England is on the board at this year’s World Series of Poker after the country’s latest poker prodigy, Craig McCorkell, took down Event #36 $3,000 NLHE Shootout, and more importantly, the bracelet and $368,593 that came with it. The 26-year-old came into the final day under the radar as most were looking at fellow Brit Roberto Romanello and his chance to bag the elusive Triple Crown. As with many of the Brits that come over to the WSOP, their rail is usually a lively one and McCorkell revealed that some of them were so excited they for “kicked out or whatever”. I’d dread to think what the “whatever” consisted of!
21 players will be back hunting for a bracelet on the final day of Event #38 with Jeffrey Manza leading the way. The $1,500 NLHE attracted 2,534 entries and 277 of those started off the day with Manza joined at the front of the field by Dung Nguyen with their respective chip counts 1,302,000 and 1,273,000.
Another of the WSOP’s big daddy events is underway with Benjamin Safe holding a narrow lead in Event #39: $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha. The event tempted 293 players to pay the entry fee and that included Phil Ivey…who fell by the wayside in the early stages with Daniel Negreanu, Viktor Blom and Tom Marchese joining him.
Negreanu has also called out the poker community for their criticism of Ivey’s role in the Full Tilt Poker saga and finds it “mind-boggling” that the bracelet chaser has been singled out. KidPoker gave a full and frank interview to PokerListings.com and for those that wondered, yes, the expletives are back. As well as finding it hard to accept everyone blaming Ivey, he again rounds on Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and Ray Bitar, branding them “scumbags” and it comes just months after he urged players to partake in some ball play with them. In terms of his own play at the WSOP, he admits that he’d like to tell everyone who says they’re “disappointed” in him to “go f*ck” themselves.
