What if Ivey wins?

by Aaron Angerman

2009 Event 25

I don't know if you've heard yet, but there's a big tourney wrapping up this weekend. After four months worth of the world's best/worst cliffhanger, the nine survivors in the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event will have their blindfolds and ear protection removed as they are released from solitary confinement in the Harrah's basement to play this thing down to a winner. Now the whole solitary confinement story might just be something I heard while I was drinking, but this playing for a bracelet thing is for real.

The November Nine will be unleashed on the poker community on Saturday, November 7th, from the Rio in Las Vegas. There, in the Penn & Teller Theater (where we at Poker Pages will in fact be providing LIVE coverage), the nine hottest names in poker will battle it out in a steel cage for the $8.5 million first-place prize and the final bracelet to be handed out this year. Ok, maybe no steel cage, but the theater set-up is unreal. Click here to check out profiles of the Nov. 9.

So the "nine hottest names in poker" line may have been a stretch. In fact, I've heard this year's November Nine referred to as 'Ivey, the logger and seven not-Ivey's' on several occasions. I apologize if that's rude, but maybe that's saying something about this year's final table. If either of those two comes up short, will there be much of a story? More so, if Ivey comes away with the gold, what's in store for poker?

2009 Event 8

Phil Ivey is coming off of one of the more impressive WSOP's in recent history. The poker world has been waiting for another big Ivey run, and they got that this year in the form of a couple early wins. By event #25, Ivey had claimed his second bracelet of the series, and side bets that ballooned up to $10 or $12 million, depending on which rail bird or stoned forum surfer you were asking. Ivey's fans would have been Ok with those results, knowing their guy was sitting pretty with seven career bracelets at age 33. But he wasn't done. He was shooting for one more bracelet.

Three bracelets in a series has been done before. Five times to be exact. Puggy Pearson did it first. Ted Forrest and Phil Hellmuth followed, each grabbing three in the 1993 WSOP. It even happened once this year, as Jeff Lisandro and his hat pulled off a Stud trifecta at the Rio. Hell, it's even old news to Ivey, who pulled off the triple in 2003. But nobody has done it twice. Fast-forward to July 15th. Nine players exhale for the first time in weeks as the Main Event final table has finally be formed. Their work is done… at least for four months. Reporters scramble to get interviews. All but a handful were hounding Phil Ivey, the biggest name to ever make the WSOP Main Event final table.

WSOP 2003

When play resumes on Saturday, there will be roughly 195 million chips in play. Ivey will control just five percent of those chips. To compare, Darvin Moon's monster stack accounts for 30 percent of on-felt coinage. If Norman Chad's man-crush hopes to capture his third bracelet of the series, he'll have his work cut out for him, as only two November Niners will show up this weekend with a shorter stack. Antoine Saout will return from France with basically one less big blind than Ivey. Only Englishman James Akenhead, with 3.5 percent of the chips in play, could really direct any chip envy in Ivey's direction.

But it's not like Ivey is short. They're smack dab in the middle of the 120,000/240,000 blind level, with 30,000 antes tacked on. Ivey's 9,765,000 chips are good for about 40 big blinds. For all those schooled by Harrington, his M is about 25. "Action" Dan says he has his entire arsenal available to him at this point. Not that he can't get stacked off by most of the table, but even with the 7th biggest stack, Ivey can make a few moves and laydowns without going broke.

But sports books are showing Phil some love. Many sites are taking money on the eventual Main Event winner. Right now, you can find Ivey at a tasty 6/1 to win it all on Betfair. Bodog is showing the man quite a bit more respect, selling Ivey at 7/2 to grab that third bracelet of '09. Only Erich Buchman (3/1) and chip leader Moon (2/1) are liked more in Bodog's eyes. That's some serious respect, seeing how Ivey has 25 million fewer chips than Buchman… oh yeah, and 50 million less than Moon. Ivey is also 3/1 to be among the first couple eliminations. Hell, you can even bet on the suit of the final river card. I laughed, until I saw spades was going off at 5/2. How can you pass that up?

I've written to death about Moneymaker and "the Poker Boom". You and I know we wouldn't be waiting four months for a final table if the donkey accountant from Tennessee didn't come through in the clutch. But isn't it time to admit that poker needs a big name to be world champ?

WSOP 2003

Hachem's win put an entire continent on the poker map, so I can totally write the Aussie off. Raymer has been putting in his hours on the political front, so kudos to the big man for that… and for being just enough like an un-cool-dad for the reptile shades not to catch on. But really, with the exception of Moneymaker, has the string of unknown Main Event winners really been that good for the game? The last three winners, Eastgate, Yang and Gold, have yet to leave any sort of mark on the poker world. Will they ever? Can we really sit here and say it wouldn't be better for the game to have Negreanu, Brunson or Ivey penciled in as one of the last few Main Event winners, or are we really still trying that hard to sell the idea of a constant line of unknowns at the podium for the biggest tournament on earth?

At the end of the day, it's not really the Main Event winners that serve as the ambassadors of the game. It's the players that have been winning for years. The ones who were earning bracelets long before ESPN even caught a whiff of the WSOP. Don't we need one of these pros to come through in the Big One? They'll wake up on the right side of the bed and the cards will just fall their way. It happens, right? Wouldn't that take the game to entirely new level? A level where poker's superstars are mentioned in the same breath as Derek Jeter, Tom Brady or LeBron James. How about Ivey? One time!

Might as well be Ivey, the dude is a rock star right now. Apparently he got tired of dominating the covers of poker magazines, so he took over ESPN. Who's on the cover of the ESPN the Magazine NBA Preview issue this month? Kobe? LeBron? Nah. Try Ivey. And if you didn't get enough of his mug on each episode of ESPN Main Event coverage, they dedicated a segment of E:60 to his ballin' day-to-day. And this is just for making the November Nine. What's will they want from him if he wins it? Will we see him on Lexus commercials? Nike? Not hard to picture golfers hocking golf clubs in the future, maybe Taylor Made. I think we're about to find out.

Join Poker Pages on Saturday, November 7th, for LIVE coverage of the WSOP Main Event final table from Las Vegas.