World Series of Poker 2012
The Bracelet Bet
It's that time of year again. The time of year when the worlds finest poker players descend on Las Vegas, NV to compete for pokers most prestigious prize, the WSOP bracelet. With a bracelet being presented to the winner of each event, there are 61 bracelets on offer this year. Last year Andrew J Cushen and I had a fantasy draft and each picked a team of 10 players. The winner of the bet was whoever had the team that won the most bracelets. I took that one down last year, but this year Cush is aiming to take my crown. We've increased the team size to 12 players this year and it was a simple draft except we chose to eliminate Ivey and Dwan as possible picks. Everyone else from Doyle Brunson to Darvin Moon was up for grabs.
Team Cush
Phil Hellmuth Jr.
The self proclaimed best player in the world. When The Poker Brat wins a hand poker is a game of skill, when he loses, it's all luck and his opponent is a donkey. He is pure entertainment at the table with his outbursts and tantrums. His entrances into the WSOP are getting more extravagant by the year. The thing is though, he has the game to back it all up. He holds the record for most bracelets won, at 11. He has 86 career cashes at the WSOP and has raked in almost $11m in tournament earnings in his distinguished career. Critics will point to the facts that he hasn't won a bracelet in any code other than hold'em and the fact that he hasn't won a bracelet in a tournament with a buy-in greater than $3,000 in 19 years. But all that is irrelevant, the man can play and he had an exceptional year last year. He was desperately unlucky not to add bracelet no.12 to his collection. 
John Juanda
Bracelets aside, John Juanda's tournament poker stats are even better than Hellmuth's. He has amassed almost $12m in tournament earnings over the course of his career has made 57 cashes at the WSOP. He is the proud owner of five bracelets, the highlight of which has to be his Main event win in the NLHE main event at 2008's WSOP Europe. He is accomplished at almost every variety of game played at the WSOP so his sixth bracelet is a distinct possibility this year.
Sam Trickett
Playing poker seriously since 2005 when a knee injury ended his professional soccer career, Trickett has emerged as one of the hottest prospects in poker over the last 2 years. Trickett has yet to add a bracelet to the millions he has earned but I can't see that being the case for too much longer. He has however cashed 7 times in the two years he has played at the WSOP. He has killed the huge cash games in Macau in both 2011 and 2012 with the likes of Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey and John Juanda.
Last year's WSOP was all about this man. He won Player of the Year 2011 after winning the $10,000 PLO Wold Championship, a second place finish in the $3,000 PLO event along with a further final table appearance for an 8th place finish in the $50,000 Poker Players championship. He had one other cash, before a huge run in the Main Event which saw him emerge as favourite of the November Nine. He ended up finishing 3rd in the Main Event to cap off an amazing year for the 27 year old. I doubt anyone would bet against him doubling or even trebling his bracelet tally this year.
Grospellier, or ElkY as he best known is a former professional gamer who was only the fourth player to complete the Triple Crown of Poker, a title at the WSOP, the WPT and the EPT. He has 16 WSOP cashes and over $9m in tournament earnings. ElkY made his name online, becoming the first person to reach both Supernova and Supernova Elite status on Pokerstars, but he has proven that he is just as accomplished in the live arena.
Dario Minieri
Minieri burst onto the scene in 2006 with some high profile cashes in the EPT. He added final tables at the WPT to those cashes and then a bracelet for the $2,500 buy in NLHE 6 handed event in 2008. He was also the first person on Pokerstars to amass enough Frequent player points to earn a Porsche. The big money cashes have escaped him over the last couple of years, but there is no doubt Minieri has the talent to emerge as a major player at the 2012 WSOP.
Yevgeniy Timoshenko
Timoshenko boasts an impressive series of results in his relatively short poker career. He has 10 cashes and 3 final tables to his name at the WSOP. His biggest result so far was winning Season 7 of the WPT for over $2m. He also had a huge result winning the 2009 Main Event of the World Series of Online Poker for $1.7m. He has improved year on year at the WSOP so there are many who reckon he will get his first bracelet this year.
Justin Smith
BoostedJ is another player who has been knocking on the door for a bracelet over the last number of years. He has a WPT title to his name after winning in London 2 years ago. With 10 WSOP cashes and over $2.1 million earned from live tournaments it's clear Smith is a real player and this could be the year he adds the bracelet to that WPT win. His biggest result of late was a second place finish at the WPT 5 Star World Championship in December.
Michael Mizrachi
The Grinder loves this time of year. Two WSOP bracelets, 7 final tables and 26 cashes. In 2010, which was labelled Year of the Grinder, he won the $50,000 Poker Players Championship and finished 5th in the main event. He narrowly missed out on being Player of the Year, while many felt his results were the best of the year. He had a pretty good 2011 too, with a second place finish in the Omaha/Stud eight or better $2,500 event. He'll definitely be hoping for a return to his form in 2010 this coming month.
Barry Greenstein
Three Bracelets and 52 cashes in his WSOP career along with 2 WPT titles and over $7.6m in tournament winnings prove what an accomplished player Greenstein is. Without a bracelet since 2008 he'll be hoping to add a 4th WSOP title to his collection this year.
Erik Seidel
With over $17m in tournament winnings, 8 bracelets and 69 WSOP cashes, there aren't too many players around with a more successful record than Erik Seidel. He is probably best known, to non-poker fans, as the man who played right into Johnny Chan's hands in that clip seen in the film Rounders. I think the 8 bracelets probably just about make up for the notoriety that brought though. He's also won a WPT title over the course of his illustrious career.
Maybe not as successful on the felt as some of the others on his team, but with 11 WSOP Cashes in the last five years, over a range of games, Lind is clearly in with a shout of winning his first bracelet. A final table in last years Poker Players Championship suggests that he is well equipped to take on the best at any variation of the game this year.
Team Tom
Daniel Negreanu
Kid Poker ain't exactly a kid in poker terms anymore. He's been playing poker at the very top of the game for over a decade and has become one of the most respected players in the game. With 4 WSOP bracelets and 51 cashes, it's easy to see why. Negreanu has amassed over $16m in tournament earnings and would be one of the favourites to come out victorious in any poker tournament he enters.
May not be everyone's pick in a draft for bracelets considering he hasn't won one yet and he's been on the scene for quite a while now, but the simple fact is, he is one of the best poker players in the world, so that makes up for the fact that he may not play as many events as other players. 14 WSOP cashes and around $3.6m in tournament earnings may not be the most impressive stats for a man who's been playing at this level for almost a decade, but his lack of tournament wins is down to him focusing more on playing cash, than his lack of ability in tournaments.
"When will it end?", (his bad luck) will often be the closing question on Mercier's tweets after busting from a tournament. It may be tongue in cheek, or he may actually be cursing his luck, but with two bracelets and over $7m in tournament earnings, I personally wouldn't mind some of his luck. He's one of the most talented and feared players around at the moment. A win in the Five Star World Championship in December and a 3rd place finish in the PCA a month later means he's coming into the WSOP in pretty good form and would be tipped by many to pick up bracelet number three this year.
On the radar for about five years now, Katchalov, picked up a WPT title in 2007 and added his first bracelet to that at last years WSOP in a 7 card stud event. He's earned around $7 million in tournament earnings, some of which was earned in his 21 WSOP cashes. He's definitely one to watch throughout this years series.
Another cash game player in Team Tom, but while Galfond has been one of the most successful online cash game players ever, he has translated that into success in tournaments too. He picked up a bracelet in 2008 in the $5,000 PLO re-buy event. Unknown just how many events he'll play, but when he's in the field, he'll be one of the favourites to take the title.
Jake Cody has become one of the hottest prospects in poker over the last two years. He burst onto the scene in 2010 with wins at the EPT Deauville and WPT London and last year he added a bracelet with his win in the $25,000 heads-up NLHE event at the Rio. In doing this he became only the third person in history to complete the Triple-Crown of poker. It's results like those in such a short space of time that lead many to believe he'll add to these titles at this year's WSOP.
"You call, it's going to be all over, baby!" is one of the most famous phrases in poker history, as Scotty taunted Kevin McBride into calling off the remainder of his stack to win the Main Event in 1998. Add 4 more bracelets to that Main Event victory and you can see what Scotty is considered one of the greats of the game. He may have lost a few freinds and fans on the way to winning the 2008 $50,000 Players Championship, but that win also showed that he is still up there with the best.
Akenhead, along with, Trickett, Cody and JP Kelly (I'm still fuming he slipped my mind for this draft) are the young brits who are taking poker by the scruff of the neck and plan on accumulating plenty of cashes and bracelets for Britain for the foreseeable future. Akenhead has yet to win a bracelet and has just 6 WSOP cashes, but he has earned over $2m in his relatively short career. He has a few small wins under his belt but he would be eager, and is capable of adding a WSOP title to his collection this year.
Pilgrim is a player who might just be waiting for that break, that little bit of luck before he makes his mark and wins a bracelet. He has just 7 cashes in the WSOP but has had some good results on the circuit events.
Jeff Lisandro has accumulated 5 bracelets in his career, all of which were won since Chris Moneymaker's win in the main event in 2003. He is the only player to have won 5 bracelets since the poker boom so there is no doubt he will be in the shake up for bracelet no.6 at some stage this summer.
A bracelet winner last year and a further 13 WSOP cashes suggest that Bari could be a force again this year. He has been on the tournament circuit for four or five years now and has consistent cashes. He is a force to be reckoned with and will hope that last years win will push him on to add a second and maybe third bracelet to his collection this summer.
Blom is a WSOP rookie having only turned 21 last September. However, a rookie hasn't entered the WSOP with such huge expectations since Tom Dwan played his first series. Under the guise of Isildur1, Blom created a poker frenzy as he challenged and beat and subsequently lost huge money online to some of the greatest players in the game. He showed in those games that he has the talent to beat the best and his tournament record shows he has the game to make his mark this year, with a win, a 2nd and a 7th place finish at the PCA, the EPT Deauville and the EPT Grand Final respectively, and those results are all from 2012!
Verdict
On the face of it, Team Cush has the more experienced team and has 32 bracelets, 12 more than Team Tom. However, nine of Hellmuth's eleven bracelets, six of Seidel's eight and three of Juanda's five were won before the Chris Moneymaker's Main Event win in 2003 and therefore before the epic fields that came with the poker boom that was the Moneymaker Effect. On Team Tom, two of Negreanu's four bracelets and four of Nguyen's five were won in the pre-boom era. So to look at the bracelets once since the boom may be a more accurate reflection on how the teams square up.
Since Moneymaker's win then, The players on Team Cush have amassed fourteen bracelets while the players on Team Tom have won the same amount. Looking at it like that, the teams seem pretty evenly balanced. However, it seems as though the players on Team Cush will be more active and play more tournaments than those on Tom's team. It is unknown just how many events the likes of Antonius, Galfond and Blom will play. This fact probably gives Team Cush a slight advantage.
Players to watch
While Phil Hellmuth is the holder of the most bracelets in the history of the series, the fact remains that he has only won two events since the poker boom, so in my opinion the players to watch in this years series are a young Brit and a young Yank from either team.
From Team Cush I'd find it hard to look past Sam Trickett, who has been just crushing games over the past 18 months and he cannot be far away from claiming his first bracelet. It is also impossible to overlook Ben Lamb. While it could be hard to come close to his achievements of 2011 he clearly has the game to be a big player in this year's series.
From Team Tom I think Jake Cody and Jason Mercier are the men that are capable of doing the most damage. Both won bracelets last year to go along with countless other fine results at the WSOP and other events.
I also think it could be worth mentioning Viktor Blom as even though there is massive expectation on him this year, he has the game to take this years series by storm.
