While 2009 WSOP Main Event champion Joe Cada has been on a publicity tear since his victory, not much has been heard from the other members of the November Nine. Well, Phil Ivey has been winning millions in high-stakes online poker action, but the other seven guys have been pretty quiet. Steven Begleiter, former Wall Streeter and sixth place finisher in the Main Event, recently came out of seclusion to discuss his poker future on Bloomberg.

Joining news hosts Mark Crumpton and Lori Rothman, Begleiter implied that he's not going to give up his day job to devote his life to poker any time soon. He said that during the break awaiting the November final table, he played quite a few poker tournaments to help prepare himself. But now that that's over, he's "probably back to being a one tournament a year guy." That, despite the fact that his final table appearance earned him approximately $1.6 million dollars for a few days work.

He also went on to say that many of the same traits that make a poker player great, would easy cross over to a job on Wall Street. He even said that if his former company Bear Stearns hadn't exploded during the banking collapse, he'd probably have been trying to hire some of the players that he met during his WSOP run.

During the interview, it was pretty clear that Bloomberg News was interested in Begleiter more for his background, than out of a greater interest in poker. At least that was the impression given when one of the hosts mistakenly stated that the WSOP Main Event was a $10 million buy-in tournament. It seems that kind of mis-information runs in the Bloomberg family.

Phil Ivey didn't help. The youngest champion in World Series of Poker couldn't draw them in. Even the ultimate everyman, the Delaware lumberjack, didn't make a difference. Despite all the great stories and action at the final table of the 2009 WSOP, the number of viewers watching the event on TV was actually lower than back in 2008. Not a whole lot lower, but a bit.

In 2008, the final table got a 1.9 household rating. This year, that number shrunk slightly, to 1.8. Now, I'm no expert, but my sources (Wikipedia) tell me that each ratings point represents 1.14 million viewers. But for those who love poker on TV, there's not too much to worry about. Viewership in both 2008 and 2009 was up, compared to back in 2007, before they delayed the final table until November. So the whole idea of building hype by having the final table play months after the rest of the event does seem to be working. Oh, and ratings were up by 13% among the all-important, beloved-by-advertisers, male 25-54 demographic.

Oh, and if anyone's paying really close attention, they may have noticed that I'm 0 for 2 in recent predictions. In an earlier post, I said my money was on Steven Begleiter to take the bracelet. And a couple days ago, I predicted the TV ratings for 2009 would be way up over 2008. Since bad things come in threes, I'm going to make one more prediction...I hereby prognosticate that I'm not going to win $10,000 on a scratch n' win lottery ticket tomorrow.

Last night on ESPN, the long-awaited November Nine got their time in the sun, as the TV network aired two and a half hours of highlights from the final table. For those who were actually following the final table as it happened, via websites, blogs or in the flesh, the outcome wasn't particularly surprising of course. Joe Cada still won, Darvin Moon still played with his now-trademark mix of luck, randomness and occasionally brilliant reads, and Phil Ivey still didn't do anything.

But since viewers of the broadcast could now see the player's hole cards, there were still plenty of fascinating moments along the way. And considering how low Cada's chip stack got, down to five big blinds at one point, it was fun to watch how he clawed his way back to eventually take the bracelet and the huge pile of money.

One of the hands that has people talking was a battle between Steven Begleiter and eventual runner-up Darvin Moon. The logger from Delaware raised to $1.3 million with K-Q and Begleiter raised to $3.9 million with his As-Qs. The flop favored Begleiter in a big way, 3-4-2 with two spades. Begleiter had a 93% advantage at this point, with his overcard, and a handful of straight and flush draws. Begleiter bet $5.3 million, which Moon quickly raised to $15 million. At this point Begleiter went all-in with his final $6 million in chips. Despite the relatively small bet and the huge pile of chips in the middle, Moon folded his K-Q. And in a moment that will have Moon hiding the TV remote from his wife for the next few weeks, he told her he had a pair of Queens, but that he put Begleiter on AKs.

There were plenty of other dramatic moments along the way, but when all was said and done, the winner was Joe Cada, which we all already knew anyway. It remains to be seen if ESPN is a winner too. Considering Phil Ivey's presence at the final table, along with the media-hyped stories based on Begleiter and Moon's backgrounds, it would be a safe bet that more people watched last night's final table than 2008's. And we should find out soon enough exactly what the ratings were for last night's broadcast.

Joe Cada, 2009 WSOP Main Event winner. (Image Courtesy WSOP)

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - The 2009 WSOP Main Event was definitely one for the record books. Not only did it have the world longest Final Table but it was also won by the youngest player yet to win a WSOP Main Event.

Initial play saw Joe Cada and Darvin Moon exchange chips and eventually break even just before the break. When the two players came back almost dead even in chips Moon quickly took charge and cranked up the pressure leaving Joe Cada scrambling and eventually in a position where he had to start playing defensively – the death knell for a heads-up match.

Based on the attitude of the crowd in the Rio in Las Vegas, the buzz about the blogosphere and the tweets of Twitter, Moon is respected as a person but more or less reviled as a poker player.

In a world where poker players feel constantly obligated to defend themselves as practitioners of a skill game, Moon did them no favors by totally steamrolling his way to a chip lead at the Final Table and almost taking down the whole thing.

An interesting retrospective, PokerNews does a good job of going over the luck factor that led to both Moon’s and Cada’s ascension to the heads-up Final Table.

Cada for his part played an impressive heads-up match and didn't get rattled or make any big mistakes even as Moon reveresed the stacks by taking a 2-1 lead at one point. Moon however made a big misstep when after a small raise on the turn from Cada, he reraised all-in with an open-ended straight draw and was called by Cada who held two pair. Moon would never come back from being crippled and would eventually call a push from Cada and would race his Jd-Qd against Cada's pocket nines. The nines held and Cada took the WSOP bracelet and became the youngest ever WSOP Main Event winner. A record that will be extremely hard to break.

For those looking for the next “Ambassador of Poker” a big sigh of relief is in order. Moon had stated on numerous occasions that he intends to return to the woods of Maryland where he will continue with his logging business in relative obscurity whether he won or not. Cada on the other hand has shown keen interest in representing the game and even wore a Poker Player's Association patch for the Final Table. Expect to see a lot more of Joe Cada in the future.

For their efforts, Moon will take home $5.2 million and Cada will take home $8.6 million. Interestingly, Cada will actually end up taking home less money than Moon as he we will walk with only around $2.5 million after paying his backers and taxes.

Darvin Moon pulled ahead in the WSOP heads-up Final Table almost immediately. (Image Courtesy ESPN)

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - After only a few hands into the WSOP heads-up final and the logger from Maryland, Darvin Moon, has already taken the chip lead from Joe Cada.

The first hand of the night was the biggest of Moon’s victories when he called Cada’s pre-flop raise of 3.5 million.

The flop fell 3s-Ks-2d and Cada shot 3.5 million into the center. Moon didn’t hesitate to grab two large stacks of chips and push them forward for a raise to 10 million. Cada called.

The turn came the Ad and Cada checked to Moon who returned with another 10 million. Cada inst-called.

The river was a Kc and both players check and Moon showed Qs-Qd and Cada showed 9d-9c.

Moon continued this little burst of momentum which ended up bringing him into a slight lead by about 15 million.

Darvin Moon and Joe Cada square off before the 2009 WSOP Heads-up action.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack opened the ceremonies with a short speech that left pretty much everyone in the media room scratching their heads when he proclaimed this WSOP Final Table to be the most exciting ever played out.

Apparently Jeffrey wasn’t watching during the two four hour periods where absolutely nothing of note happened over the 17 hour Final Table. Although to be fair, the edited down ESPN coverage might end up being particularly good.

Following that, tournament direct Jack Effel took the mic and got the crowd worked up by asking who they were cheering for.

“If you want to see Darvin Moon win the bracelet let me hear you!” he called.

This was followed by a smattering of cheers and an overwhelming amount of booing. Joe Cada with a huge cheering section, is clearly a crowd favourite.

Cards are in the air now so stay tuned to the Cake Poker Blog for more live updates.

Joe Cada lurks behind Darvin Moon, ready to pounce on the WSOP Final Table first place cash.


LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - Who says Ace-King never wins? Joe Cada won what might have been the biggest race of the 2009 WSOP, and probably his life, with Big Slick.

It all started with Cada betting from the button for 2.5 million and Antoine Saout reraised him all-in. Darvin Moon got out of the way from the big blind Cada quickly made the call showing Ad-Ks against Saout’s 8s-8h.

The flop brought 5h-4s-5c giving Saout a great shot at doubling up. The turn brought him even closer with the 10d. But with 6 outs left on the river, the Kc hits and Joe Cada catapulted into the chip lead for heads-up action while Saout hit the rails where he got to experience that bizarre feeling of being upset after winning $3.48 million.

Sounds exciting doesn’t it? Wish you were there don’t you? Well keep in mind this came after a record setting Final Table that lasted 17 hours with playing coming to an end at 6am local time. And there’s still heads-up play left before the record books can pencil in how long exactly this record breaking WSOP Final Table took to play out.

Cada enters heads-up against the logger from Maryland, Darvin Moon, with a 9 to 4 chip advantage. First place will take home $8,547,042 while second will have to make due with $5,182,928. The action begins tonight at 10pm with ESPN coverage to follow tomorrow night at 10pm. The Cake Poker Blog will be there tonight bringing you live highlights from the Rio in Las Vegas.

This man, Tom Dwan, has a million bucks to throw around on side bets.

When Phil Ivey busted out of the final table of the WSOP main event, he waved goodbye to the $8.5 million-ish grand prize. But just as significantly, he also lost the chance to win at least $6 million more in side bets he had placed with everyone from Andy Bloch, to Tom Dwan, to your grandma.

When there were still 2,500 players in the main event field, Bloch bet against Phil Ivey to the tune of $20,000. He gave Ivey 99 to 1 odds against a victory, meaning that if Phil had managed to win, Bloch would have owed him almost $2 million bucks. Nobody knows the specifics odds or timing of the Tom Dwan bet, but we do know that if Phil had won the main event, Dwan would have owed him about a million bucks.

And those were just the two big ones that people are talking about. Ivey also had his finger in a lot of other pies behind-the-scenes, including reported bets with Daniel Negreanu, Mike Matusow and plenty of others. Of course it's all academic now, since Ivey didn't win. But you can bet that even now that he's been knocked out, he's probably cooked up a few side bets to keep things interesting when the final head-to-head battle takes place today.

At every major poker tournament, the money risked in side action often rivals the actual prize money. After all, these poker players are serious gamblers, the kind of people who would probably place a bet on whether Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears will be the first to release a sex tape. It's crazy to think, but whenever one of the big names in poker takes down a bracelet, that huge stack of cash on the table is most likely just a small chunk of their actual winnings on the day.

After a prolonged and painful shortstack existence at the 2009 WSOP Final Table, Phil Ivey was finally eliminated in 7th place. (Image Courtesy CardPlayer)

It would take 175 hands but finally Darvin Moon’s indomitable luck pulled the plug on Phil Ivey who had been on life support for hours.

The fateful hand began with Ivey pushing all-in from under the gun and everyone folding around to Moon in the big blind. Moon made the call and flipped over Ad-Qs which, much to the thrill of the audience, left him totally dominated by Ivey’s Ac-Ks.

The excitement in the live theatre was palpable as chants of, “Ivey, Ivey, Ivey!” filled the room. Ivey himself seemed to be the least interested in the cards to come as he casually snacked on the apple he had been working on.

The air was sucked out of the room, however, when the flop brought Qd-6c-6s. Ivey didn’t flinch, but he did he return to eating his apple as he was reduced to just a handful of outs for his tournament life. The board of course brought no help for the man that many consider the best poker player on the planet as the 3c and 5c fell.

Ivey’s cash of $ 1,404,014 brought his career earnings up to $12,236,714 moving him up from the third all-time most tournament earnings to replace Jamie Gold in second place. Ivey now sits right behind Daniel Negreanu who has $12,427,047. If Ivey could have held on and finished in fifth it would’ve been enough to top Nedgreanu.

Steve Begleiter and the rest of the November Nine are starting to feel the heat of the media spotlight. (Image Courtesy LasVegasVegas.com)

If you’re a true poker fan, you should probably just take the rest of the week off. Use up those banked vacation days, take a sabbatical, fake swine flu...Hell, it might even be worth it to go down to the nearest clinic and lick some door handles so you can actually catch H1N1. Because if you have to work this week, there’s no way you’ll be able to check out even one tenth of the media coverage leading up to the start of the WSOP final table showdown on Saturday. 

As you already know, the Main Event at the World Series of Poker is by far the biggest event in the game.  And this year it’s blessed to have one of the biggest poker stars in the world qualifying for the “November Nine”. Phil Ivey may not really ever talk, but his uncanny skill, experience and unreadable poker face make him one of the premier names in the game.

 And there are some other good stories too, from the logger starring as the Humble Chip-Leader, to the former Wall Street banker playing the role of The Villain (though technically it wasn’t 100% his personal fault that my mutual funds are now worth less than my 1991 Hyundai) to the poker magazine editor, guest-starring as The Guy Who Phil Helmuth is Coaching.  All that has combined with poker’s ongoing rise in mainstream popularity to ensure that fans are going to spend the next week developing a very intimate relationship with their TV remotes and reading glasses.

Of course the build-up to the televised final table started the second the rest of the WSOP ended. But it goes into fifth gear this week. Tonight, ESPN is airing a couple hours of coverage from the Main Event, whittling the field from 18 down to the November Nine. Time Magazine just posted a story about that Wall Streeter Steven Begleiter and all your favorite poker websites are filling up with discussion, predictions and minutiae about the final table.  

So grab a few of your favorite beverage, start prepping that apologetic email to your boss about why you won’t be coming in for the rest of the week, and get ready to bask in the hype.