After two tournaments that were quite popular with the tournament professionals, the World Poker Tour rolled the dice with their end-of-season event. The Monster WPT Tournament of Champions – the replacement for the WPT World Championship – started on Friday and, from first look, the change was not as successful as WPT officials might have hoped.
The Tournament of Champions was going to be a bold experiment anyway. Only the players who won a WPT tournament on the Main Tour during its existence – 226 men in all (no woman has ever won a WPT open event) – would be eligible to participate in the tournament. The 20 players who won a tournament during the Season XIV schedule earned a seat as a part of their prize for winning their respective tournament, while the other WPT Champions’ Club members who chose to participate would have to pony up $15,000 to enter the tournament. While it wasn’t a question of the Season XIV winners coming to the game, it was a question how many past champions would buy into the change.
Late registration for the tournament stretched through the second level of play for the day but, from the start, it was a bit obvious that numbers-wise the WPT Tournament of Champions wasn’t going to be highly successful. 59 players were in their seats when the “shuffle up and deal” call was made and, by the time the late registration period ended, only five more players would show up. If there is an upside to having only a 64-player field, it is that there were several quality players throughout the tournament room at the Seminole Hard Rock.
Another innovation that many wanted to see play out was the “Action Clock” that was being used by the players in the Tournament of Champions. All players were given 30 seconds to make their decisions – whether pre-flop or any of the other action streets (flop, turn, river) – with the dealers in charge of running the clock on the players through a display board that all players could see. If a player had a difficult decision to make, they were allotted four “time chips” that would give them an additional 30 seconds to dwell on the issue. Players would get four of those “time chips” per day and they could not roll them over from one day to the next.
The ”Action Clock” was generally well received by the players, except for one feature that was built into the device. The “Action Clock” had a warning tone with ten seconds to go that some players found to be distracting. On many tables, it was decided to shut the warning tone off, but some players decided to leave the tone on as a secondary device to let them know when the clock was counting down.
Commentary over Twitter from the players was especially positive. “These shot clocks are absolutely amazing,” David Paredes commented to his followers over Twitter. “I wish we could have them every WPT event.” (It could happen…) Tyler Patterson also chimed in on Twitter, “Love these clocks. I’m not sure how it affects the action yet, but the mechanics for the dealers looks really easy, big numbers good sound.”
For the record, the first player to actually test out the “Action Clock” and use an extension was former World Champion Joe Hachem, who tossed out a time chip to make a call but would fold on a later street. It seems the first to use the time chip for his benefit was Marvin Rettenmaier, who was able to win a pot off of Farid Yachou after using the extension. Once again, for the history books, the first player eliminated from the WPT Tournament of Champions was Brian Altman, whose Q-J off suit fell to Shawn Cunix’s A-J after an unnecessary Ace hit the flop.
Yachou didn’t let his run-in with Rettenmaier slow him down any. He would storm through the remainder of the day, eliminating Rettenmaier late in the evening when his pocket Kings stood over Rettenmaier’s pocket Jacks, in building up a 216,700 chip stack. The reigning WPT Amsterdam champion is still a distance from actually winning the championship, however.
1. Farid Yachou, 216,700
2. Michael Mizrachi, 210,100
3. Justin Young, 196,600
4. Ravi Raghavan, 188,300
5. Noah Schwartz, 170,200
6. Tyler Patterson, 155,600
7. Jonathan Jaffe, 154,100
8. John Hennigan, 150,300
Normally we would give a Top Ten, but only eight players will take a payday from this tournament. The minimum payday is $38,160 for the eighth place finisher, while the eventual champion will take down $381,600 and a huge prize package from the WPT and Monster Headphones.
Play will resume for the Monster WPT Tournament of Champions at noon (Eastern Time), with the plan to get to the six-handed WPT final table. The champion will be determined on Sunday, which will also close the WPT’s Season XIV schedule.
