took down the trophy and $1,596,100 more to add to the money pit.

While this quickly became an article that should have been titled “Amazing Feats in Poker History”, I’m about to bring the satellite back into the WSOP orbit. Of all of his amazing achievements, two of them manage to stand out somehow on a laundry list already written in gold, underlined in platinum, and kept in a frame made of diamonds and bald eagle scalps.

Ivey is one of only four players to have had a three-bracelet year as I had mentioned in a previous “Amazing Feats in WSOP History”, joining the ranks of Ted Forrest, Phil Hellmuth, and Jeffrey Lisandro. Coupled with the fact that last year, he won two more bracelets ($2,500 no-limit 2-7 draw lowball; $2,500 split omaha hi/lo & 7 card stud hi/lo) AND final tabled the Main Event, he essentially leaps light years ahead of his three aforementioned peers, and unsurprisingly, sits alone in the glory of another incredible poker achievement.

Without a doubt, what is arguably Ivey’s finest accomplishment and can easily be considered the all-time leading achievement in WSOP Main Event history are his four top 25 finishes over the past decade of the $10,000 championship. The average Joes that dish out the buy-in watching their favorite pros on TV can only hope to cash in it. The pros playing for all the dead money can only expect to make the bubble. Nobody has done it quite like Ivey. He’s placed the following years, earning the specified amounts out of the following fields:

• 23rd – 2002 – $40,000 – 631 players
• 10th – 2003 – $82,700 – 839 players
• 20th -  2005 – $304, 680 – 5619 players
• 7th – 2009 – $1,404,002 – 6494 players

What else can be said that hasn’t already? Ivey is poker’s greatest export and has drastically increased its gross domestic product (GDP) with his glaring stare, fearless demeanor, innate abilities, and by being a man driven by the competition as much as he is the action. Records and numbers are meant to be broken and surpassed, but when people look back on the annals of poker, there will always be only one Phil Ivey.

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Harrington’s rise to greatness began back in 1987, when he  placed 6th out of 152 players in the first of the Main Events later won by Johnny Chan back-to-back. Forward to 1995, when in only his second cash ever at the WSOP, he outlasted a 285 person Main Event field to take down the Main Event and take home heaping stacks of hundos in the amount of $1,000,000. He would defend his title nobly the following year in 1996, finishing 17th for $23,400.

While the debate is always made that older players couldn’t hold their own in fields of present day, Harrington knocked the cynics right out of their seats with what is considered by some to be the greatest feat in WSOP history.

The year of Moneymaker in 2003 saw Harrington returning to the Main Event final table, a place he had called home through the mid-90s. His run through the 895 players in the field came to an end in 3rd place when Moneymaker raised enough to put Harrington all-in on a 2d-6d-10d flop. Harrington called holding the second nut flush draw and a pair of sixes with Kd6s, Moneymaker the 10-9 offsuit. Moneymaker’s pair of tens would hold, and Harrington would ride off into the Vegas sunset, $650,000 the richer. Moneymaker would ride on to win the bracelet, a monkey he was never able to brush off his back in all the years of mediocre accomplishments following the explosion he set off with his poker boom.

The turnout of 2004 would speak volumes regarding the impact Moneymaker had on WSOP registration, as showcased by the first Main Event field for the first time being in the thousands (2,576). It would also speak volumes of the man who published his own take on hold’em. His elimination in 2003 would prove to be a short ride into the sunset.

A field triple the size of the previous year played no obstacle for Harrington, who inconceivably made it to booth the 2003 and 2004 Main Event final tables, an accomplishment not thought feasible and one that is statistically improbable. He would later place 4th after uncharacteristically bluffing all-in against David Williams’ two-pair for $1,500,000. Regardless of never capturing a championship in either final table appearance, such an illustrious feat was proof that he had already won before he even sat down to play.

Between now and then, Harrington would go on to place 2nd at the World Poker Tour Season 4 Doyle Brunson North American Championship for $620,730 while going on to win the the World Poker Tour (WPT) Season 6 Legends of Poker Championship for $1,634,865. With his largest victory to date, he joined Joe Hachem, Doyle Brunson, Scotty Nguyen, and Carlos Mortensen as one of the only WSOP Main Event champions with WPT bracelets.

A resume laced with consistently deep runs against large fields highlighted by achieving back-to-back final tables stands as a testament for Harrington’s stance on old age against young guns. $6,111,422 in winnings later, Harrington forever stands at the pinnacle of poker achievements. Hell, he put the flag at the summit.

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Ivey reached his record-setting 9th final table on Thursday at the World Poker Tour (WPT) Bellagio Cup VI. Getting down to three-handed play, two formidable players stood in his way: Moritz Kranich and Justin Smith.

Kranich won The French Open back in 2009, the European Poker Tour’s championship stop in Deauville, France for $1,208,175. Smith, who is known as “Boosted J” online, made it back-to-back final tables with his performance, having taken 3rd in the very same event last year.

Ivey gained the chip lead at one point, but failed to see it through to the money presentation. With unrelenting blinds, Ivey’s shove of Q4 was called by the K8 of Smith. An 8 on the flop sealed Ivey’s fate, as he went on to bust in 3rd place, walking away with $363,650.

With the massive blinds swelling over their heads,  Smith was all-in and behind on the turn, after Kranich’s K10 peeled a K to take the lead over his JJ. The river flopped a blank and Kranich sealed himself the $875, 150 victory. For his improvement from last year’s third to this year’s second, Smith added $594,755 to his bankroll.

If Ivey doubters even exist, they should note that of his 12 WPT Championship cashes, he has final tabled eight of the events:

• 1st – WPT Bellagio Cup IV – WPT Season 9 = $363,350
• 34th - WPT World Championship – Season 7 = $40,855
• 21st – Foxwoods World Poker Finals – Season 7 = $27,135
• 10th – World Poker Challenge – Season 6 = $46,832
• 1st – LA Poker Classic – WPT Event Season 6 = $1,596,100
• 5th – Mirage Poker Showdown – WPT Event Season 6 = $129,684
• 6th – Five-Star World Poker Classic – WPT Championship Season 3 = $264,195
• 3rd – World Poker Challenge – WPT Season 3 = $163,908
• 6th – Borgata Poker Open – WPT Season 3 = $105,700
• 3rd – Five-Star World Poker Classic – WPT Championship Season 1 = $253,313
• 2nd – Jack Binion World Poker Open – WPT Season 1 = $291,030

The words “nothing short of an amazing accomplishment” and “Phil Ivey” find themselves in the same sentence more often than “of” and “the”; it’s feats like these that establish why. He is poker’s Michael Jordan or Mike Tyson, and it’s enthralling to sit back and watch somebody soar above the competition and knockout the rest that stand in his way.

Mortensen earned his first WPT title at the Doyle Brunson North American Poker Championship in 2004, walking away with a cool $1,000,000. His second win was the Season Five Championship event in 2007 and its monstrous $3,970,415 first place purse, making him the only player to have won both the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event and WPT Championship.

Mortensen first gained notoriety when he won the WSOP Main Event back in 2001. Since then, he has 18 WSOP and 15 WPT cashes to his credit, as well as a second WSOP bracelet in limit hold’em from 2003. To date, his tourney winnings surpass $9,132,442, putting him at 11^th overall amongst poker’s top money winners. His competition:

1. Phil Ivey – $12,799,787
2. Daniel Negreanu – $12,502,375
3. Jamie Gold – $12,218,754
4. Peter Eastgate – $11,308,359
5. Joe Hachem – $10,670,474
6. Scotty Nguyen – $10,592,845
7. Allen Cunningham – $9,923,700
8. Erik Seidel –$9,593,024
9. John Juanda – $9,579,464
10. T.J. Cloutier – $9,413,236

Amidst all of his accomplishments, it is also interesting to note Mortensen’s ability to make his deep WPT runs count, with four WPT final table appearances bringing him three victories. I guess that’s pretty good…

The one thing that has eluded Hellmuth throughout his poker career is a WPT title. With three final table appearances to his credit, he has always managed to fall short of the trophy, finishing fourth in the Gold Rush event for $34,000, third at Foxwoods for $281,000, and sixth at the L.A. Poker Classic for $229,000.

Hasan Habib joins Hellmuth on his quest for a WPT title and is fourth in chips. Much like Hellmuth, Habib is no stranger to running deep in the WPT circuit, previously finishing second, third, and seventh at circuit events for over $2 million in earnings.

Joining them are Matt Keikoan (World Series of Poker bracelet winner), Mclean Karr (who battled his way back from 10 big blinds), Dan O’Brien (guy with Irish last name), and internet pro Andy “BKiCe” Seth, who sits atop a decent chip lead. O’Brien finished 11th a year ago in this very tournament, a potential story of vindication which has Disney inspirational movie plot written all over it.

A rant regarding the poor play of Europeans, how the aggressiveness of internet players is bad for the game, or “if it wasn’t for bad luck, I’d win every one” from Hellmuth has yet to be heard. With blinds at $8,000/$16,000 and a $2,000 ante, there is plenty of room for play, one of which will hopefully knock Hellmuth’s ego out of orbit so it comes crashing back down to a felted reality like a shooting star.

Here are the payouts and current chip stacks:

First place: $878,500
Second place: $521,200
Third place: $292,800
Fourth place: $234,300
Fifth place: $175,700
Sixth place: $117,000

(1) Andy Seth – $2.1 million
(2) Phil Hellmuth – $1.4 million
(3) Dan O’Brien – $1.1 million
(4) McLean Karr – $1.1 million
(5) Hasan Habib – $455,000
(6) Matt Keikoan – $371,000