Monday, August 24, 2009 - Annie Duke
I headed off on Wednesday of last week to go to Adventures of the Mind, an amazing mentoring summit. The program brings together 150 of the smartest high school students in the country with mentors who have gotten to the top of their respective fields. The summit was held at The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. I found myself in a room with 9 Nobel prize winners, the founder of Twitter, the head of Mozilla and John Nash (just to name a few of the mentors). I was honored to be in the same room with such great minds including 9 Nobel Prize Winners. Even cooler for me was that IAS was the place where John von Neumann was a professor. I speak of von Neumann several times a year in my poker seminars as he was the father of Game Theory. Any poker player should revere von Neumann and I got to walk the very paths that von Neumann walked. Oh, and Einstein walked those same paths too. He was appointed to the IAS in 1933 at a salary of $15,000 a year which was a buttload of money back then. Freaking amazing experience for me.
Anyway, getting to Adventures of the Mind was pretty harrowing (as was getting home). I planned to take an 11:30 pm flight on Continental out of LAX. I got there and the flight was delayed an hour which turned into 2 hours because flights before mine were already stacked up late. When we finally got on the plane it was already 1:30 in the morning and I was exhausted so as we starting taxiing to the runway I fell asleep. Pretty quickly I was woken up by an announcement that we were taxiing to the gate. At first I thought that I had gone out hard and clearly slept through the whole flight. To my dismay, though, I realized we hadn’t even taken off yet when the rest of the announcement said we had to go back to remove a woman from the plane. That would be a DRUNK woman from the plane who had gotten up and walked to the bathroom during takeoff to throw up! I am not kidding here.
So I was up front in business class so I got to eavesdrop on everything that was going on. We got back to the gate and the maintenance people had already gone home so we had to sit there for a over 15 minutes while they found a maintenance person to open the door of the plane. The whole time this drunk lady and her friend were complaining about how they didn’t understand why they had to be removed from the plane. Didn’t the flight attendant think they had already been embarrassed enough? The answer to that was, “No!” No one told them that they could get up and walk around the plane during taxi and takeoff! Okay…aside from the fact that the flight attendants made their normal safety announcements as we were leaving the gate and I would have to ask, “What the hell planet do you women live on? Everyone knows you can’t get out of your seat during taxi and take off.” Oh, and the final complaint of these women was, “Don’t you know you are ruining our weekend?” The answer to that was, “It’s Wednesday.” I thought that was pretty funny. My own personal answer was that they were doing a pretty good job of ruining my day.
So they finally remove these women from the plane. As a side note the one who threw up claimed to have only had two glasses of wine. I’ll take the over on that one. Anyway, they find the maintenance people who now have to clean the bathroom this woman has thrown up in. Apparently, she didn’t throw up in the toilet but in the sick. Now I am sure everyone has seen a plane’s bathroom sink and it is tiny so the whole thing was clogged with some nasty, chunky throw up. I felt pretty bad for the maintenance worker with that one. It took her about 15 minutes to clean that gross puke up. Ew!
Okay, so finally around 2 am we head toward the runway again and I arrive in Princeton almost three hours late. Thanks drunk lady! You made my day!
So I spent the next two days at The Institute for Advanced Study. I listened to some amazing spoken word artists, heard the story of how Captchas, those distorted words you have to type on the internet to prove you are a human, are now being used to digitize books. Check out http://www.recaptcha.net to find out about that. And Luis von Ahn who is the brains behind that operation (and an amazing speaker I might add). I got to hear from the president of Rhode Island School of Design, here the founder of Pixar speak and also hear from the inventor of the Ultima series of games. And that was just a sampling of the great minds I had access too. It was incredible to see these high school students enrapt by the speakers. Knowing that I was a part of an experience that will stay with these high school students their whole lives and have such a deep impact on them (it definitely had a deep impact on me).
My talk to the students was about how I found my way into poker which was really just a message about understanding that just because you are really good at something does not mean that it is what you are meant to be doing because no matter how good you are if it doesn’t light you up inside it is not the path you are meant to take, no matter how many mentors have invested time in that path or the obligations you feel towards them. In my case, I was very good at the academic path I had chosen as a young woman. I had gone to an Ivy League college, and Ivy League grad school. I had secured a very prestigious National Science Foundation Fellowship to go to grad school. My mentors and advisors had put a tremendous amount of time and effort into me and my education. And, frankly, I was a very good scientist.
But when it came down to it the only thing that was keeping down that path was a fear of failing my mentors and my parents. Had I not had the guts to leave I would never have gone down the poker path, a path that I have true passion for. A path that lights me up inside. And had I not had the guts to leave, I might never have founded Ante Up for Africa, or found my way to the board of Decision Education Foundation. I might never had the platform to accomplish the humanitarian efforts that have already been so important to me. So it all came together in the right way for me because I realized that, in the end, the only way you fail your mentors is by failing to fulfill your potential by finding the thing that makes you happiest.
So that was my message to the students. I mean it wasn’t like I could talk about my Nobel Prize winning research like some of the other speakers! I left on Friday, thinking I was going to play The Bike tournament. And my flight was delayed 4 hours. I have been having horrible luck with travel lately. By the time I finally got home to LA I didn’t get to sleep until almost 6 am so I was too exhausted to even play The Bike. I wish I had known because I certainly would have stayed an extra day at the summit. All around, the return flight being delayed really screwed my. But hey, at least there wasn’t a drunk lady on that flight. Way to go Continental!
Tags: Adventures of the Mind, Ante Up For Africa, Einstein, Game Theory, Institute of Advanced Study, John von Neumann, Mozilla, Nobel Prize, Pixar, Princeton, Twitter
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Thursday, August 20, 2009 - Annie Duke
This week is a sad one for me. Ken Bacon, President of Refugees International, passed away this week. Ken was an extraordinary individual with an amazing passion for finding lasting solutions to the refugee problem around the world. He was a Wall Street Journal reporter who became chief Pentagon spokesman under Clinton. He joined RI in 2001.
I met Ken Bacon in October, during the filming of The Celebrity Apprentice. Because Ante Up for Africa was in the process of becoming a 501c3 while the Apprentice was filming, I couldn’t play directly for my own charity. So I played for RI which is aligned in its mission with the mission of AUFA. At my first meeting with Ken I presented him with a $245K check from winning a task on Celebrity Apprentice and to say his reaction was reserved would be a drastic understatement. I was a little taken aback until I figured out the he was just an incredible sincere individual. We ended up chatting for a very long time about the issues in Sudan and Darfur and I could see the passion and real commitment to the issue that this man had.
I saw Ken a few times after that, once at the filming of the final task of the Apprentice where without Ken’s help I don’t think I could have pulled the auction off. The last time I saw him was for the 30th Anniversary Gala of Refugees International where I presented that $245K check again to a much greater reaction.
Ken brought a passion to the cause that I hope to emulate. We should all be so lucky to have someone like Ken Bacon fighting for us and the things we believe in. I am truly lucky to have known him, if even for such a brief time. I am certainly a better person for the time I got with him.
Tags: Ante Up For Africa, Celebrity Apprentice, Clinton, Ken Bacon, refugees international
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Monday, August 10, 2009 - Annie Duke
So I have been back from DC now for a week and really feeling settled in for the first time since the WSOP ended. I left for Vegas at the end of May and came back mid July. That is a long time away from home and I really wanted to just settled back in to my routine in LA. But I turned around less than a week later to head to DC to lobby for the Poker Players Alliance (www.joinpps.org) and for Refugees International and Enough Project (www.refugeesinernational.org www.enoughproject.org) . That all went great with movement on both fronts. I am happy to say that Senator Menendez dropped his bill to legalize peer to peer games this week. You can read all about the bill at http://theppa.org/special/s1597/ This kind of movement on the legislative front is huge and is what the PPA has been working towards for the past three years. On the House of Representatives side of things, the frontier is looking rosy as well with Rep. Frank introducing H.R. 2166. http://theppa.org/special/dc/ which calls for the licensing and regulation of the online gaming industry which would bring us in line with hour The UK and 25 other countries handle online gaming. These pieces of legislation both have bipartisan support which shows that this is an issue that crosses party lines because across the board from the standpoint of consumer protection, civil liberties, protection of minors, world trade, etc. UIGEA is just bad government policy and members of both parties are recognizing that. It is really gratifying to see the work that many of us have done taking frequent trips to Capitol Hill to talk to lawmakers coming to fruition. And the support of the over 1 million people who have joined the PPA is responsible for those efforts and the powerful voice that poker players have in our nation’s capital. We should all be patting ourselves on the back for taking action.
On the Sudan front, the people we met with were very receptive to reexamining the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between North and South Sudan. It was a very educational day for me listening to Omer Ismail and Melanie Tiff talk about the issues. I am very familiar with how to lobby the poker issue. Watching these passionate individuals talk the Sudan issue was incredible and really reaffirmed my passion for the issue.
After I was done lobbying, my family and I spent the rest of the vacation doing the monuments and Smithsonians. The Holocaust Museum is a must for anyone going to DC. Obviously, it is so moving to see the artifacts and stories from Nazi Germany but they also have a section in there on Sudan and I was able to bring my children through there and touch them about the work that Ante Up for Africa does in a way that just talking to them about it could never do. They have an amazing interactive section of the museum where the kids could read personal stories from people affected by the conflict there. And the fact that it was related to the holocaust really helped bring it home for them. They saw the idea that when we say, “Never again” that we really need to live that because if we let our guards down then “never again” means nothing as it will happen again and again as it has throughout human history.
Anyway, the whole experience was really moving. But we are all happy to be home. And I am ecstatic to be sleeping in my own bed every night, doing Bikram everyday and cooking dinner for my kids in my own kitchen again.
Tags: Annie Duke, Ante Up For Africa, Enough Project, Gaming Regulations, poker players alliance, refugees international, Vegas, WSOP
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Monday, July 20, 2009 - P0ker H0
Coming home and getting back to the grind after spending five weeks in Las Vegas isn’t as easy as it sounds. With the Ante Up for Africa and the UB parties, poker every day, and the whole Las Vegas experience, coming back to little hometown Madison, Wisconsin, is like getting back to Earth after walking on the moon for the first time!
I started the grind last Wednesday night and found that the Wednesday schedule is the best by far. The UB 1K, the UB 200/80K guarantee, the $100 Aruba Rebuy, and the 20K Deepstack all start within a couple of hours of each other. And UB runs satellites into all of them, all day long. I made the final table of the 20K guarantee, taking 4th for around $1900. In the 80K, I got heads up and used the UB deal maker feature, which I really like, and the other player and I chopped for about $17K each. It was a really great way to get back to the grind.
What I’m really excited about now is Aruba! Aruba! Aruba! Every poker player should be looking forward to it, too! It’s the one poker trip that is on my mind year-round. This year will be #8 or 9, too many to remember. But what I do remember is all the people that I’ve met there. All the UB pros, all the online people I play with on a daily basis, and the wonderful people from behind the scenes at UltimateBet that grind it out every day from the UB offices down in Costa Rica and up in Canada that make it possible for us to play, work, and live the dream of online poker. Besides the friends I have made, there are the great times in Aruba too, such as golfing with Phil, the deep-sea fishing, the UB welcome and closing parties, helping PokerJo find her shoes, the endless beaches and romantic sunsets (Okay, I threw that in there for my wife!), the booze cruises, the infamous party at Phil’s rooftop suite, and the fact that I’ve choked 2 final tables…. all bring back great memories.
UltimateBet is giving us lots of opportunities to play to win a seat at the 2009 Aruba Classic. My favorite way is the Steps. These are like eating potato chips. I play them by the handful! You can catch me playing Steps 1-10 at any time of the day. Playing tight and right is very important in these. The $100 Rebuy on Wednesdays is another great way to win. I love the $500 Sunday night tournament because that usually pays between 4-6 seats. I like a tournament that you don’t have to win to get the seat. Believe me, I’ve won a few of them this way! Now, let me give you the cherry on the Aruba tourney sundae! Come to Aruba for free or as little as $5. Listen to my radio show Sunday nights, 9PM EST, “The Ultimate Poker Show”, on Roundersradio.com. We are running two tournaments every Sunday night: a free roll with $50 added by UB and the winner gets to advance to a tournament where we are giving away a free Aruba package, and a $5 tournament with a $100 added and all nine players that make the final table will also be added into the Aruba package giveaway at the end of 10 weeks. If you can’t listen Sunday nights, and you want more “Poker H0″, you can listen to me and Wiscomurray on our local radio talk show, “Man Up with Mark and Mike”, where you can get the passwords for these tournaments and listen to us talk trash and poker every Saturday afternoon at 3 PM EST, http://manupwithmarkandmike.com/ .
Good luck at the tables! Hope to see you in Aruba…..H0
Tags: Ante Up For Africa, Aruba, aruba classic, Canada, Costa Rica, las vegas, Phil Hellmuth, Poker Poker Poker, poker tournaments, PokerJo, The Ultimate Poker Show, ub
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Monday, July 13, 2009 - smokin_aces
Please help us reach our Twitter goal!
Just over 48 hours left until the Twitter Up For Africa freeroll. You can read all the details here.
We set an ambitious goal of trying to get 2000 new Twitter followers during the lead up to this tournament. If we hit that goal, we’ll give $1 for each new follower to the Twitter Up For Africa pot. From there, $1000 would go to Annie Duke’s amazing charity Ante Up For Africa, and $1000 would go towards the payout structure for the freeroll.
This morning we officially got our 1000th new follower during the timeframe of this event which is absolutely amazing. There are a lot you out there who can share credit for this feat, and we all thank you.
Our challenge now is to come together in one final push towards glory. Please take a second to email blast your friends, retweet us on Twitter, text your contacts and anything else you can do to help us reach this goal and give to charity and the freeroll.
We need your help and so do the people of Darfur!
The password for the Twitter Up For Africa tournament is tufa3500. Get your friends to follow @ultimate_bet on Twitter, and come play in this amazing freeroll!
GL
Aces
Tags: Annie Duke, Ante Up For Africa, freerolls, Twitter Freerolls, Twitter Up For Africa
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Friday, July 3, 2009 - P0ker J0
Wow – well it has been FAR too long since I have posted. I have been gearing up for the WSOP but also managed to take a week off with NO access to technology. I headed down to the Dominican Republic and enjoyed a merlot or 10 on the beach! I actually left my Blackberry in the safe in the room and just kicked back – not a care in the world.
But now I’m bing bang back to reality. The WSOP is in full force and two of my newest pros are kicking some serious ass!! Check out Matt Graham and Brandon Cantu – two new pros – two new bracelets. I’m just so proud (shed a tear here). So all eyes will be on Mr. Hellmuth this year as he makes his big arrival on July 5th. If you are in the area on the 5th, he will be making the entrances of all entrances. It just seems that each year gets bigger and better. Aren’t I the lucky one that gets to help the Poker Brat get dressed every year. Some chicks would just kill for my job 
UB is sponsoring some kick ass celebrities into the Ante Up for Africa event on July 2nd. You can expect to see the never boring Charles Barkley sporting the UB brand – as well as Herschel Walker (from Celebrity Apprentice), Dean Cain (Yes – Superman!!) among others. It should be a great event for a great cause!! I only wish I was able to land the great Jon Bon Jovi!
Well it seems the WSOP is all consuming. I cannot wait to hit sin city and meet some folks that I have only chatted with on the phone, and hook up with old friends that I haven’t seen in a while. Let there be fun, let there be laughter, let there be merlot but most of all – let there be copious amounts of hairspray!!
P0ker J0 out! Next BLOG comes to you from Sin City!!
xoxo
Tags: Ante Up For Africa, AUFA, Brandon Cantu, Charles Barkley, Matt Graham, Phil Hellmuth, WSOP
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Thursday, July 2, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
Today is perhaps the most glamorous day of the World Series of Poker, as celebrities from the entertainment, sports and poker worlds come together for the Ante Up for Africa charity tournament. A total of 138 players bought into the $5,000 event, and as always it’s hoped that the players will voluntarily donate some of their prize winnings (most donate all) to the Ante Up for Africa charity.
This is the third year that the Ante Up for Africa charity (created by UltimateBet’s Annie Duke, actor/director Don Cheadle, and Norman Epstein) has held this event at the World Series of Poker, and it seems like every year it brings even more famous faces to the Rio–and more people who gather at the rail to see those famous faces, take pictures, and ask for autographs.
But as I said last year during last year’s Ante Up for Africa event, it’s fine to focus on the glamorous celebrities and the excitement of the tournament today, so long as you remember why this event came together tomorrow. I said that this is the third year that the Ante Up for Africa event has been held at the WSOP, and that means that the humanitarian disaster in Darfur is still going on three years on. In fact the situation suffering from the war and genocide there is more dire than ever before.
In the January 5, 2009 edition of the New Yorker Jonathan Hart wrote about aid workers from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees who are trying to help a quarter of a million Sudanese living in refugee camps just across the border from the Darfur region. If you’re interested enough in the poker tournament and the celebrities playing in it to read this post, then I hope you also read Hart’s article and understand why so many people support this cause. And if my words don’t move you to learn more about the catastrophe in Darfur, then perhaps these photographs taken by Christoph Bangert at the refugee camps will:
You don’t have to become an aid worker to help the people suffering in Darfur–each and every one of us can provide in some small way that can add up to big changes. Make a donation. Write to your elected officials to make sure they don’t let Darfur fall off the world stage. And keep yourself educated about what’s happening in that part of the world. The Ante Up for Africa tournament comes one day a year, but the charity operates 365/24/7. And that’s how often their aid is needed.
Tags: 2009 wsop, Annie Duke, Ante Up For Africa, ante up for africa tournament, charity poker tournament, don cheadle, world series of poker, WSOP, wsop ante up for africa, wsop charity tournament
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Thursday, June 25, 2009 - smokin_aces
A Freeroll With A Higher Purpose
As poker players and fans of competition in general, we like to make things fun. In response to the overwhelming and continued support of the Ultimate Bet community and beyond, we’re launching our most exciting Twitter event yet. It’s not just any Freeroll tournament. This one has what you might call, a higher purpose. 
Remember the Follow Friday Freeroll? Fun right? Well this next one makes that look like 3 Card Monty.
The next Ultimate Bet Twitter Freeroll is happening right here on Wednesday July 15 2009. To make the payout extra sweet we’re asking for your help. We NEED to reach 3500 Twitter followers by the time this Twitter Freeroll happens. We’re currently at 1500, so we need your help to get 2000 new followers.
For each new Twitter follower we get between now and then, we’ll add $1 to the pot. If we hit the goal of 3500 Twitter followers by July 15, you will have helped us increase the total pot to $2000. To make us all feel extra special, we’re going to donate $1000 of the cash to our good friend Annie Duke’s charity Ante Up For Africa. The other $1000 will be used to create the payout structure for the tournament. If we hit that goal, the Freeroll payout structure will reward EVERYONE who finishes from 1st to 74th. WHAT? 74TH! That’s right, it’s getting crazy.
Potential Twitter Up For Africa Payout Structure (It’s ‘potential’ because we need to hit 3500 followers for this to pay out)
- 1st Place - Seat at the $200K Guaranteed ($215 Value)
- 2nd Place – Seat at the $200K Guaranteed ($215 Value)
- 3rd Place – Seat at the Sniper 30K ($130 Value)
- 4th Place – Seat at the $15K Guaranteed ($55 Value)
- 5th to 38th Place – Seat at the Saturday $7K Guaranteed ($5.50 Value)
- 39th to 74th Place – Seat at the Sunday $7K Guaranteed ($5.50 Value)
But remember, this is a contest that has us all working together to increase our Twitter followers to 3500 by July 15, the date of the Twitter Up For Africa tournament. When we hit that target WE ALL WIN, and so does one of the world’s finest charitable organizations. So help us out and we can ALL win TOGETHER, while literally helping to make the world a better place.
There will be many more updates to follow, but for now, spread the word on your blogs, Twitter pages, Facebooks, Myspaces, text and email your friends, forward this blog post and help us connect with more amazing people like you.
Here’s the link to this post:
http://blog.ultimatebet.com/2009/06/twitter-up-for-africa
Here’s the link to the Ultimate Bet twitter page:
http://www.twitter.com/ultimate_bet
If you don’t yet use Twitter, this is the reason you’ve been waiting for to join the UB Twitter party! It’s so easy to get an account! Just sign up and then ‘follow’ @ultimate_bet
The countdown begins NOW. Oh and look, we’re at 1516 followers at last check. That’s already $16 in the pot!!
But remember, we need to hit that target for all this good stuff to happen.
So Let’s TWITTER UP FOR AFRICA!
The code for this tournamant is tufa3500
GL!
Tags: Ante Up For Africa, freeroll, Twitter, Twitter Up For Africa, ultimate_bet
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Monday, April 27, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
There are 30 days until the start of the 2009 World Series of Poker–this I learned from the Twitter feed of WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack. Yes, even the Commish is Twittering now, God help us all. A month until the Series starts, and then a 50-day marathon of bracelets and bad beats and Benjamins until the next November Nine is set. And for the third consecutive year I’ll be there providing gavel-to-gavel coverage for the ‘ol UltimateBet Blog.
Every year the WSOP seems to be better organized and better run–last year there were so few complaints that people were writing stories about how strange it was that no one was complaining. Lots of people expected the number of players to decrease, but instead there was a substantial upticks. There was an uproar when Harrah’s announced they would delay the final table for four months, but TV ratings for the November Nine were up around 50%.
And people are talking about the changes to this year’s World Series. No more rebuy events–the insane shove-fests that characterized the rebuy periods were deemed unfair to players who didn’t bring a bandolier of rebuys (and who perhaps found themselves at a table with half the chips as other tables). The opening event is a $40,000 Hold-Em tournament to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the World Series–how might that deplete players’ bankrolls just as the WSOP begins? And the rules about verbal abuse have been dramatically tightened–forget the “F-bomb” rule, just about any nastiness directed at another play could result in a penalty.
There’s also been a change in the TV scheduling. Only four events will be televised by ESPN–the Main Event; aforementioned $40K Hold-Em tournament; the Ante Up for Africa event, and a special invitational event for past Main Event champions. None of the other bracelet events will be televised and there is going to be even more Main Event coverage than before.
This year’s WSOP will be held in a world that’s in a serious state of flux. The current economic crisis is the worst the world has seen since the Great Depression, who knows how that might affect attendance. There’s also the potential for great change in the poker world as well, as Rep. Barney Frank is planning on introducing legislation that would legalize online poker (and perhaps online gaming in genera) in the United States. A repeal of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) could trigger a new poker boom, one that might first make itself known at this year’s Series.
But all that will happen outside the confines of the Amazon Room. Inside, the game will go on as it always has and always will. Even if there are fewer players this year the World Series of Poker is still an event of staggering size. In 2008 a total of 58,720 players competed for prize pools that totaled a jaw-dropping $180,774,427. Peter Eastgate won more money as the Main Event champion than Tiger Woods (U.S Open), Roger Federer (U.S. Open), Ryan Newman (Daytona 500) and Scott Dixon (Indy 500) won, combined, for capturing their sports’ premiere events.
If you play poker and you’ve never visited the World Series of Poker, you really should make a pilgrimage to see it for yourself. Because once you see it, you’ll want to find a way to play in it. It is a sight to behold, and even if you spend 50 consecutive days and nights in the belly of the beast it’s still an awesome spectacle. And it’s just 30 days away.
Tags: 2009 november nine, 2009 world series of poker, 2009 wsop, amazon room, Ante Up For Africa, november nine, Poker Poker Poker, poker tournaments, world series of poker, world series of poker main event, WSOP, wsop main events
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Monday, January 26, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
We may be five months away from the start of the 2009 World Series of Poker but it’s never too soon to start making your plan for the biggest event in the game. Harrah’s has released this year’s schedule and there are a number of significant changes that will no doubt spark some discussion.
Well, one thing that wasn’t changed is delaying the final table until November. The Main Event begins on July 3rd and runs until the 15th, at which point the nine remaining players will scatter around the globe before reconvening at the Rio on November 7th. The bracelet will be awarded on November 10th, so it looks like there will be a day off for the final two players before they begin the heads-up battle.
But while the November Nine returns for 2009, rebuy events will not. There had been talk that the rebuy events might disappear because many people felt that it gave deep-pocketed players a chance to “buy” a bracelet. I can’t say that I agree with that philosophy–once the rebuy period ends you still have to figure out a way to get all the chips. Plus the rebuy events usually featured extremely tough fields some kray-zee gambling that was loads of fun to write about. But the rebuy events are gone, replaced by several new tournaments that will be of considerable interest to poker players and fans alike.
And there’s a big one right off the bat–the first open-field event of the 2009 WSOP (on May 28th) will be a $40,000 No-Limit Hold-Em event, and that’s not typo–the buy-in is $40K. That number was picked to celebrate this being the 40th anniversary of the World Series of Poker and no doubt that event will draw a small and elite crowd. For those of us unable to easily scrounge up forty big dimes, especially in these tough economic times, Harrah’s is offering a $1,000 “Stimulus Special” tournament beginning on May 30th. Harrah’s is hoping that this will be the biggest non-Main Event field in history and is expecting a total prize pool of near $5 million.
There are ten $10,000 “World Championship” events this year (including the Main Event) in various forms of poker, as well as the $50K H.O.R.S.E tournament. There are also seven $1,500 tournaments for those of us who want to play in the WSOP but aren’t quite ready to play a $10K event. In all there will be 57 tournaments at the 2009 World Series of Poker–and that doesn’t even include the celebrity-laden Ante Up for Africa tournament that Annie Duke and Don Cheadle will once again host the day before the Main Event starts.
So that’s five months to peruse the schedule, make your travel plans, and build up your bankroll. And believe me, those five months will fly by faster than you can imagine. Plan ahead, and don’t be standing on the rail when the Amazon Room once again becomes the center of the poker Universe.
Tags: $40, 2009 november nine, 2009 world series of poker, 2009 world series of poker schedule, 2009 wsop, 2009 wsop schedule, Ante Up For Africa, harrah's, harrah's schedule, november nine, ub, ub world series of poker, ub wsop, ultimatebet, ultimatebet world series of poker, ultimatebet wsop, world series of poker, WSOP
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