Chip stacks rise as players drop at World Series of Poker; ‘05 champ frustrated with pace

Stacks rise as players drop at poker world series

LAS VEGAS — The 2005 World Series of Poker champion said he’s lost all respect for a new brand of extremely aggressive poker players who seem to want to gamble all their chips on every hand in the main event.

“I had quite a bit of respect but you know what? They know nothing about poker,” Joe Hachem said as he took a break from his sixth session of poker at the $10,000 buy-in tournament.

“These kids really know nothing. These kids are just … idiots,” Hachem said.

A breakneck pace that has already led tournament officials to shorten two sessions of play continued on Monday as 38 players from a field of 185 were eliminated in two hours, despite starting with many chips relative to minimum bets.

The remaining field represented the top players left from a total of 6,494 entrants. Each of the players left on Monday were guaranteed at least $36,626, while the top prize of $8.55 million will be awarded at the final table in November.

“We’re playing for one of the biggest prizes in history and they’re getting … five hundred million blinds in there with second pair,” Hachem said. “To me, the reason I’m upset is because it’s disrespectful. We’re playing in the world series, we’re not just having fun at a local home game. These guys are pushing chips around like it’s nothing.”

Chips have no monetary value, but are used to show the relative position of players compared with one another on the felt. Players started on Monday with an average of just over 1 million chips each, while pots cost a minimum of an ante plus 30,000 chips to play if nobody raised.

Hachem was one of only two former main event champions left in the tournament, along with last year’s winner Peter Eastgate. Hachem and Eastgate sat next to each other to start the day, at the same table as two-time gold bracelet winner J.C. Tran and Dennis Phillips, last year’s third place finisher.

During one hand, Tran folded a strong hand of ace-king before any community cards were dealt when faced with the all-in bet of an opponent. Tran would have been well ahead in the hand if his opponent held two other unpaired cards, but would have had about a 50-50 shot if the opponent held a pocket pair of queens or lower. If the opponent had kings or aces, Tran would have been a big underdog, and Tran didn’t want to risk his tournament on a single gamble without more information.

Hachem said playing against opponents who only know one move — no matter what they’re holding — is frustrating.

“Look, their style may be the way they play on the Internet and that’s what they’ve got to do because they can open up another tournament every 10 seconds,” Hachem said. “It’s fine, right, but you’re playing here, you got so much time, you got so much going for you and these guys just want to go to war every hand.

“That’s why a crazy Internet kid is very unlikely to win one of these things,” Hachem said.