This week saw ESPN’s 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event coverage begin with episodes one and two out of 27, and focused on Day 1a and 1b action. The usual suspects were calling the action for ESPN, Lon McEachern and Norman Chad, and for the most part ESPN’s coverage remains much the same as it has since 2003, with a few minor technical enhancements.
Episode 1 brought us the action from Day 1a with a featured table that included Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, and joining Matusow at the featured table was Jason Lester who made it to the final table at the 2003 Main Event. One interesting hand involving Matusow saw the dealer expose Matusow’s second hole-card –an Ace—which prompted “The Mouth” to say: “If this other one is an ace I vomit and puke right now, that’s all,”. Of course the other card was in fact an Ace.
Other notables in the field on Day 1a were TJ Cloutier, Ted Forrest, Scott Seiver, Isaac Haxton, Erik Seidel, Ray Romano, and three former WSOP Main Event Champions, Bobby Baldwin, Greg Raymer, and Chris Moneymaker.
As is usually the case on Day 1’s the table talk often overrides the actual play, and poker fans were treated to two interesting stories during Day 1a action. First was the weight-loss prop bet between Matusow and Ted Forrest, and then there was an interesting story told by Erik Seidel that involved a Scrabble hustler, his mother, and walking home through the snow in socks!
Episode 2 on Tuesday saw the action shift to Day 1b of the Main Event with most of the action revolving around two tables: The first featured 2010 bracelet winner Gavin Smith and Ivan Demidov, while the second featured table needed only one player to carry the action, Annette Obrestad.
Other big names in the Day 1b field included UB Poker spokesman Joe Sebok, Liv Boeree, Jean-Robert Bellande, Phil Laak, Jennifer Tilly, and Bertrand “ElkY” Grosspelier.
Obrestad kept the ESPN cameras focused on the now 21 year-old phenom, as she participated in a roller-coaster ride in her first WSOP Main Event, first losing with a full-house to a larger full-house, and then hitting a 2-outer to stay alive after pushing pocket 9’s on a 10-X-X flop, only to be called by pocket Jacks. Obrestad was eventually eliminated when her A-J couldn’t outrun Chris Bjorin’s pocket Queens, thus ending her disappointing 2010 WSOP debut.
Next week’s 2010 WSOP Main Event episodes on ESPN will show the highlights from Day 1c and 1d.
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Written by Steve Ruddock on August 12th, 2010