The 41st Annual World Series of Poker Main Event coverage kicks off tonight at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. EST on ESPN. Lon McEachern and Norman Chad, poker’s Statler and Waldorf, call the play-by-play as cameras take us through the second largest field in Main Event history: a staggering 7,319 players vying for a first prize of $8,944,138.
The 2010 season is already off to a great start right out of the gates, seeing the year-over-year ratings increase 15% during the season-opening broadcast of the inaugural $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship. A stacked list of players comprised the final table, battling for the $1,559,046 first place prize and Chip Reese Memorial Trophy, headlined by brothers Michael and Robert Mizrachi. The duo marked the third time in WSOP history that two related players made the same final table. The other occureneces were when brother-sister combo Annie Duke and Howard Lederer would place 6th and 9th, respectively, in a 1995 $1,500 pot-limit hold’em event, and when brothers Ross and Barney Boatman placed 7th and 9th in a 2002 $1,500 pot-limit Omaha event.
Playing like the IRS had a gun to his head, Michael Mizrachi was a site to behold this year: out of five cashes, he final tabled four of them, eventually winning week one’s Poker Player’s Championship broadcast and reaching poker’s coveted November Nine. He may have taken home over a million dollars with his Chip Reese trophy, but stands to take home much, much more with a top finish at the final table of the Main Event. He currently sits in 7th place with 14,450,000 in chips.
The week two broadcast aired coverage of the Tournament of Champions (TOC) return to the WSOP. An invitational field of 27 brought out some of the greatest names in the game, vying for the $1,000,000 freeroll prize pool, and saw a table brimming with familiar faces: Howard Lederer, Johnny Chan, Annie Duke, Barry Greenstein, Joe Hachem, Daniel Negreanu, Jennifer Harman, Huck Seed, and T.J. Cloutier. Seeing Cloutier’s less than triumphant return to ESPN cameras looking like a distressed, dilapidated carcass gave me the same feeling I get when watching Layne Staley on Alice and Chains: MTV Unplugged. His gaunt, aged figure was worn like a man who squandered his millions away on his demons, and was a depressing reminder during the first hour of coverage how there is nothing worse in this world than wasted talent.
Insert two hours of poker millionaire banter, an obnoxious Howard Lederer relishing in camera time he hasn’t seen since 2003, stupid retrospective segments, some fantastic plays by Johnny Chan, and a luckbox Huck Seed seemingly hitting every out he needed, and you have yourself an ESPN broadcast. Seed would later emerge the victor after beating Lederer heads-up for the title, taking home $500,000 and the TOC trophy.
What will the Main Event coverage have in store for us tonight outside of all-in moments sponsored by beef jerky and antiperspirants? Tune in and find out.
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