Latecomer Celebrities

If you watch Poker on TV, you have seen a lot of the famous Poker players that registered late for Wednesday's $1500 No Limit Hold'em tournament.  Players are allowed to register for WSOP tournaments up to 2 hours after they start.  They are given a full stack of chips even though they may face others who have been playing for a while.  Officials have decided that players who registered between noon and one o'clock will all start at one o'clock and those who registered between one and two o'clock will start at two o'clock at their own tables which were added to accommodate these additional players.

I drew an assignment to deal at a table in this area.  I was amazed when I saw who was being seated at my tables.

Here is a partial list of "famous" players I dealt to at the first three tables I pushed into:

Dan Heimiller - Won over a million dollars just in WSOP events
Men Nguyen - 6 WSOP Bracelets, "All you can eat, baby."
Chau Giang - Doyle's buddy in the "Big Game", 3 WSOP bracelets
Jonny Chan -  Featured in the movie Rounders and twice winner of the WSOP Main Event
Dewey Tomko - 3 Bracelets, Poker Hall of Fame 2008
Michael Binger - WPT star and won over $5 million in WSOP events
Phil Hellmuth - Holds WSOP record for winning Bracelets (12). Current number one
Allen Cunningham - five-time WSOP bracelet winner, Player of the Year at the 2005 WSOP
Jeff Shulman - 2009 Final Table WSOP Main Event and Editor of Cardplayer Magazine
John Phan - 2 WSOP Bracelets and 4 WPT televised final  tables.

Apparently, these players do not put much value in playing the first level of the tournament when the pots are very small and do not have a big impact on the outcome of the tournament.  In fact Phil Hellmuth is famous for buying into the Main Event and not showing up to play for the first hour or two, then making a grand entrance complete with costumes and television cameras.

Many of these late registrants also subscribe to the strategy of "Go big or go home" where they play extremely agressively and they either build a huge chip stack that can carry them to the top of the leaderboard or bust out quickly and not spend a lot of time in a tournament they will not make money in.  Proof of this is that in the first five hands I dealt, three players busted out of the tournament.  For two of those players, they busted out on the first hand they voluntarily put money into.  Just lit a match to $1500!