With the World Series of Poker now complete, save this years much anticipated “most international” November Nine, players and fans have time on their hands to analyze some of the play and hands that went down this year.
Often, as discussed in both the bracelet debate and staking articles, just whether or not a player is performing as good, or as bad, is it appears is discussed. With out doing a ton of research and sifting through 100s of pages of PDFs, it pretty much wasn’t worth the effort for any less than the results obsessed.
Then Rob “Veerob” Perelmen stepped in. Well known for his skills on and off the felts, the California Poker State & Heartland Poker Tour Champion came up with another one of his industry solutions. When it comes to the technology driving live poker streams, TV productions and internet poker media, there isn’t much Rob hasn’t had a big part of behind the scenes. It seems Perelman wanted it to be simple to track individual player buy-ins when it came to the WSOP, something rarely available for live poker; so he created http://WSOPdb.com.
The site is a simple black screen, with a place to enter the legal name (what they would use on their Total Rewards card) and the name that shows up on the official WSOP site. Enter any player who played and it searches all the WSOP reports, returning an accurate report of any events they entered and the total of their buy-ins over the 2011 World Series of Poker.
While their results in the same events require a bit more digging, opening a second window and using the WSOP site and entering player names there gives the pay-outs for the same player.
While a task for those with time to kill, some of the actual numbers are quite surprising and interesting, showing who is truly “ahead of the game” when it comes to the 2011 WSOP; for instance, Mr. Tom “Durrr” Dwan was often reported playing two or three events at a time, sometimes shoving a single hand before busting and running to his next table. This “strategy” resulted in a massive $166,000 in total buy-ins over 37 events. One would think that without scoring a bracelet and with only going 1 cash for about every twelve events he entered, this would put “Durrr” deep in the hole. However, with two top 10 finishes and another cash, Tom won $225,435 over the WSOP, for a gain of $59,435
Daniel Negreanu, to pick another well known pro, played in 35 events, racking up $240,500 in buy-ins that would crush most bankrolls. Negreanu also cashed 3 times, with nearly the same ratio as Dwan, but even with a fairly deep run in the Main Event only totaled $77,047 in winnings, for a loss of $163,453.
Phil Hellmuth, who’s play and profitability is probably scrutinized twice as much as the previous two examples, played in 28 events, his entries totaling $148,000. The “Poker Brat” managed to cash 5 times however, with three heads up finishes, racking himself up $1,591,004. That puts Hellmuth up $1,443,004, or nearly ten times his total investment.
Of course, as accurate of a story as these numbers seem to tell, they don’t reflect any “swaps”, shares or sponsorship, leaving the overall picture far from 100%. That said, there are a ton of surprises in store for anyone that wanted to plug in the “big names” versus the “unknowns” and often the players that are least expected are the “big winners” when it comes to return on investment.
For those interested in the more on the subject of the WSOP and bankroll, you might also want to check out Mike “Timex” McDonald’s thoughts on his latest Cardrunners blog, titled: “10 Comments on the WSOP-why I loved it and you shouldn’t play it”
