The Bubble
Saturday, July 11, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
We’ve played 14 levels so far at the Main Event–that’s 28 hours of poker. Twenty-eight hours sitting in that chair, playing hand after hand, disaster always one card away. The 789 players returning to the Amazon Room today have watched as thousands of other hopefuls saw those hopes betrayed, crushed, destroyed. And then watched as their precious chips were dragged across the felt to be incorporated into the victor’s much-bigger stack.
All that poker. All that time. All that tension and anxiety and exhilaration. And so far, all that has been for naught.
At least so far as money goes–not one player in the Main Event has made a dime so far. Not Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, who has run away from the field and is the chip leader with 1.3 million. Not Phil Hellmuth, eleven-time bracelet winner and the 1989 winner of this event, who returns today with 485,000 and a chance to post his 74th career WSOP cash…and perhaps be on track for far more. And not Scott Ian, who gritted it out yesterday with a shortstack and wrote today that “I’m gonna fight ‘em til I can’t”.
For some players in the field the Bubble is a psychological barrier that cannot be overcome. You’ll see players folding hands without looking at their cards, terrified that they might look down at two Aces and feel compelled to play a pot. A pot that might cost them their stack and any chance at cashing. And for a lot of the players in the field cashing in the Main Event is almost as great an achievement as winning the Main Event–the latter isn’t a possibilty they’ve honestly contemplated, but to make the money? To go home with money in their pocket and grand tale to tell? That’s worth folding Aces.
And then there are the players who know about this Bubble dynamic, and prey upon those who are terrfied to put a chip in the pot. In 2007 I watched Lee Watkinson (who went on to make the final table) go all-in preflop about ten times in twenty minutes because he had the table covered and no one was willing to gamble for their tournament lives. Watkinson picked up the blinds and antes risk-free–they shouldn’t have bothered dealing the cards, it would’ve saved everyone a bit of trouble.
I should say that at the moment the Amazon Room sounds like an echo chamber–all you hear right now is “All in and call, 64! All in and all, 58! All in and call 74!!” The desperate shortstacks are trying to gather ammunition to make a run for the Bubble, the gamblers are using the Bubble to add pressure to their big bets. But once we get closer and closer to that magic number of 648, the number of players who will cash in the 2009 Main Event, that’s when we’ll see who turtles and who bares their fangs.
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- The Begining of the End The Main Event field has been reduced to 1,035 players,...
- Quality, Not Quantity. Kinda of a different vibe in the Amazon Room today....
- The Quiet Hour The Amazon Room, at 10AM: The room still isn’t completely...
Tags: 2009 world series of poker, 2009 wsop, Phil Hellmuth, Scott Ian, world series of poker, WSOP
July 11th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Pnews and WSOP site down ? just on the bubble….?
July 11th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
They are back now…must be the demand on line.