Really?lol 3 words for ya bud 'President Barack Obama'

I'm sure a lot of these guys play on the Internet. Heard Ivey also beats the games at Bobby's room. I meant by Internet player someone who started out on the Internet.

Joe Hachem and Annie Duke are sooo tilting why would anyone vote for them wtf ??

Duke had an automatic invite from winning a prior TOC.

No.

George bush

I hope it's a really obnoxious, 10 foot tall trophy. Those always crack me up!

The vote totals are pretty pathetic.

The 355,081 "votes" is a bit misleading. A person making all 20 picks would count as 20 "votes".

355,081 divided by 20 equals 17,754 voters. Some people would have voted for less than 20 players, meaning maybe 18k-19k unique voters.

Of those, 16,267 voted for Ivey.

there s joe hachem and not carlos mortensen???

I can't stand Hachem & find Ferguson hugely boring to watch, but I can kinda understand why they got some votes... but Lederer? Really???

And no Euros (Only Elky but that was thru the SNG)

Same old donks as usual. Disgusting.

They really need to step up thier creativity when it comes to things like this. I mean seriously its the same old SOB's that are in every TOC.
WHO CARES, I can handle watching the cash games with the same peeps over and over again (but even then they change up the lineups IE HSP PAD etc) cause they are playing 100K pots, which is entertaining.
Have an Online Player Tournament and play for a trophy or something. Take the top ten ranked online tourny grinders put them at a table and duke it out, or something, anything other than watching doyle, howard, ivey, DN etc over and over again.
SOOOOOO Boring!

This is the mindset I don't get. What's 'disgusting' about it? It was a vote from casual ESPN watchers. Do you think those people are voting for little known internet players? Of course the field is boring to most of us, who want to see the best and most exciting players. But we're not the audience that this is appealing to. Most of the people voting probably only watch a few shows each year on ESPN. They don't care one bit about who the 'best' players are, and there's no reason why they should. They should and do care about watching people they have heard of.

To be fair, I voted and my ballot had a bunch of online players, but I realize that I'm in the minority in that regard. The ESPN audience wants the 2004 All Star Team and that's what they got.

I most definately see your point. However shouldnt espn realize that they can capitalize on alot more than your average everyday joe who only wants to watch the old regs. They do podcasts amonst other things in which they talk to Doc Sands, and Gboro780, so they are aware of the market for these things. Thier poker coverage all around the board is terrible. I would just like to see changes thats all.

My only gripe is that poker isn't doing a good job of promoting its young superstars. Guys like Daniel Alaei, Steve Sung, Jason Mercier, Faraz Jaka, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, durrrr, and Isaac Haxton are much better at NLHE than the average TOC player. If the public had a chance to become familiar with these younger players, they would probably begin to appreciate their skills.

Unfortunately, that's unlikely because ESPN's coverage of the WSOP continues to emphasize the 2003 stars like Harman, Juanda, Negreanu, Hellmuth, Scotty, Hansen, Lederer, Ferguson, and Ivey. Some of those guys are still elite players, but some of them aren't (or never were in the first place).

It would be really nice if ESPN would showcase some of the top young players, but it probably won't happen unless they make a deep run in the ME.

ESPN's lack of non-Main Event coverage has a lot to do with it too. In '04 and '05 they showed a lot of tourneys and gave a lot of people opportunities to become big names back then by playing at televised final tables, winning televised bracelets, etc. If they showed more events, like they used to, a lot of the talented young players would get that all important television exposure that they don't get now.

looks like a good poker roster

what? are you really this dumb? you think Obama being elected is the same as these has-beens being voted into this tourney?

most people don't play poker or know who these tards are. sample size..

politics is pretty much the definition of a popularity contest. which ever candidate is most popular wins his party's nomination then the most popular out of the 2 wins the presidency. they obv put foward policies which = the 'skill' bit in poker in this context... but people disagree over policies so it's more of a popularity contest.

better to think of obama as a change of dealer. bush was such a terrible dealer that the players got pissed off and voted for change.

if you were dumb enough to vote for mccain/palin then lol

Grunch:

Great another tourney with the same exact players.

Poker really needs some new TV superstars or something.

This **** is starting to get real old real quick.

Why isn't Mason,Sklansky,Miller and all the other 2p2 authors on TV?

Or the online guys who charge $2k+ for e-books on TV?

I'm just glad that Hellmuth didn't finish first in the voting. I'm happy to see Dan Harrington in there.

Did anyone listen to poker edge? Phil Gordon said he heard from "several" sources that Phil Ivey may not be playing in the TOC, due to other WSOP events and bets he has. I find it hard to believe he will not at least play day one and at least show for the event. Is this confirmed or just a rumor?