Players 2 Watch

The World Series of Poker is to poker what the NCAA Tournament is to college basketball. While our eyes are on the big guns to win it all, it’s the unlikely stories that usually steal the show.

Every year we watch new players rise out of nothingness, gaining fame and fortune one hand at a time. From Chris Moneymaker winning the World Championship in 2003 to Jeff Madsen making four final tables with two bracelets in 2006, the World Series has set the stage for the player without a name to have his day.

This year, we look forward to a new breed of poker players looking to plant their seed in the poker storybooks. Bluff selected eight individuals who, if the cards fall right, might be the subjects of the stories we are telling a year from now…

The first story I ever heard about Marc Karam was from a friend of mine, as I had noticed Marc having significant success in several big tournaments and had asked about him. My friend replied, “Oh yeah, I played with him in Monte Carlo. He’s a f**king maniac!” That “maniac” loose-aggressive style has already taken Marc to two final tables in major tournaments in 2007, for over $1.7 million in winnings (which is incredible considering he has only played those two tournaments!).

While Marc’s play might be described by some as “maniacal,” his composure at the table is far from it. Marc “looks” like a poker player, his motions very stoic and deliberate. He does not let his emotions get the best of him, which suits a player well for the World Series when a player needs to be on his best game every single day for a period of almost two months.

Marc’s regular games are high-stakes No Limit Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha cash games. Marc plays in some of the biggest games you can find on the internet, with overwhelming success. Marc is a part of ‘Team Eurolinx’, which features a strong group of mostly European players (Marc himself is Canadian) that have been having great success on the tournament circuits on the other side of the pond.

This summer, Marc is making the trip to Las Vegas this summer to play at the World Series, where he plans to play at least fifteen events. With his smart aggressive play, he is certainly likely to build some huge chip stacks and contend in several of the events he plays.

OK, OK, so I am kind of cheating here. Eric isn’t really a rookie to World Series fame and fortune. He DOES have two bracelets. He was at one time the youngest player to ever win a bracelet, and then won his second the very next year. But we here at Bluff feel E-Fro still doesn’t get the credit he deserves. To illustrate the kind of overall poker ability E-Fro has, the two events he won bracelets in were Limit Hold’em and Pot-Limit Omaha, and he also has WSOP cashes in Razz and No-Limit!

We talked to Eric about his bracelets, and when asked which meant more to him, Eric replied, “I actually have no idea. The first one, setting the record for youngest to ever win by so much, in just the third event I could legally play in my life, was incredible. I never actually considered the possibility of winning a bracelet, I was just going out to Vegas to have a good time and play some cards. I liked my chances to do pretty well, but not win. The second bracelet obviously validated the first and the ability I had to play poker.”

If a second bracelet simply validated his ability, what will a third bracelet do? With the size of the fields in recent years, Eric’s back to back bracelet wins as a TWENTY-TWO year old has to be one of the most incredible World Series accomplishments in recent years. A third straight bracelet this year would put him in serious running for one of the great World Series performances of all time.

Jonathan has been on a serious tear in live tournaments since turning 21. Affectionately known to most as “J-Little”, his recent cashes include a 5th at the $10,000 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure for over $300,000, and a two final tables at WPT Championship preliminary events.

Jonathan used to be an almost strictly internet player, but has recently been traveling across the country trying his luck on the live circuit.

J-Little’s first true taste of success came in January at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. He found himself coming in to the final table second in chips, with a great chance to take home the $1.5 million first prize. Early at the final table, Jon got all his chips in the middle holding two jacks against the A-K off-suit of Robert Mizrachi (brother to ‘The Grinder’) and it looked great until an A fell on the very last card, crippling Little, and he would go out shortly thereafter.

A lot of good players would have a tough time recovering from that Ace on the river that might have cost him a million dollars, but Jonathan bounced right back. At a $3,000 No-Limit event at the Bellagio leading up to the WPT Championship, Jonathan got heads-up with J.C. Tran, the hottest tournament poker player in the world, who was so impressed with Little’s play that he agreed to a chop heads-up.

If Jonathan maintains the sort of consistency and composure that has granted him this much success thus far, he will be in contention to have a monster World Series of Poker. We recommend you keep an eye out for him.

There’s a lot of talent coming out of the Dallas/Ft. Worth area these days. One of the most promising players is Travis Rice, a name you are surely not yet familiar. Travis plays online as ‘TravestyFund’ and has been playing the biggest buy-in tournaments and sit-and-gos for years. Travis comes from a school of young players that began their poker career grinding it out playing thousands of sit-andgos a month on Party Poker, eventually working their way up to the highest stakes. Travis has moved on since then, now focusing mainly on live tournaments and NL cash games when he plays online.

Travis’s first big success came this Spring in Los Angeles during the L.A. Poker Classic where he won a preliminary event for nearly $200,000. Since then he has been playing most of the big tournaments all over the country.

Travis and a group of friends (some of them part of a group that calls themselves the ‘Ship it Holla Ballas”) have rented a house for the entire summer, where they dedicate themselves to two things exclusively all summer: poker and parties. However, Travis does understand that the kind of success he is striving for this summer takes a healthy dose of discipline, so he plans to take his ‘poker days’ seriously and use his days off to do all the partying.

When asked about his expectations for the summer, Travis told Bluff that he “understands that it's mathematically possible that I play optimally and don’t cash in one of the events that I play this summer…. I just wanna get lucky a couple of times, that’s all it will take.”

Ryan Daut had never had a big score in a live tournament when he traveled to the Bahamas at the beginning of 2007. As you might know, he went on to win the tournament for over $1.5 million. He entered a field stacked with internet qualifiers, but that doesn’t mean it was a field of amateurs. The best internet players in the world always make the trip to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, as do most of the best professionals. As the field narrowed, Ryan played solid, smart poker while learning important lessons along the way.

Perhaps the most important lesson came in an early hand in the tournament. On the very first day, Ryan took a big risk for all of his chips. He was facing a river bet from a player who had bet every street, and he was sure the player had a real hand. The board read 3-4-6-6-7, and all Ryan had was a missed flush draw. Ryan moved all in over the top of the river bet for all of his chips. The player went into the tank for a very long time and finally someone called the clock on him. The player eventually folded at the end of his time bank, but Ryan learned a very important lesson in tournament poker on that hand. He told Bluff, “I remember thinking afterwards that high risk moves like these were not how tournaments were won, and I concentrated on playing smaller pots the rest of the tournament.”

This kind of poker I.Q. will make Ryan a big threat in any tournament he plays this year during the World Series. He’ll also be playing at least fifteen other tournaments this summer, and he tells us to expect to see him make at least one final table. We think that’s a safe bet!

Bluff wrote a story about David and his roommate Tom Dwan in January 2007 titled “Lifestyles of the Sick and Famous,” and it highlighted the success and lifestyle both young internet players had achieved, all before the age of 21. It was then that David first mentioned the World Series to me, telling me of his aspirations to play as many events as possible once he turned 21 years old.

David has already made a name for himself in the online community, as he has been beating the highest level cash games, tournaments, and sit-n-gos for a long time. Turning 21 will give David the opportunity to take his wide array of poker knowledge to Las Vegas, where he plans to play as many events as possible this summer.

As money isn’t an issue (David has more money than most people his age could even dream of), he plans to play a lot of the biggest buy-in events on the schedule, while specifically looking forward to the rebuy tournaments, because they allow a player with deep pockets to buy a big stack early, giving him the ability to go deep in the tournament when the rebuy period is over.

One thing David spoke to me about specifically is his plan to go after the record for the youngest bracelet winner. He will have two weeks after his 21st birthday to do it, and he plans on playing every event possible in order to accomplish this goal. With the wealth of knowledge, experience, and financial freedom David has, there is a very good chance David will have a monster World Series!

I first met Alan in early March while the “Wynn Classic” tournament series was going on. Before my flight, we had made plans to meet and do an interview for the magazine. He told me that he would be playing a tournament that day, so he might be late for the interview; he had made the second day of the tournament and planned to make the final table and win it. It’s common for a good poker player to exude this kind of confidence, so I didn’t really think much of it.

As my flight landed in Las Vegas, I turned on my phone and got the text message: “Final table, five players left, chip leader.” After getting to my hotel room, I shot right over to the Wynn, but by the time I got there the tournament was over. I gave Alan a call; he picked up and said, “Oh yeah, I won that tournament.”

Alan isn’t a stranger to a World Series final table, as he placed second in the $5,000 Pot Limit Hold’em event last year. While most poker players can only dream of having that kind of success at the WSOP, Alan was not satisfied, and told Bluff that he has spent all year working on his game for the World Series, and is completely dedicated to winning his first bracelet this year. He sent a full itinerary, outlining every event he plans on playing (giving himself very little time off), his personal goals for himself, and a list of things he needs to do to play his best poker. With that kind of focus and determination, and given my one experience doubting Alan, he is a sure bet to make big waves at the RIO this summer.

Carl Olson (aka ‘colson10’) was one of the first stars of online poker. He has been beating the biggest online tournaments for years, to go in hand with considerable live success. The first of those came in the inaugural season of the European Poker Tour (EPT) where he encountered a final table with long time friend Brandon Schaefer and rising star Justin Bonomo (ZeeJustin). Carl ended up headsup with Brandon, and eventually scored a second place finish. Ever since, Carl has been on the rise, with career live tournament cashes exceeding $500,000, including one final table in 2006.

A lot of younger internet players have a certain ‘image’, where most opponents immediately pin them as one of those ‘internet kids’. They talk a lot, dress in very specific ways, show a lot of bluffs, and play very loose and aggressive. While Carl is certainly an aggressive player, he doesn’t necessarily have ‘young internet kid’ look to him. He looks like someone who has experienced the ups and downs of the game and whose primary focus at the table is just to gather the chips of his opponents.

Also, unlike some players on our list, Carl has had a few years of live tournament experience and has survived a couple of years at the World Series. He understands how difficult it is to play your best game night in and night out and tells Bluff that his main goal for the summer of 2007 is to end up ahead at the end and to make at least one final table.