After more than a four month wait, the men who will make up the 2015 World Series of Poker Championship Event’ s “November Nine” have reconvened on the Rio All Suites Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, in particular the Penn and Teller Theater. Beginning on Sunday and over the course of the next three days, they will battle it out to not only have the right to be called poker next World Champion, but also to pick up the lion’s share of the nearly $24 million ($23,805,956, to be precise) remaining from the $60 million prize pool. It’s been quite some time since we reached this point, however, so let’s take on a quick review of how we got to this day.
First off, here’s how the leaderboard will look when play commences tomorrow night:
1. Joe McKeehen, 63.1 million chips
2. Zvi Stern, 29.8 million
3. Neil Blumenfield, 22 million
4. Pierre Neuville, 21.075 million
5. Max Steinberg, 20.2 million
6. Thomas Cannuli, 12.25 million
7. Josh Beckley, 11.8 million
8. Patrick Chan, 6.225 million
9. Federico Butteroni, 6.2 million
The play-down to the WSOP Championship Event “November Nine” was one of the more exciting events of the 2015 tournament poker year. Thomas Kearney led the way for the final 27 players back in July, but he had plenty of strong players and big names in pursuit of him. With Justin ‘stealthmunk’ Schwartz, Fedor Holz and Blake Bohn drawing some attention, most of the eyes in the Amazon Room were on Poker Hall of Famer Daniel Negreanu as he worked deep into the event.
Negreanu’s run was arguably one of the highlights of the 2015 WSOP Championship Event and he gave his all in trying to make it to the probably the only poker goal that has eluded him. Bohn and Holz wouldn’t be around to watch much of Negreanu’s action, but Schwartz would stick around for quite some time before a particularly painful (for Schwartz) hand occurred.
After he limped in from the hijack, Schwartz saw Alex Turyansky raise the pot out of the cutoff and chip leader McKeehen (more on him in a minute) called off the button. Schwartz made the call and, on a 6-3-2 flop, checked the action to Turyansky, who made it 700K to go. McKeehen made the call and, after a moment’s thought, Schwartz pushed his nearly 10 million chip stack to the center. Turyansky didn’t take the bait but McKeehen immediately made the call to put Schwartz’s tournament life on the line.
It was a particularly painful one for Schwartz. Both players were set mining, Schwartz with pocket threes and McKeehen with pocket sixes, and both had struck gold on the flop. McKeehen would dodge the case three that Schwartz needed to add on to his already massive stack and send an incredulous Schwartz (if you saw the ESPN broadcast, you saw his indignation) out of the tournament in 14th place.
That left the only other “big” story in whether Negreanu would make the “November Nine.” Negreanu fought off the short stack for much of the Day 7 proceedings and was able to take a chunk of chips out of McKeehen late in the day, but it wouldn’t be enough to get ‘Kid Poker’ to the finish line. It was McKeehen again taking down a strong player, this time using a J♦ 3♦ to beat Negreanu’s A-4 off suit on an A-K-10-3-Q board to cruelly crush Negreanu’s dreams of the final table and further empower McKeehen and fortify his chip stack.
McKeehen could do no wrong on that day in July, knocking off players almost at will as his chip stack blew up. After starting with 11.975 million in chips on that Day 7, McKeehen never made a wrong decision as he inflated his stack to more than five times its starting size in taking the chip leader honors for action on Sunday. To give a point of reference, McKeehen has around a third of the chips in play and the bottom five players’ (Steinberg, Cannuli, Beckley, Chan and Butteroni) chip stacks added together STILL don’t equal McKeehen’s massive holdings.
But what will be the result of McKeehen’s work on Sunday and the following two days in determining a champion? In Part 2 of our preview of the 2015 WSOP Championship Event “November Nine,” we’ll take a look at how the table sets up for play on Sunday and what might be the likely outcome.
