Published: July 16, 2007 10:42 am      

Familiar faces again fade at WSOP

Dr. Bruce VanHorn to appear on ESPN's Tuesday night poker coverage

Sometime Tuesday evening, the 36 players left standing in the 2007 World Series of Poker Main Event after Sunday’s action (today is a day off) will be whittled down to the nine who will make up the final table for the world’s most important poker tournament.

And a quick glance at the list of survivors from the almost 6,000 who started the Main Event 10 days ago has most observers asking what has become an annual question: “Who are these guys?”

The worldwide Texas Hold’Em explosion has turned the World Series of Poker into a free-for-all among thousands of amateurs and hundreds of pros that, because of the sheer numbers, has left almost all of the game’s best-known players at the rail when the stretch run of the Main Event has begun each year since Robert Varkonyi came out of nowhere to claim the 2002 title. But this year might have been the amateurs’ finest hour so far.

Of the 621 players who cashed in the Main Event (621st paid $20,000, or twice the entry fee), virtually all were unknowns. Only two past winners — Huck Seed (1996) and Scotty Nguyen (1998) finished in the top 100, with Seed, who beat Ada’s own Dr. Bruce VanHorn to claim his title 11 years ago, bowing out in 73rd place and Nguyen still alive in 28th place and easily the biggest name in the final 36. Two other past Main Event winners — Varkonyi (who finished 177th) and 1986 winner (and Bethany, OK resident) Berry Johnston (who wound up 113th) cashed in this year’s tournament, and, other than Nguyen, four players in the final 36 — Americans Lee Watkinson, Bill Edler, Allan King and Russian Alex Kravchenko — have previously won gold bracelets at WSOP tournaments.

Nguyen’s chip stack of just under $2 entering this week’s action ranks him well behind the $10.28 million amassed by David Tran, a veteran cash game player who began this year’s main event ranked 721st but got on the kind of final weekend roll that traditionally spells success over the tournament’s final few days. Tran, who has churned out more than $1 million in tournament winnings over the past couple of years but whose biggest previous payday was less than $75,000, leads WSOP newcomer Philip Hilm by just over 300,000 chips entering Tuesday’s action, with Houston’s Ray Henson ($8.25 million) the only other player in the final 36 above $8 million.

After growing by leaps and bounds over the past few years, this year’s World Series was caught in the backwash of the U. S. government’s recent crackdown on online gambling, and, as a result, the number of entrants for the Main Event was down 27 percent from last year, to just over 6,300.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 made it a lot more difficult for online players to move money in and out of gambling sites and ultimately cut down on the number who were able to qualify in online satellite events this year. As a result, more players had to pay the $10,000 entry fee or qualify in person at satellites — tournaments that require a smaller entry fee and have a seat at the Main Event as their top prize.

Despite their lower numbers, however, amateurs continued to flourish this year on poker’s biggest stage.

Of the top 621 finishers as the 2007 Main Event, only Nguyen, Seed, Swedish star Gus Hanson, young gun Julian Gardner (who two years ago became — although briefly — the youngest players in history to win a WSOP gold bracelet) and veteran tournament pro “Downtown” Chad Brown were really household names in the poker community. The internet poker explosion has shortened the game’s learning curve and helped put more and more 20-somethings at final tables in Las Vegas during the 55 tournaments that made up this year’s WSOP. And, with an increasing number of players capable of making a run if the cards fall their way, the odds continue to be against poker’s better known players at the Main Event.

ESPN began its annual marathon coverage of the World Series earlier this month, and taped coverage of the Main Event will begin in early August. If you miss a few installments, don’t worry — highlights of the WSOP’s biggest tournaments will be replayed dozens of times over the next year.

And speaking of Ada’s best known poker player, Dr. VanHorn’s visit to a WSOP final table will be televised for the first time Tuesday night. VanHorn, who cashed twice at this year’s World Series, finished sixth in his first tournament of the year — a $1,500 buy-in limit hold’em event in early June — and will make his first national TV appearance this week. When VanHorn (who has banked almost $300,000 as a part-time tournament player over the past dozen or so years) reached the final table at the 1996 Main Event, WSOP founder Benny Binion and ESPN were feuding, so, for one of the few times over the past two decades, the World Series received no television coverage that year.

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Whoever coined the phrase “What goes around, comes around” might have been a NASCAR fan.

Budweiser announced this week that it won’t be Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s sponsor when NASCAR’s most popular driver makes the leap to Hendrick Motorsports for the 2008 season. At the same time, rumors are circulating that Kyle Busch — who lost his ride with Hendrick when Earnhardt came on board — will be in Earnhardt’s trademark red No. 8 Budweiser car next season.

Busch, who deserved better than he got from Hendrick, will have no trouble finding another sponsor and another car for next year, but landing in what is arguably the most recognizable car in auto racing — the car formerly driven by the man who took his job — would give even more incentive to a young driver who already competes like his hair is on fire.

Although he dropped from eighth to ninth in the Nextel Cup standings with his 13th-place finish at Chicago Sunday, Busch is still comfortably inside the top 12, almost 200 points ahead of 13th-place Ryan Newman. Only the top 12 drivers after 26 races (the Chicago race was the 19th of the season) make “The Chase”, NASCAR’s season-ending playoff format to decide the Nextel Cup champion.

Earnhardt, who raced up front for most of Sunday’s race but lost his power steering with less than 60 laps to go and plummeted from third to an eventual 19th-place finish, is still hanging on to the critical 12th spot in the standings, but his lead over the hard-charging Newman (who has eight top-10 finishes in his last 12 races) was trimmed to just 30 points after Newman finished eighth at Chicago.