For the pros, they say the tourneys here at the WSOP offer the kind of value you won’t find anywhere else.
Yes, there are other places you can play a $25K buy-in hold’em tournament, but Las Vegas promises the chance to be joined by wealthy amateurs, rich tourists, and part-timers without the discipline or experience to really hang with the elites.
So goes the expectation, but sometimes the reality looks a little different. Take table Gold 97, in Saturday's $25K High Roller NLH 6-Handed event at the WSOP.
Some six hours in, the table looked like this:
- Vitalijs Zavorotnijs (WPT Main Event winner, $3.1M lifetime earnings)
- Justin Arnwine (a staggering list of wins, $1.8M lifetime)
- Adrian Mateos ($62M lifetime, top 10 all-time)
- Daniel Negreanu ($57.7M lifetime, top 10 all-time)
- Alex Foxen ($57.2M lifetime, top 10 all-time)
If you’re looking for the weak link, keep looking.
Shots fired
Negreanu, having already bust this tournament earlier in the day when he ran pocket queens into pocket aces preflop, was on his second and final bullet when he min-raised under-the-gun to 10K.
It folded to Alex Foxen in the big blind, who called.
Foxen checked the 
flop, and called Negreanu’s c-bet to see the 
drop on the turn.
Another check from Foxen, and Negreanu led out for 25K. It didn’t take long for Foxen to put Negreanu all-in for the rest of his chips.
Negreanu whipped out the camera, started filming for his vlog, and made the call.
Negreanu: 
Foxen: 
Board:
Negreanu had flopped a diamond flush draw, Foxen turned the straight.
Kid Poker called for the diamond he needed, but the river was the meaningless 
.
Just the one re-entry means Negreanu is out of this $25K High Roller, but the next few days offer multiple more opportunities to play some big ones. These include the $50K High Roller on Monday and the $100K on Wednesday.
Images courtesy of the WSOP.
