Random Fun Facts About the $50K H.O.R.S.E.
Of the 16 players who cashed last year, only three remain in this year's field: Barry Greenstein, Gabe Kaplan, and Mark Gregorich.
The only player still with a shot to make back-to-back final tables in this event is Barry Greenstein.
The same number of players (148) who entered last year's event entered this year's event. However, 50 members of the 2007 field chose not to enter in 2008. This includes Gavin Smith, Phil Laak, Darrell "Gigabet" Dicken, "Captain" Tom Franklin, Tony Cousineau, Kristy Gazes, David Sklansky, Sam Grizzle, Marco Traniello, Jason Lester, Jerri Thomas, Dan Shak, Tuan Le, Ted Lawson, Victor Ramdin, John Phan, Sam Farha, Mark Vos, David "The Dragon" Pham, and Josh Arieh.
And, of course, we lost the late, great Chip Reese, for whom this tournament is now named.
There were 49 new faces in this year's $50,000 H.O.R.S.E., including Tom Dwan, Phil Galfond, Mark Goodwin, $1,500 NLHE bracelet winners Luis Velador and David Woo, Layne Flack, Brian Rast, John Monnette, Joseph "bigjoe2003" Michael, Raymond Davis, Billy "The Croc" Argyros, Marcel Luske, David Bach, Matt Glantz, Jan Von Halle, Perry Friedman, "Miami" John Cernuto, Kirill Gerasimov, Ram Vaswani, Hoyt Corkins, Andy Black, and current chip leader Michael DeMichele.