Too-Fast Tunica
The final table is in place at Tunica. Michael Mizrachi, John Stolzmann, Chau Giang, Raja Kattamuri, Scotty Nguyen, and Daniel Negreanu are the final six in the Jack Binion World Poker Open in Tunica, Mississippi. These six players should be ecstatic going into the final round today with nearly $1.5 million awarded to first place, right? Not everyone has enjoyed the tournament so far, and not everyone has been as cool and calm as Mr. Negreanu has appeared this tournament not even Mr. Negreanu.
Throughout the tournament, Daniel has been vocal through his daily blog that the structure of this tournament rushes much too quickly, sidestepping skill and creating "move-in poker". That is not what most pros were looking for when they arrived at the $10,000 buy-in event. A similar structure had been used at Harrah's first World Series of Poker event earlier this year. Afterwards, Harrah's took the time to listen to the player's wants, and have now announced that the WSOP will be utilizing 90 minute levels over a four day period, and reinstating the 25-50 blind level. Before the levels were much shorter as Harrah's tried to cram the huge event into 3 days. Unfortunately, the WPO cannot change mid-event.
To give an example of the difference upsetting some pros, this is an excerpt of blind levels at Tunica:
300-600
500-1000
800-16000
The pros are used to something more along the lines of:
200-400
250-500
300-600
400-800
500-1000
600-1200
800-1600
The speed of this sort of structure has caused a lot of players to have to resort to a one-move preflop brand of poker. Blinds are coming up quickly, as much a threat to some players' stacks as other players are. The pressure is on the short stacks, who know they may need to double up often in order to stay ahead of the blinds. This causes many players to quickly raise all-in preflop, whether the hand is in the upper echelon of hands or it's A7o.
After all of this, many pros have busted out, but Daniel Negreanu seems to be on a roll. He has managed to keep himself calm even while his frustrations at the structure well up within him. Daniel has shown that mid to low pocket pairs can be incredibly valuable in this structure (winning 2-2 vs. A-7, 5-5 vs. A-9, 7-7 vs. QJ all on Day 3) when calling those preflop all-ins. Daniel is 3rd in chips to begin day 4.
Seat position with chip count:
1.Michael Mizrachi - 515,000
2.John Stolzmannn - 517,000
3.Chau Giang - 1,406,000
4.Raja Kattamuri - 330,000
5.Scotty Nguyen - 1,210,000
6.Daniel Negreanu - 1,173,000
With Scotty Nguyen and Daniel Negreanu at the same table, this could prove quite an exciting final round.
Good luck & Good odds!
