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2008 WSOP Forecast, Day One: First Championship Event Starts

By launchpoker, May 30, 2008
2008 WSOP Forecast, Day One: First Championship Event Starts


  Today the 39th annual World Series of Poker will begin with a $10,000 event, something that used to be reserved for the very last game of the series, the Main Event. With the poker boom hitting its stride, with fewer ups and downs, the dust has settled a bit and revealed that more poker players are wanting to play the WSOP than ever, with various abilities to buy in. The result is a wider range of buy ins, going all the way up to the massive $50k H.O.R.S.E. event later on, and more $10k events, those that the pros really consider the "real" events.



  This one is the $10k Pot Limit Holdem Championship. Note that any event with a $10k price tag is going to be called a Championship. In this case it is Pot Limit, an event that many find intriguing: a little limit, a little no limit, and all Holdem. So who is going to win?



  Of course if we knew that we'd have a lock on the market, wouldn't we? But we could guess. Just from the sheer volume of players expected, the winner being a well known pro is a small likelihood. This doesn't mean it won't happen, it just gets harder for the pros to win as the size of the fields go up - true for the amateurs as well, by the way, so don't feel sorry for the pros. But as we don't know the amateurs, we have to look at the pros to see who we think might have an outstanding chance. The two names that come to mind are Tom McEvoy and TJ Cloutier.



  There are tons of pros who are good at Pot Limit Holdem, but these two wrote a book on it. Okay, so did a lot of others, but consider this - Pot Limit takes a lot of measured patience to win, combined with the ability to act when the time for deliberation is over. Tom and TJ have the years on them - both in general and in the poker world - to make it happen, if the cards fall a little bit their way. Let us also not forget that TJ is one of the winning-est WSOP players in history, with more cashes than anyone before last year's run by Phil Hellmuth. It should be very interesting to see who the chip leader is tomorrow. Till then!