So after 2 months of non stop play the WSOP 2013 is finally over with the announcement of the WSOP November 9 – and the odds of them winning. Full Tilt has announced they are to branch out into casino games and other forms of gambling. And in other news the Hendon Mob has sold their site to Global Poker Index.
WSOP 2013 November Nine Winner Odds
A bit of a mixed bag of players for the 2013 November Nine WSOP final table but IMHO a very clear leader in the shape of J.C. Tran who is the big stack with 38,000,000 chips (95 big blinds).
With current odds on Bodog for Tran of 9/5 your not going to make a fortune if the likely favourite wins but that is where the sensible money would go. The other likely contender is Amir Lehavot, 2nd in chips with 29,700,000 and odds of 9/2.
Chip Counts & Odds
#1 – JC Tran with 38m chips at 9/5
#2 – Amir Lehavot with 29.7m chips at 9/2
#3 – Marc-Etienne McLaughlin with 26.5m chips at 5/1
#4 – Jay Farber with 25.9m chips at 15/2
#5 – Ryan Riess with 25.8m chips at 6/1
#6 – Sylvain Loosli with 19.6m chips at 8/1
#7 – Michiel Brummelhuis with 11.2m chips at 12/1
#8 – Mark Newhouse with 7.3m chips at 15/1
#9 – David Benefield with 6.3m chips at 15/1
In terms of a good value long shot outsider then look no further than short stack David Benefield at 15/1 who is likely to do a lot of damage with his short stack and I think will finish a lot higher than is chips stack suggests, especially with a break to prepare himself for a come-back.
Offering similar odds on the 2013 WSOP winner are Ladbrokes, currently offering marginally better odds on JC Tran with 2/1 & 47/16 respectively and Benefield was out at 18’s.
Full Tilt To Launch Casino
Following rumours last week, the Rational Group (owners of PokerStars & Full Tilt) have confirmed they plan to broaden the offering at Full Tilt (Poker).
While this isn’t a surprise it does signal yet again how shrewd PokerStars have been in managing their brands and future strategy as it’s far easier and logical to expand the “Full Tilt” brand out to other gaming verticals like casino, maybe betting and even other areas just by dropping the “poker” from Full Tilt branding and marketing.
There are already other operators using casinostars & bingostars domains so in retrospect it’s obvious that PokerStars had wider plans for the acquiring the Full Tilt brand in the first place.
Full Tilt Bingo anyone ?
This should also further soften the games at FullTilt drawing casino and betting players over to the poker room, also a very definite heads-up to the rest of the competition in casino & gaming.
There is another interesting angle on this with reference to the fragmented and evolving US state by state market which may mean some states will allow a poker only model and other a casino/poker model so I would guess that having two options of diverse and poker only offerings would allow them to compete in more markets.
Global Poker Index Buys Hendon Mob
Tthe much loved UK forum and player ranking site The Hendon Mob has been sold to poker ranking competitor Global Poker Index. While the hendon mob boys had recently lost their site sponsorship deal with Gentings, the sale of the site wasn’t expected, especially considering Barny Boatmans brilliant WSOP bracelet win for over $500k would have cheered the lads.
The Hendon Mob database is by far the biggest and historically longest record of player rankings and results site out there, the GPI buy-out would mean that their combined rankings and results would be vast.
Exactly how the new GPI group plans to utilise all the data and brands is not known, but they are keeping on the Hendon Mob staff and involvement. They also announced they are planning to acquire more sites and related businesses.
I would speculate that the bulk of THM player data and rankings will be absorbed into a bigger and historically more complete Global Poker Index. This would enable the Hendon Mob boys (Barney & Ross Boatman, Joe Beavers & Ram Vaswani) to better focus their very brand specific site for self promotion and continuing the UK focussed forum community which identifies with them so readily.
Daniel Rant & Neil Channing Blog
Really interesting post on Neil Channing’s blog I spotted and retweeted last week, which Daniel Negreanu also picked up on (below at 16.40)
Basically Mr Channing rightly had a problem with the young internet “pros” berating old timers in live games and talking about their hand ranges etc right in their face with no regard for – well decent basic manners and half decent table etiquette.
Daniel rightly pointed out what any live poker player would tell you every day of the week – don’t scare recreational players off, be nice
Why so many online “pros” seem to be so ignorant when it comes to live is beyond me other than they have got so used to slagging off anyone they feel superior to online and being able to pick up more fish at another table that they have lost sight of the fundamentals of the live game.
Playing live they should have at least half decent manners and not being such a sore loser at the table is vital to keeping the game loose and convivial which means people happily give their chips away instead of closing up, having a miserable time next to net geeks and don’t play again.
Personally I’ve come across exactly the same situation as Channing describes and I’ve just sat a shook my head in disbelief – and then taken the pi** out of the ipad laden nit speak geeks and ignored them to chat with either the sharp old skool players or the “duffers” as they might prefer to see them.
Fair enough if your behaving like a bell-end to get a rise out of a decent player or a fellow geek stats nit but when you just slag guys up who are the value in the game your not only being a douche but also more than a bit retarded for your own best interests.
Negreanu’s “Rants” are always worth a listen
