I apologize for at all seeming negative, I just want to clarify a few aspects of the story which I feel are a little misleading:<p>"The buy in is a steep $1,000" - Yes, in absolute terms $1,000 buy-in is high, however by WSOP standards this is the lowest buy-in for an open event (IE anybody can enter).<p>"if he took home fourth (the place at which he’s currently ranked), Chan would take home more than $150,000" - At this stage in the tournament even looking at the payout for your position is just crazy. Even the first place player right now would likely be better off taking $150k if somebody offered it to him right now rather than play on. Right now the 1st place stack has about 12% of the chips in play (our hero has ~4% of the chips in play). In order to win you need to get 100% of the chips in play... IE there is a long way to go for everybody.<p>"though he’s probably done the best: Former Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya took 101st place last year." - This is the most egregious error. Chamath placed 101st in the WSOP Main Event, the $10,000 buy-in and most prestigious event in the WSOP series (it is called <i>main event</i> after all). This is just comparing apples to oranges, the events have completely different buy-ins, different structures, and of course one is the <i>main event</i> and one isn't. I think many people would prefer a 101st place finish in the main event rather than anything short of winning this $1k no limit event from purely a prestige perspective.
Whenever I read poker articles by non-poker writers it always makes me cringe. Kind of like when non-tech writers write articles about the tech industry. Not exactly, "the internet is a series of tube" cringe worthy, but just annoying stuff.<p>1. The WSOP is a series of events. He is playing in one event, not the actual World Series of Poker.<p>2. $1000, while a lot to most people, is the cheapest event you can buy into at the WSOP. There is a $1 million buy-in (for charity) and a $50K Player's Championship and the Main Event which is a $10K buy-in.<p>3. It's not a 3 million dollar pot, it's a 3 million dollar prize pool.<p>4. Being in place X is completely irrelevant when talking about "how much he would win in his current spot"<p>Also where's Ian Chan's results page? Or is this going to be his first live tournament cash?
Ian is a great poker player and an even better tweeter. Follow him and his WSOP tweets here: <a href="https://twitter.com/chanian" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/chanian</a>
It's been fascinating to follow this over the last few days. I almost think that in some ways, it's more exciting to see it happen via Twitter than it would be to watch it on video. I wonder why that is.
... so what's to stop an opponent from reading his tweets (in which he shares his hands)?<p>edit: i guess he wasn't too worried about it when there were so many players, but has since stopped sharing his hands now that he has acknowledged others reading his tweets. that's interesting.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/chanian/status/220034966480883712" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/chanian/status/220034966480883712</a>
Good for him that he is able to play a WSOP-event, but many many poker players tweet during live tournaments. So from a poker players' perspective this is not all that interesting.<p>Good luck to him though, ship it :)
It was my understanding you can't use your phone tableside during a tournament, but he seems to be posting photos frequently from his seat - can someone clarify?
As the stakes increase, a smart opponent should start mapping his tweets to how he subsequently played the hand. Maybe apply some Sentiment Analysis (or something) to figure out if there is a statistically significant "TELL" :-)<p>Then figure a out a passive way (three consecutive texts - Good; two texts - bad, etc) to get this info to one of the players at his table.
Hand by hand chip counts <a href="http://www.wsop.com/tournaments/chipcounts.asp?rr=5&grid=887&tid=12154&dayof=" rel="nofollow">http://www.wsop.com/tournaments/chipcounts.asp?rr=5&grid...</a>