Regarding the November Nine, I already gave you Part I, here is Part II:

Jeff Shulman is the second most well known player at the Final Table. 

In 1998, Barry Shulman, his dad, bought Card Player magazine and put in Jeff as the editor.  Card Player used to be the only game in town and as such had nearly exclusive coverage of the WSOP.  After poker’s popularity skyrocketted, other poker magazines hit the hands, notably Bluff.  Bluff inked a deal with Harrah’s to get all sorts of exclusive coverage of the WSOP starting in 2008, and Card Player was sidelined.  Since this happened, Jeff Shulman has written many an article blasting Harrah’s. 

Shortly before getting to the Final Table of this year’s main event, Jeff said that if he won, he’d throw the bracelet in the trash.  Seriously.  He hates Harrah’s that much.  He retracted that later and said he’d probably auction off the bracelet and give that money to charity (presumably the >$1.2 million in tournament winnings he’ll keep) or some other similar options, such as

- Hold a tournament for all players shut out of the main event and award the winner the bracelet

-  Give the bracelet away in a SpadeClub.com tournament

- Give the bracelet to Stephen Colbert

OK.  Whatever.

Jeff has had plenty of poker success and will be a formidable opponent.  Yet, he is best known for coming up short in 2000 when he made the final table before getting knocked out by eventual winner, Chris Ferguson.  (For that 7th place finish, he got a whopping $146,000.)  He was 25 years old at the time and it was his first ever Main Event.  His final table appearance is chronicled in Positively Fifth Street.

If Phil Ivey is the guy most people are rooting for, this is the guy most are rooting against.  Read any poker blog and they just hate him, mainly for the stupid comment about the bracelet.  That would be like Tony Romo making a comment after losing a playoff game that losing a football game is no big deal.  Oh wait, he did say that.

I am going to preview the November Nine 1 or 2 guys at a time.  Today, we’ll start with the big stack and the big whig:

Phil Ivey

• Currently #2 on the list of all-time tournament winnings, he will be #1 as soon as the final table of the 2009 Main Event is complete, even if he busts out on the first hand.
• Owns the record (tie) for most gold bracelets in one year with 3 in 2002
• He won his 6th and 7th bracelets this year and might win his 8th in the Main Event
• His highest previous Main Event finish is 10th, in 2003 (the Moneymaker year and probably the year that most sticks in people’s minds)
• He has 0 gold bracelets in Holdem events
• He is a regular in The Big Game ($4k-$8k mixed cash game at Bellagio)
• He supposedly won $16 million from Andy Beal.
• He is 33
• While I used a fake ID to buy beer for myself and wine coolers for chicks in high school, Ivey used his to play poker in Atlantic City.

Darvin Moon

• He is 45
• He won his entry via a satellite in West Virginia
• Might be the least experienced player at the final table (though he holds a comanding chip lead)
• Owns a logging company in Maryland (expect comparisons between him and fellow blue collar hero, Dennis Phillips)
• In the first four hands of the Main Event, he got a set of Kings and a set of Aces.  He referred to them incorrectly as “trips”
• His luck continued throughout the tournament, including the final hand before the final table:
• From Bluff:  “The final elimination didn’t take long at all and not surprisingly Darvin Moon was involved. Buchman raised to 650,000, Moon called from the button and Jordan Smith re-raised to 2,600,000 from the smal blind. The raise got Buchman to fold but Moon called. The flop came 8 4 2, Smith checked and Moon lead out for 4,000,000 and Smith moved all-in. Moon called and tabled 8 8 for top set and Smith showed A A. Both the turn and the river failed to improve Smith’s hand and he was out in tenth as the November Nine bubble boy.”
• Given his unbelievable luck, he is quite honest and humble (unlike a certain Mr. Gold three years ago).  He said, “I told them as soon as I go card dead you guys will eat me alive. I’m humble. I know where I stand among the class of people I’m against. I’m outclassed by so far.” In fact, he said all he wants to do with the money is improve the quality of life for his parents and take a 2-month break to Alaska. He even said he would be back in the woods the very next week.

The November Nine (in order of chip count) are:
Seat 1: Darvin Moon – 58,930,000
Seat 6: Eric Buchman – 34,800,000
Seat 5: Steven Begleiter – 29,885,000
Seat 9: Jeff Shulman – 19,580,000
Seat 7: Joe Cada – 13,215,000
Seat 4: Kevin Schaffel – 12,390,000
Seat 3: Phil Ivey – 9,765,000
Seat 8: Antoine Saout – 9,500,000
Seat 2: James Akenhead – 6,800,000

I’ll save the commentary for now, aiming for quality over timliness, given the massive amount that will be written about these guys over the next few days.

They have played down to 29 players from the 6,494 that entered the Main Event.  Sitting in 2nd place with $12.2 million is Phil Ivey.  How much does ESPN love that?  That’d be great if he could pull it off, as it’s been since 2001 that a real poker pro won the Main Event.  And this isn’t just any poker pro, he is one that many consider to be the best.  Maybe it is a game of skill after all…(it certainly ain’t gambling)

I think I have clinched the Fantasy WSOP contest, as I (according to my calculations) have the lead and am the only person with an active player (some guy named Ivey!).  We forgot to agree on an entry fee.  Let’s just go with $2,500 per man.  Each of you can just mail me a check.

Esfandiari is still in, but he just lost a big hand, cutting a $6m stack in half.

They’ll play down to 27 today, but I’m going to bed before they eliminate the other two.

On the subject of Hellmuth getting knocked out, I thought this was a nice critique:

Phil got busted slow playing Aces, by just flat calling an early position raiser, and allowing two more players to see a flop. All his chips went into middle on the flop, when he was behind (see official WSOP site for more details) to two pair, then a straight. Basically he tried playing too cute and I often here professional poker players say the biggest mistake amatuers make is slow playing big hands. Well I can’t wait to see the ESPN WSOP shows, especially when Hellmuth gets his balls busted. Can’t wait!

The first thing that leaps to mind is the part in Sklansky’s tournament book (an ANCIENT tome, relatively speaking) about the girl who was staked in a tournament and told to fold everything except for a small set of hands and to go all in with all of those preflop. If I remember correctly, she did very well with the strategy and it was rather illustrative of the point that the best strategy is usually the simplest.

Days 1 and 2 are over; all future “Days” last only one day.

The field of 6,494 is down to 2,044.  It took two “days” (actually 6 days) to narrow the field by two-thirds.  Historically, the WSOP Main Event would eliminate the same percentage in one “day”, so the increase in starting stacks has led to it being clearly easier to hang around longer.  In fact, there was a story about a guy that showed up on Day 1d only to find out that he was registered for Day 1a, and he still had chips!  It was not possible to be blinded off and get past Day 1 in the past.  I know $10k is a lot of dough, but seeing as how a full third of the field gets at least two full days of fun out of it, it seems like a pretty good bargain (if you are rolling in dough like CCM).

One of the most interesting stories to date involves Eric Cloutier (professional hockey player, not a relative of TJ).  After Day 1a, it was posted that he had 150k in chips and was chip leader.  He really had a mere 15k  and was near the bottom of the chip counts.  By the end of Day 2, he worked all the way up to 2nd highest chip count (so, as reported on a few blogs, the WSOP wasn’t wrong, they were just right prematurely!)

The biggest “controversy” to date in the Main Event involves the hoards of people that were turned away on Day 1d.  I have no sympathy for them.  I have no sympathy for anybody that waits until the very last second to do anything.  Dude, you are playing in the world’s biggest poker event, get there a couple hours earlier!

The controversy extends to the fact that the WSOP made some exceptions for some big name guys who came late.  For starters, many (possibly all) of these people weren’t really late.  They had evidently registered without yet paying.  Second of all, the WSOP should be allowed to pick and choose who they let in.  Let’s face it, the presence of the poker pros and the Hollywood celebrities is why people watch it (and, more important, watch the commercials!)  I wouldn’t watch it if it were just Steve Danneman versus Jerry Yang.  In fact, my interest wanes as the field narrows and the characters become less compelling.

The most intersting person on the leader board is Phil Ivey at $346k in 17th place.  I’d hate to be at his table.

Peter Eastgate was on the ropes, holding $8k with $1k blinds.  Over the course of an hour, he ran that up to just over $100k.  I haven’t seen a rush that big since we played at the Del back in November.

Yesterday was a day of rest and Day 3 starts this afternoon.