On today’s Daily Deal, the voting is over for the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions and the top twenty have been set. Also, the North American Poker Tour announces a new stop, ESPN reports on side bets at the WSOP, and PND congratulates JD McNamara on his outstanding finish in Event twenty four.
Hello, I’m Sean Gibson and welcome to the Daily Deal by Poker News Daily.
The field for the 2010 World Series of Tournament of Champions is set. Over 350,000 fan votes were submitted for the ultimate who’s who of poker popularity. Not surprisingly, Phil Ivey came on top of the list, closely followed by PokerStars front man Daniel Negreanu. Third place went to living legend Doyle Brunson. Anyone would be happy to enter this list, but UB.com pro and poker bad boy Phil Hellmuth is probably not satisfied with being in fourth place – after all, he owns a record eleven bracelets, as many as Ivey and Negreanu combined. Two Full Tilt Poker pros landed in fifth and sixth place: Chris “Jesus” Ferguson earned about a thousand more votes than the silent assassin Allen Cunningham. The tournament kicks off in ten days from the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino with twenty-seven players: the top twenty vote-getters, the five pre-qualified champions, and two sponsor exemption seats.
The PokerStars North American Poker Tour has added a new stop to its Season One schedule, heading to the Bicycle Casino in sunny Bell Gardens, California which is in Los Angeles county. Many top players from the PokerStars stable are expected to take part in the November tournament, including Daniel Negreanu, Vanessa Rousso, and Barry Greenstein. Negreanu praised the choice of location, saying,
“I’ve played at The Bike in the past and there is a strong local presence in Los Angeles. It’s always really important for a tournament’s success to have a strong core of local players as it gives even more incentive to travel to the events when you know there will be big money on the line.”
NAPT Los Angeles is scheduled to run from November twelfth to November seventeenth, with a buy-in of $5,000.
This week on the ESPN.com poker news show “The Inside Deal,” poker columnist Gary Wise talked about this year’s most notorious bracelet prop bets. Tom Dwan’s appearance at the final table of Event eleven caused a huge uproar in the poker world, since he has big money riding on his winning a bracelet this year. Wise told “Inside Deal” viewers,
“Tom Dwan has become the focus of the World Series. He stands to win somewhere between nine and twelve million dollars if he wins all of his prop bets, which are mostly based on winning a bracelet this year, winning two bracelets over the next three years, and making more cashes than whoever he bet against.”
Last, but certainly not least, we wish to congratulate PND reporter JD McNamara, who ended up in second place at Event twenty four. That said, JD, we expect to see you in the office on Monday at eight am sharp!
That does it for today’s Daily Deal, we’ll see you back here at Poker News Daily dot com tomorrow for a new episode of this show as well as the latest in poker news. I’ll see you then!