Surely I can't be the only one watching these?

PokerGo has been re-playing a different WSOP each week this summer, starting with 2003. They are already up to 2006, and will presumably release 2007 on Monday. I've seen all of these shows before, but it's been a while for some of them.

Some of my miscellaneous thoughts and impressions:

2003 - Amir Vahedi was a likeable character, but my oh my did he ever punt off his stack at the FT. Brutal. Everyone remembers Moneymaker's AQ vs. 99 hand that knocked out Ivey, but Chris also got very lucky earlier in the tournament when he won an underpair vs. overpair situation all-in. He was quite fortunate to win this event. That being said, the famous bluff against Farha showed incredible heart and courage. His win was a great story and the telecast is loaded with a cast of legends (Scotty, Hellmuth, Doyle, Chan, Ivey, etc). You can see why this made for great TV. The whole affair also still had a bit of a seedy old school Vegas feel, which you don't get in the post-Binion's WSOP telecasts. Nobody there in 2003 possibly could've known how much things were about to change...

2004 - Raymer played really well in all the televised hands. Williams has done well in the 15 years since this, but at the time seemed like a mediocre player who simply ran hot at the FT. Luske brought some personality to the telecast.

2005 - This might be one of the more compelling WSOP telecasts of all time. You have a lot of big names running deep and some real donks mixed in there too (Tiffany Williamson was painfully bad tbh). It's pretty gross to watch this thing play down from the final 27 and see how lucky Aaron Kanter was. Total card rack. This is definitely a "what could have been" year. What if Ivey had better luck in the final 27? What if Matusow hadn't been coolered early at the FT? What if Raymer would've survived against Kanter? It all could've played out a lot differently. A lot of people talk about Andy Black as if he had a "meltdown" at the FT, but really he seemed to make reasonable decisions and was simply unlucky in several spots. On the other hand, Scott Lazar's implosion was nightmare fuel. Hachem seemed really solid, but him winning this was definitely a longshot since his stack was so small to start the FT. It took a lot of patience and fortune.

2006 - Still the biggest field ever, and fittingly the first WSOP to take place entirely at the Rio. This was arguably the peak of the poker boom. I always thought Gold played well, but in hindsight it's also evident that he ran hotter than the sun. What's interesting is that the other players who ran deep clearly had no respect for his game and thought of him as a lucky fish. That actually worked to his favor in a number of spots. Say what you will about Gold, but he was able to get people to make a lot of mistakes against him. I do think he deserves a lot of credit for that.

Up next week...the madness of 2007, arguably the weakest FT in modern ME history, famous for Scotty's painful implosion on the FT bubble, the Yang/Watkinson prayer war, and Jerry Yang blasting away. Should be fun.

I've been watching them all too. What struck me the most was what an insufferable assh*le Joe Hachem became in 2006.

Berating players, being a prick, saying incredibly un-self-aware things like "I can't make a hand" "One time... hold one time finally" and just the usual "I can't run any worse"

Bro, you "won" $8M 12 months ago.

And of course just the difference in play. Many times Norman will be like "And a super small 2.8x raise preflop, I'd like to see him raise 5x etc"
People limping in with like K9o, calling raises, just awful play looking back

Yeah, he didn't come across great in 2006. I don't think humility was a strong point for him at that exact moment in time.

I've noticed that the play tends to be clowny on the early days when there's a high concentration of pure recs. Also, the tournament structure seemed relatively shallow in that era, so rungood was a bigger factor. It feels like it's much harder for a pure luckbox to run deep these days.

Nowadays you might have 1-2 spots at the 9-handed final table. In that era it felt like you'd have 4-5 a lot of the years. Probably a combination of softer overall fields and faster, more luck-based structures.

Finishing 2006... Just unreal how good Gold runs during that stretch like 50 handed to Champ

Yea, it was really pure. Very, very few hiccups.

As I said, I do think he deserves some credit for tilting people and talking them into misplays. It's like the other players in the event had so little respect for his game that they were reaching and taking bad spots just to try to punk him.

In terms of technical skill at the time of winning the bracelet, he's probably in the bottom 4 players to win the ME in the past 20 years (Yang, Varkonyi, Gold, and Moneymaker would be my bottom 4 in some order). Gold hasn't cashed the ME in the 13 years since then, which isn't a great look considering the structure and depth of that event. For the sake of comparison, Allen Cunningham has cashed in the ME 8 times since 2006...

I'm on to 2007 now and they've noted that the starting stacks were boosted to 20k, after being I think 10 or 15k in earlier years. As the structure has improved, it has become much less of a pure luckament and most of the recent winners have been super impressive players IMO (Riess, Jacobson, Cynn, Ensan, etc). Really hard to win this thing if you're just a mediocre player on a heater because the short-handed play and HU will chew you up.

Hooo brother, just finished 2007. Of all the WSOPs from that time period, this is the one I have watched the fewest times. I was pulling for Scotty Nguyen and what happened to him on the bubble was painful. 2007 also has the dubious reputation of being probably the weakest WSOP ME FT in modern history, as Lee Watkinson and Alex Kravchenko were the closest thing to "top pros" at the FT while the top 3 finishers were all rank amateurs.

The early day coverage features a heavy dose of Hevad Khan and Humberto Brenes. I thought some of Khan's goofiness was amusing, but Humberto and the "chark" hamming it up for the cameras got very old very fast.

I remembered Scotty's big meltdown on the FT bubble, but what I'd forgotten was how many other big names ran deep. Gus Hansen finished 61st. Daniel Alaei and Kenny Tran both finished in the top 27. It could've been a more interesting FT if a couple those guys had survived. Scotty and Tran can only blame themselves, as they both made big mistakes to get felted.

Scotty's meltdown was a big story at the time, but Philip Hilm's FT performance has to be on the short list of biggest ICM punts in WSOP history. All he had to do was sit back and be patient, but instead he seemed intent on bulldozing the table, and just took a lot of unnecessary spots to go from top 2-3 in chips with 9 left, to out in 9th. He probably lit 2-3M in EV on fire. It rivals Scott Lazar's 2005 meltdown for the worst that I've seen at the FT, and was probably worse given the size of his stack and the softness of the table. He should've been able to cruise to a top 3-4 finish at least.

Yang is probably the worst player to win the ME since I started watching (2003). Actually, I don't think it's even very close. Very little nuance to his game. He was just blasting everything and never folding when he had a piece, and was very fortunate to never run into a nutted hand and to usually get there in flip/underdog situations. He played with aggression, but also ran very, very pure in what was essentially a flippament. It's absurd that he's a former "world champion" of poker. A lot of people yearn for the carnival feel of those early poker boom WSOPs, but even if the game is more serious with all the hoodies and tanking, you have to admit that the level of play is much higher. With the ME structure being so deep now in 2020, it would be hard for a player with this many leaks to win.

The play at the 2007 FT was generally awful though. It has earned its reputation as the weakest year.

Onward to 2008 on Monday, which was the first "November Nine" and a much stronger collection of players at the FT.

I've been watching non-stop as well, even though Pokergo is annoying at this point since they updated the app.

I'm trying to remember the hands exactly, but in back to back years I think the FT could have been way different if Action Dan had been a little more aggressive preflop in blind vs blind situations. There was one hand in 03 I think he limps in with K rag off short stacked against Chris's BB then calls off his stack on a flush draw and I can't remember it right now (will look it up) but then again in 2004 when he limps in SB vs. David BB. I forget Dan's hand (I'm trying to find it) but he let's David see a flop with Q2 off and fill up. I remember watching both years in about a week and saying both instances "Why is Dan limping blind vs. blind?"

I don't know, I probably should have come better prepared with the hands before replying to the thread lol.

After watching the 2004 week I was reminded what an insufferable douchebag Josh Arieh was. Holy s**t, I can't believe the good ol' boys in Atlanta let him get away with his mouth.

The butterfly effect in these things can be huge. The recent example I like to cite is from the 2018 ME, where with maybe 2-3 tables left Miles opens KK UTG and Dyer just flats him in the next seat with AK. An ace come on the flop and Miles is able to get away from it cheaply. If they get stacks in pre, he goes out and never makes his 2nd place run. All because Dyer opted to flat a very realistic 3-bet candidate.

As for 2004, yeah, Arieh didn't come across too well. Definitely seemed a little too arrogant and entitled in terms of his attitude and behavior. To his credit, he's gone on to have the best career of all the players from that FT, so he has at least backed up some of his cockiness with results. He seems a little calmer now in recent telecasts like the $50k mix last year.

I'm working through 2008 right now on PokerGo and it's far more entertaining than 2007. I watched this one a lot when I was getting back into grinding online in 2009, and it's held up well on a lot of levels. Will write more once I finish it, probably tomorrow.

I rewatched this yesterday and it's pretty bad: Lee Childs' fold of Queens after putting in so much postflop was pretty insane, and also had it called it was a 90% chance Jerry Yang would've been busted right then and there.

The meta-game of the table-talk was badly judged too where they all talked up how scary Yang was, which allowed him the confidence to just continue being very aggressive, and also got players to level themselves in weird spots like Hilm did.

Yea, Childs should be haunted by that QQ fold. It's probably just too strong on that board to fold even though Yang could theoretically have KK or AA.

Hilm's punt is one of the worst ever.

I felt like Khan and Kravchenko were the only people who played decently there in the televised hands, and neither got the spins needed to make a run at it.

Finished 2008 tonight. This has always been one of my favorites and it's held up pretty well.

This was probably peak Hellmuth in terms of petulant behavior and whining. It's the tournament that gave us "Idiot from Northern Europe..." and "Buddy, you're an idiot!" His banter with Dragomir and Roothlus is classic. You can tell that PH desperately wants to do well, but he seemingly felt entitled to win every pot he entered and was tilting off the charts any time he ran into bad luck. The older I get, the sadder and more appalling I find his behavior. It's truly embarrassing stuff for a player of his stature.

ESPN had to be happy with Hellmuth, Matusow, and Hansen all running pretty deep. Those guys got a lot of screen time. After the huge names were felted, ESPN eventually shifted their focus to Chino Rheem as the "established pro". I'm guessing he may have gotten the overall most screen time of any single player in this telecast. Rheem has proven himself to be an enduring force on the circuit, but at the time his track record in MTTs was not incredible, so it felt a bit forced to try to present him as a "name brand" player at the FT.

Obviously the ME really exploded after Moneymaker, but in a lot of ways 2008 feels like the first "modern" FT. It kicked off the enduring trend of young winners (Eastgate, Cada, Duhamel, Heinz, Merson, Riess, etc) and a lower concentration of pure luckboxes at the FT. Eastgate and Demidov were solid. Schwartz has subsequently won a HORSE bracelet and made multiple other FTs in WSOP prelims. Chino has $10M+ in lifetime winnings.

The weak links were seemingly Montgomery, Suharto, and Phillips. Montgomery was dangerous because he had so much gamble and aggression, but that style was combustible. He was a longshot to win playing like that. In my mind I had always remember Phillips as a competent player, but watching this now, it's so obvious that he was just an average tight/solid weekend warrior rec player riding a hot wave of cards. His tight/cautious style largely kept him out of harm's way, but he got punked every time he was in a thin spot vs. a tricky opponent and there's really no way he was going to win the title against this lineup.

I'm getting fatigued from watching so much poker, but might need to rally for 2009: "Ivey! Ivey! Ivey!"

WSOP 2009 doesn't seem to come up on my PokerGO, are you having issues with this too?

I watched the 2008 too, and it's very fun all round. Lots of memorable moments and names: Hellmuth getting to Day 6, Brandon Cantu blowing up, the Losev string bet drama, Montgomery's A4 jam versus Paul Snead, Tiffany Michelle's deep run.

Phillips did repeatedly make big hands, and got paid off a lot. His AK hand versus Demidov AQ was the real kicker - he picked the exact line to lose the most chips and equity - if he had just punted it pre it would've been a different FT for him.

Yea, not showing up yet on the schedule, which I assume is just a temporary issue. They dropped some of episode 1 from 2009 on YouTube earlier this morning, so it's clear that they intend to release the 2009 content this week.

2008 is probably one of the more compelling years overall. Lots of memorable spots and players. Another one that neither of us mentioned is Joe Bishop, who had some fun hands and moments.

Now available via --> ON DEMAND --> WSOP CLASSIC --> WSOP CLASSIC 2009 in the menus.

I might just have to renew my membership for this feature alone. I have the 2003 set on DVD, and I've longed to revisit the 2005 coverage as that's when I first started watching/playing the game. But the 2009 WSOP holds a special place for me: it was my first trip to Vegas, and also one of the first uses of my "nifty fifty" lens (an ultrafast 50mm lens that works very well in low-light conditions, like a casino). Must have taken 300 photos of Day 6 or whatever that was.

Somewhere in the 2009 coverage is one of the more notorious hands (besides Kopp's blowup) that I witnessed firsthand. ElkY was in it, and in fact might have been the raiser/bettor throughout. Multiple players saw a K-5-X flop. Bet, call, call, with the others folding. The turn paired the board. Bet, call, call. The river completed a possible straight or flush. Enough to slow down the betting, anyway.

Elky and the other player checked to Cook, who checked behind... with 55, for a boat.

Of course, this created quite a murmur on the rail, but I couldn't even react to it: I was standing next to a group of Scott's friends. Really nice people, who I had just met shortly before this hand. They cheered and clapped, clearly not understanding how much value their boy squandered.

I'm about halfway through 2009 and I've watched 2003-2008 in their entirety, so I've seen quite a lot of Hachem by now. Solid player, but man you are right, his table demeanor is pretty bad in general. Just acts like the most entitled prick in the world, like it's a national tragedy every time he loses a pot. Very whiny and condescending. Not a good look for him.

Only other thing that stands out to me about the 2009 telecast so far is how horribly Lindgren and Lisandro played in their televised hands at the featured table. I'm sure they're much better at NLHE than this small sample of hands showed, but they basically made the wrong decision on every street in every hand. It's pretty brutal to watch.

Up to Day 7 of the 2008 and Peter Eastgate has literally been shown zero times...
I mean maybe a glimpse, but zero hands shown.

Seems kind of odd editing, I know he’s got the personality of wall paper but still.

Forgot about Tiffany Michelle

Yea, I noticed that too. They were very slow to roll out Eastgate, Demidov, Schwartz, etc. You don't see them until the very end and then they dominate the last couple episodes.

That was the November Nine era when (I think) they didn't know who was going to win while they were editing the early episodes, so it feels like their strategy that year was to go all-in on Chino to build him up as the "established pro" at the FT. I imagine that nine random no-names is not what they were aiming for when they devised the November Nine concept.

That said, even despite eventually getting some huge names at the FT in the November Nine era (Ivey, Mizrachi, Tran, Josephy), it's funny how many brutal close calls with great storylines narrowly missed out (Carlos, Bauman/Hille, Negreanu).

Anyway, I'm still working my way through 2009, even though they've moved onto 2010 this week. The huge number of episodes really becomes noticeable around 2008-2009, and it's simply a lot of content to get through.

I'll post some final thoughts on 2009 whenever I finally finish it.

2009 Day 1A - Watching Lex completely punk his table is still great, that poor German kid.
Lex 3 bets K4s and calls off another 50 BBs with it when the German kid shoves 76s for some reason... Just insane

I've been watching about 3 episodes a day (What a life), and you really realize just how annoying Norman Chad is. Also, I HATE Johnny Chan, what a god damn goober who beat a few $50 nightly fields

Finally done with 2009. What a marathon. 25 episodes in total, the last of which is double the usual run time. Altogether, it's about 20 hours of content. That's a long way off from the 2003 telecast, which you can blast through in ~5 hours.

Some final thoughts on this one:

- It's funny how many flash-in-the-pan types there are in poker. You'll see guys like Scott Fischman and Hevad Khan get a bunch of screen time for a couple years, and then just totally drop off the face of the Earth. This 2009 telecast features a healthy dose of some players who have completely disappeared like Ville Wahlbeck, Joe Sebok, and Peter Eastgate. The shelf life in poker can be very brief.

- On that note, it was fun to see Eastgate and Dennis Phillips make top 100 runs after reaching the FT a year before. Eastgate seems like a very self-aware guy who decided that poker isn't a healthy part of his lifestyle and I don't think we can question that choice, but it's kind of a shame to see a promising talent drop out of the scene after achieving so much so fast.

- Esfandiari went out in 24th after running a bluff against the wrong opponent, Steve Begleiter. I guess Begleiter deserves some credit for running as deep as he did (he finished 6th), but in the televised hands he seemed to overplay borderline hands and does not strike me as the type of guy to be making any big folds.

- Darvin Moon is one of the more indelible "one-off" characters in WSOP history. He was a card rack who just kept crushing people with monster hands, but he also showed some variety to his play and mixed up his betting patterns to at least make himself hard to play against. I found myself rooting for him even though he wasn't the most skilled player in the field. He was courteous, humble, and a little tougher than you might think.

- The most famous hand from this telecast has to be the Darvin Moon vs. Billy Kopp flush vs. flush hand for piles of chips with 12 players left. I'm no ICM wizard, but there's probably a decent argument that neither player played this hand well given stack sizes and the paired board on the turn. Kopp's line just seems suicidal though and is probably on the short list of worst ICM punts in the post-Moneymaker era (I'm putting Scott Lazar 2005 and Philip Hilm 2007 as the other major contenders, and maybe Cheong 2010). What a wasted opportunity by Kopp.

- This year is perhaps best-known for Ivey's deep run. In my memory it was smooth sailing from start to finish for him, but he actually hit a very rough patch on day 8 and had to dig deep to find chips when running cold. Of course, it doesn't help that he mucked a winner for 1-2M chips at showdown! As far as the FT goes, the only spot I think he'll really regret is folding JJ to Saout's pre-flop 3-bet with 77. Maybe he thought he was ahead of Saout's range, but felt that his edge against the field was too big to justify any risk if Saout had AK or AQ. It seems like a tight fold. In general though, he just didn't run well in all-in situations at the FT or this might have been very different. It would've been a lot of fun to see him with a healthy enough stack to really start bulldozing, but alas it wasn't meant to be...

- Joe Cada has an insane record in the last decade and is obviously a great player, but watching this event again, you can really see why he was hated at the time. He repeatedly got his money in bad and sucked out, consistently overplaying baby pairs. He's proven his greatness over time, but if all you knew about him was this 2009 FT, you'd think he's just a reckless lucksack.

- Overall, this final table is one of the worst advertisements for poker as a game of skill. It was just a complete shove fest, and it felt like the worst hand was always winning. Even though Ivey finished 7th, he lasted about 65% of the edited telecast, probably because ESPN knew interest would crater as soon as he was off the screen.

- I think Saout "won" this FT in terms of consistent decision making and getting his money in good, but the luck was not with him. Schaffel and Shulman never really made any mistakes in the televised hands, but had no real luck at the FT.

Next up is 2010, the final telecast in 441 Productions history, and thus the last hurrah of the famous guitar twang intro that they used from 2003-2010. This one is mainly known for Cheong's crazy spew, the Affleck/Duhamel brutality, and Candio dancing around like a clown. I intend to watch it eventually, but at a meaty 27 episodes, it's not something I'm likely to blast through right away.

Chan still cashes the ME with some frequency, so I think he has more skill than you're giving him credit for, but I've always noticed that there's a huge contrast between how he was presented in Rounders (cold-blooded and intimidating) and his IRL demeanor (he seems pretty chill and even a bit giggly sometimes). Nothing wrong with that necessarily.

Seems like a dude who had his time at the top, crushed, made a good chunk of money, and is content to recede to the background and just play casually here and there.

The FT gets ridiculous with people just punting in stacks fairly deep with very little flop play. I don't think people felt that comfortable playing flops given there was so much money on the line and would rather just run it pre. This even includes Saout on his bust-out hand where he ships 40m on top a 2.5m raise with 88.

I think Ivey just really did not expect Saout to 3-bet 77 versus an early-positioner opener. I remember watching it live and 3-bets looked way tighter than that and I think Ivey is in a tough spot with JJ at that point in the FT.

The Kopp hand is really bad, he probably thought it was bad but didn't want to make the tough decision of folding at any point so decided to punt it in himself, inventing some narrative that "this Moon guy is unpredictable", even though he shows up with big hands in this spot. The last hand where Moon called flop and raised turn was with AJ on a KQTx board and his opponent then correctly folded TT on a blank river getting like 4 or 5-1. Very stark contrast to this hand. Kopp already decided this was the hand he was going to double once he flopped it, and he probably just thought there were enough "random" scenarios where he ships turn and gets it in versus AK with an A diamonds or something when in reality there just aren't enough of those.

There were a ton of great or fun players in the ~top 100 this year so it is a shame that the FT play wasn't great. Had a fun known TV names like Hachem, Eastgate, JC Tran, Kenny Tran, Antonio, Benyamine, Sebok, as well as great players like Hac Dang, Andrew Lichtenberger, Ben Lamb etc.

IIRC he tried to create some justification after the fact about how he knew Darvin had a bigger flush and was turning his hand into a bluff to represent the full house, but it certainly seems like he just overplayed his hand and spazzed. People become reckless when they don't respect their opponent and I think once he flopped the flush Kopp just figured that he was getting an easy double vs. a fishy player. He still walked away with $800k+, but how much equity did he light on fire there? Maybe $1-2M in EV, plus whatever the distinction of being a "November Niner" means to him, if anything.

This was back in the days when online poker was still in the USA and sponsorships were more of a thing, so he probably dropped some value there as well. On that note, Joe Cada wore Ultimate Bet gear on the days leading up to the FT and swapped it for PokerStars at the actual final table. Kind of funny. You don't see as many patches and hats these days.

Finally diving into 2010 now. In all my time watching the WSOP, I'm actually not sure I've ever watched this one all the way through. I've seen the major hands like Cheong vs. Duhamel and Duhamel vs. Affleck, but I don't know if I've seen the full run-up.

Episode 2 was a bizarre time capsule. Gavin Smith was on the main featured table and Thuy Doan was featured heavily, so it was kind of unsettling to spend so much time watching people who are no longer alive. Between them, Devilfish, Chad Brown, Chip Reese, Amir Vahedi, and a few others who have passed in the last 10-15 years, watching these old broadcasts can have a bizarre, morbid layer.

They also spent a lot of time trying to hype up Annette Oberstad on the secondary featured table as the next poker prodigy. She had a couple big scores right out of the gate in the late 00s, but only had one six-figure score in the 2010s decade, so the superstar trajectory never really materialized. It seems like she was just a mediocre player on a heater at the time. You see this a lot in these old broadcasts where they hype up some rising star and then 2-3 years later that person has fallen totally off the map. No wonder they still stick Negreanu and Hellmuth on the featured table every year. Say what you want about them, but they've stood the test of time and are still relevant.

About to finish 2009. It's amazing how unlikable Hachem is, just a complete ass.

Also, I can't not laugh out loud at Harrington wearing a neck brace all event because his neck gets sore from playing poker. Even in the previous years all he does in complain about how grueling it is having to sit and play poker. He's the oldest man ever