World Open

The PartyPoker World Open at the Three Mills Studios, London is underway, featuring the strongest field in the history of the tournament. The televised tournament is sold out and features 72 players with a $7,000 buy-in and a total prize pool in excess of $500,000. The event is produced by Matchroom Sport and will be broadcast on Five in the UK later this year and distributed worldwide.

The field is packed with highly respected names from the world of Poker. PartyPoker Premier League Poker stars Liz Lieu, Juha Helppi, Roland De Wolfe, Tony G, Vicky Coren, Dave "The Devilfish" Ulliott and Ian Frazer.

I spoke with Liz Lieu last week at the Bellagio in Las Vegas and asked about her impending jump over the pond the the UK:

"I'm so excited to be heading back to London for another Party Poker event. The World Open looks to be a great tournament, and I'm happy to be invited to play."

In addition, for the very first time in the tournament's history, all four members of the UK's most successful poker playing team the Hendon Mob take to the felt. Ram Vaswani, Joe Beevers and brothers Barny and Ross Boatman will all be under the spotlight and fancied to do well on their debuts. They too will be fresh from the Bellagio tournament, where both Ross and Barny went deep. Others to look out for include John Magill (12th WSOP Main Event 2006), recent Irish Open winner Marty Smyth, 2006 PartyPoker European Open champion Liam Flood, Don Fagan, Thomas Wahlroos, Roy Brindley and Roberto Romanello.

Last year's winner was Pippa Flanders, a well respected pro from Preston, UK, but the rise in her fortunes in the last year and the $200,000 she scooped from the World Open in 2006 mean that she inadvertently booked an expensive cruise on the QE2 later this month so she is unable to defend her title. Pippa and her husband, fellow pro Tim Flanders, have a plan, however, and are entering their 23-year-old daughter Charlotte instead.

A PartyPoker spokesman said:

"The field is the strongest in the tournament's history and we're very pleased. It's a shame that Pippa Flanders isn't back to defend her crown but Charlotte will surely defend the title valiantly."

The preliminary tournaments began on the 27th April with a celebrity table. The semi-finals start on May 3rd with the final on the evening of May 4th.

Speaking of lady players, Warren sent along a press relese about Pippa Flanders and her victory at the World Open (I saw her husband, Tim, was doing well at the EPT). I guess in the States we're getting more and more used to seeing players without a Y chromosome do well. But in Europe, this is still apparently new ground, as the women are just starting to assert themselves at the table.

(Do you agree, Jen? If I am being wrong and sexist, please slap me.)

Here's word from our Party Man about one of the largest prizes thusfar won by a female:

LONDON--It just occurred to me that I forgot to tell y'all what happened at the PartyPoker.com World Open 2. While American poker is greedily bickering over all sorts of big-money details and worried about our own legislators trying to put the kibbosh on poker fun, here in the UK they are simply playing for a good time. And even though you see poker and betting stuff that would be illegal in the States all over the place here, shockingly it has not brought upon the demise of this kingdom and/or Tony Blair.

Now make no mistake, just because we’re in the land of all things “proper,” the World Open was no fancy Brocket Hall-type affair. On the contrary, this game was much grittier. Check out the venue where it took place:

click to enlarge

Kinda cool, huh? Proof that you don’t need glitz and glamour for intense, exciting poker to go down. Click below for a closer look at all the jolly-good limey action.

(By the way, hats off to tournament organizers, who changed their minds about revealing the results on the internet! Most European poker programmers haven’t yet realized that it does no harm to give away the winners before a show airs – in fact it helps increase viewership -- because poker fans don’t care so much about the mystery of who wins as how they win. The boys in Leyton, however, when it comes to poker, have always been ahead of the curve.)

LONDON--OK, so I have to admit, I'm not very happy with my previous post on the World Open. It was a little bit tilty, because I had one of those blogger delights where you type up a brilliant, semi-mammoth post only to have your computer mysteriously reboot about 20 seconds before you're to ready press "publish." But regardless, that shouldn't matter to you -- I'm pretty sure it's not your fault, nor that of any of the players in this event -- so below is some of the good stuff you didn't get the previous go-round.

First, The World Open is not being played in a casino. It's taking place in Matchroom Stadium, home of the Leyton Orient Football Club. More specifically, the action's going down in the bar of this stadium, which I think is cool -- gives it a kinda underground feel.

Leyton also happens to be the place where they shoot "The Poker Den" -- which apparently is a European version of "High Stakes Poker."

Kenna James was the only American who played. And though you wouldn't know from his jovial demeanor, he wasn't particularly happy as he busted out. Afterwards, he joined the infamous Jesse May in the broadcast booth:

LONDON--I've jumped across the proverbial pond to check out the World Open, a relatively new event (I think this is the second one) sponsored by our good friends at PartyPoker. About 20 different countries are represented here in a 72-player field ... a combination of pros and online qualifiers ponying up $7,000 for the buy-in.

The event is structured as a very European semi-shootout ... meaning we began with 12 tables of 6 players each. The winner of each table "heat" moved on to the semifinals and into the money. These two tables then play down to three players each ... at which point the remaining players take their uneven chipstacks with them to the final table. Twelfth place gets their buy-in money back, and I'm not sure how much the winner gets -- will let you know, of course, assuming I can work through the language barrier here in England to find out.

In the meantime, here's who made it through to the semis: