The Tiger Woods of Poker seeking his own holy grail

One only has to look at Phil Ivey and his incredible poker record to see numerous similarities between him and Tiger Woods. That fierce determination to succeed mixed with an almost uncanny ability stands them both out from the mere mortals that they do combat with on a daily basis.

Ivey is also one of the very few players in the world to be at the top of the tree in both live play and online play. He has won literally millions playing poker online over the past few years and even that is dwarfed by some of the astronomical proposition bets that he has taken on recently.

But poker greatness seems to be measured in how many World Series of Poker bracelets you own these days and the annual jamboree in Las Vegas is well and truly under way once again. Ivey already had five bracelets to his name and he had jumped to stardom in 2002 when he became one of the very few players to win three bracelets in one series.

Well Ivey has done it again this year and has picked up another two bracelets already with wins in the $2500 Omaha/Seven Card Stud hi-lo event where he picked up $220,538 and also in the $2500 2-7 Lowball where he won $96,367. This now puts him on seven World Series bracelets and is now only four behind Phil Hellmuth. But seeing as Ivey is excellent in all poker disciplines and also regularly plays in the big game at the Bellagio whilst Hellmuth really only excels at hold ‘em then he will surely surpass Phil in the not too distant future.

To really underline just how good Ivey is, he is already lined up to challenge online phemom Tom “durrrr” Dwan in an online heads up match spanning 50,000 hands of poker after Dwans current challenge against Patrik Antonius is finished. Dwan is recognised as being the best highstakes multi-tabling poker player on the internet and very few players in the world can match Dwan when it comes to playing four tables at a time for nosebleed stakes.

The rules of this challenge stipulate the match must be played using several tables at once at stakes of $200-$400 or above. The winner at the end of 50,000 hands keeps everything that they have won and Dwan has to pay out $1.5 million to his opponent should he lose while his opponent only has to pay out $500,000 should they lose. These seem very attractive odds that Dwan is laying on the surface but it does underline not just how highly Dwan rates himself but also how good he really is.

The strength of Dwan with regards multi-tabling the highstakes online games is well known within the industry and yet despite this Ivey was still prepared to take him on. I think that there is little doubt that Ivey is destined to be entered into the legendary hall of fame alongside many of the greatest names in poker.

As a side note it is great to see a few of the British players doing well at this years World Series of Poker and all round nice guy Roland de Wolfe took down the $5000 pot limit Omaha high/low event picking up $246,616 in the process.

Despite the floods of players who attend the series every year, there are also millions of players who don’t bother attending at all for numerous reasons. Many strong internet players don’t bother making the annual trek as they are already making money from the comfort of their own homes anyway.

To be honest one can hardly blame them and most of the players who go to Las Vegas at World Series time are basically going for the thrill and the experience or to gamble. For me and many others this basically isn’t enough but when you consider that by going to the series, you could end up creating your own piece of history then you can definitely see the lure. Who knows you could end up becoming the next Phil Ivey.

By: Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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