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Where are they now? October Nine: Jeremy Ausmus

With the final hours before the 2012 WSOP Main Event final table ticking away, it’s still anyone’s game. But someone has to lose. But someone also will win. Thirty-three-year-old Jeremy Ausmus hopes it will be him who wins.

Ausmus isn’t your typical poker pro whose ideal job is flying around the world to participate in every big-money poker event he can. Instead, he’d rather grind it out at the Bellagio for 30 to 40 hours a week and then go home to his family.

Since his placement in the October Nine back in July, Ausmus has been exhaustively preparing for the today with coaches and tournament simulations. Although he’s the short-stacked of the nine, he’s not letting that get his confidence down. He says, “I’ve played the least amount of poker I’ve ever played in my life, actually. I’ve played less poker than everyone else at the table.”

And destiny does have a mind of its own. As luck would have it, Ausmus’s second child was due to be born during the same week as the final table. However, the high-risk pregnancy only went to 34 and a half weeks, putting Kai Ausmus in the world five weeks early. Because his wife had to rest, Jeremy chose to stay home and take care of her, his newborn, and his two-year-old, Calia. He didn’t mind that he had to cancel his trip to Cannes, France to play in the WSOPE. His family is a priority above poker.

“I like the change and getting a little bit of time away from poker,” he explained. “I’m a full-time pro but I have a life away from it, which a lot of these guys don’t have.”

But with the events of the past few months, Ausmus believes anything is possible, despite the fact that since the style of the WSOP Main Event went to the three-month break format in 2008, the shortest stacked player hasn’t finished better than 7^th place. Furthermore, two of the last three short-stacked players actually finished in 9^th place. He does point out, though, that he has more chips to start with than other last chipped players who finished in 9^th.

“I feel like I have less pressure than anyone else because I’m expected to go out first,” says Ausmus. He continues, “The chip leader is going to have a ton of pressure because everyone is expecting him to win, and he can’t make a huge mistake. I can’t make a mistake either, but I’m really comfortable with this stack size.”

And the fact that he stands to win at least $754,798 already probably helps to ease the sting of a possibly first elimination.

He does have one thing in his favor though. He had become a short-stack cash game specialist playing Internet poker for the few years before online poker was shut down on Black Friday.

Depending on his win, he plans to invest most of the money and add some to his bank roll without much change to his lifestyle. He likes to play poker, and he loves being close to his family, and he’s not interested in the notoriety that comes along with the game. To him, it’s a job that makes him happy. With the odds stacked against him, he doesn’t seem to mind.

Where are they now? October Nine: Robert Salaburu

With the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event Final Table only hours away, the remaining nine players have already won at least $754,798, with payments ranging between that increase at least $215K with each spot, up to the first place prize of $8.5 million. No pressure.

Twenty-seven-year-old Robert Salaburu, hailing from San Antonio, Texas chose professional poker as an alternative to spending his early 20s at a 9 to 5 job in a cubicle. Apparently, he made the right choice because he will take his rightfully earned seat at the final table today.

Salaburu says, “There’s no doubt that the money is big, but at the end of the day, the money comes and goes. I have the chance at poker immortality. That’s what I’m gunning for.”

He began playing poker about 10 years ago in high school. Through college, he began to realize that he was making more money playing poker 15 hours a week than he would ever make with a college degree. His mom, a college Spanish professor gave him her blessing to drop out of college and find his calling. She said, “I simply wanted Robert to find his way in life and he has done that totally on his own. Robert is an independent thinker and an astute observer of human nature.” These are two great traits of a successful career poker player, and they’ve brought him all the way to the WSOP Main Event Final Table.

When play commences, Salaburu will have a 15.155 million chip stack – the seventh largest at the final table, the exact position that Pius Heinz, last year’s WSOP Main Event champion, sat in when the final table resumed.

If he wins, Salaburu will be the first Texan to win the title since 1982 when Jack Straus won the event.

“The main thing I get pride from is that I did it my way,” says Salaburu. “People told me that I was crazy and that I should stop when I was losing money. But at the end of the day, it’s nice to not have a boss, and the freedom is priceless.”

Does he have what it takes? We will soon find out.

Where are they now? October Nine: Steve Gee

With the World Series of Poker Main Event final table commencing tomorrow, Monday, October 29^th, it may seem that the October Nine would be trying to do everything they can to de-stress and prepare themselves mentally for the big day. But not 57-year-old Steve Gee. He has just relocated his entire life to Las Vegas, a move he has been considering for about a year now. Previously residing in Sacramento, California has made it hard for him to continue his career as a pro poker player. Making the final nine back in July has given him a lot to think about. He took possession of his new home in Vegas on October 17^th, but he says he won’t actually be doing any moving until after the final table. Still, it’s a lot to process.

He hopes to have a big reason to celebrate with a housewarming party after it’s all said and done with, and he has a lot of supporters expected to show up to support him. He admits he’s used the full 85 ticket allotment from WSOP. His last win was at the 2010 WSOP when he defeated a 3,000-player field and won $470K at a NLH event. Gee claims this is completely different though.

And because Gee hasn’t been featured very much on ESPN, his friends and family have a joke that he’s not even in the final table, and he’s just been pulling their leg. “I have been watching the coverage, but all my friends and family have said, ‘Steve are you lying to us? Did you make the final table?’ Every single Tuesday they say, ‘Steve we haven’t even seen you yet.’”

As coverage continued, he did eventually make the cut, and while he first was resentful towards his younger counterparts, deeming it disrespectful that they wouldn’t feature him as much, he’s now realized that there’s less tape for his opponents to analyze of his play in the WSOP. On the other hand, Gee has been watching the tapes of the other players, but that’s about the extent of his preparation. He’s not prepared to overhaul his multiple-decade strategy that’s brought him this far.

He’s also decided to make the switch from cash game player to tournament player. “I’ll tell you,” he says, “I think from this point forward I am going to have to be a tournament player. Cause after the final table, the hardest thing is going to sit down and grind.”

Where are they now? October Nine: Russell Thomas

The 2012 WSOP Main Event final table is almost upon us. Less than 24 hours away, it is likely that the October Nine are experiencing the most nerve racking anxiety they’ve ever know. It is expected that 24-year-old Russell Thomas from Hartford, Connecticut will have the biggest fan base of any of the nine final tablists at the big event, who expects to have at least 100 people cheering him on from the rails. That’s got to help with some of the stress, or will it just add to the pressure?

Among his supporters will be Thomas’s highly acclaimed poker coach, poker pro Jason Somerville. Thomas, an amateur poker player who works a day job at Aetna Insurance, told WSOP reporters, “I have co-workers coming—some that know nothing at all about poker. One of the ladies who works there, I didn’t expect her to want to come to the final table, but now she’s reading a book about poker, and she’s going to come (to Las Vegas). It was a little unexpected.”

After becoming a final contestant for the Main Event, Thomas signed with 888 Poker and has been traveling the world sporting their brand ever since. He’s been to the EPT in Barcelona, Spain and Cannes, France for the WSOPE. But he is clear this is all been business and “No fun trips. Fun is after the Main Event,” he says.

Thomas and Somerville, the 69^th finisher in the Main Event, have been working hard together analyzing hands and watching each other play. Thomas has also done something to prepare that may actually give him a leg up on the competition. He has played a mock final table with exact chip counts of his opponents and emulating how he thinks the others will act. He’s primarily a cash game player, so a lot of his prep has been in tournaments. “I just trying to stay focused. I went out quite a bit right after I made the Main Event final table, but I’m just trying to stay focused. I don’t want any regrets about my preparation,” Thomas says.

Currently on a leave of absence at Aetna, Thomas says the outcome of the final table will determine whether or not he returns to work. When asked what motivates him the most, the money, the bracelet, or the win, he answered, “I think all three.” He continued, “The difference between second place and third place, how long is it going to take me to make that money? 20 years? I don’t know. The money is obviously huge. Then I’d want to get first to win the bracelet because then you’d be a legend.”

While Thomas is focused on winning the $8,527,982 first place prize, if he finishes 9^th, he’ll still win $754,798. He’s already picked out the car he plans to buy if he makes enough money in the Main Event. “If you’ve seen the Audi R8 out front (of the Majestic Barriere), with the matte blue. I love that car. That car is just amazing, so maybe that exact one. I was thinking instead of the blue, it could be black,” Thomas explains. One thing is for sure. Thomas is just as prepared, if not more so, for the final table as any of his fellow October Nine players. Play picks back up tomorrow.

Where are they now? October Nine: Jesse Sylvia

With the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event Final Table only days away, what exactly are the October Niners doing to prepare mentally for the big day, and what are they up to? Chip leader Jesse Sylvia, hailing from the quaint and exclusive seaside town of Martha’s Vineyard, USA, is a much deeper thinker than most other 26-year-olds.

According to a recent WSOP interview, he has much to say and it’s not simply what he says but how he says it, with “careful thought and obvious passion.”

Sylvia explained that after he was officially a member of the elite October Nine, all he did for the first week was relax after the stress he had incurred during his intense stint in Las Vegas. He says, “I tried to watch some poker videos to keep sharp when I got back, at sites like CardRunners and DeucesCracked. But the first few weeks back home for me was a time to try and unwind and enjoy the moment.”

Sylvia was an overnight sensation, one day being an unknown poker player, the next being chip leader at the biggest final table in poker when at once everyone who knew anything about poker knew his name.

He explains, “I guess it’s that even if you’re away from poker, or try to get away from it like I did, when you are in the spot I’m in, you are never really quite away from it.  Know what I mean?  Because wherever you go, that’s all you get asked–’how do you feel about being the final table,’ things like that.  It’s just always with you.  I mean, the island was a sort of sanctuary for me, not just geographically but also s a place that’s isolated, which I think is good.  But in some ways, always being connected to poker regardless of what I do makes me continue to think about the game all the time.  I need to stay as sharp as possible, so I guess that’s a good thing.”

But any way you look at it, poker pulses through his veins just as much as anything else he’s compassionate about. In fact, he says during the series, he didn’t even realize he was playing up to 60 hours a week, just playing in everything he could. He says, “My girlfriend was the one who woke me up to the fact I was playing so much. But I am used to grinding long hours, so it didn’t affect me in a negative way.”

As far as his play style goes, he has tried to be more of an “instinctual player,” trying to go beyond the theory of the game. He also believes in the ten-thousand-hour rule, as explained by Malcom Gladwell in his books Blink and Outliers. This concept is based on the fact that if you put in at least ten thousand hours into something that you basically master it and become very in tune with it. And surrounding himself with people whom he respects and can learn from, which he calls “collective knowledge,” is another strategy that he employs. There’s no doubt about it—Sylvia will be a force to be reckoned with come Monday.

Where are they now? October Nine: Greg Merson

With the final leg of the 2012 World Series of Poker drawing near, it’s interesting to see what the October Nine have been up to and where their heads have been as they’ve been preparing for what is likely the biggest poker tournament of their lives thus far. Greg Merson, one of the October Nine Main Event Final Table players, says of the upcoming D-Day, “I’m going to feel like I want to throw up before.”

Since lasting through Day 7 when 26 other players stood between him and his chance at the final table Merson has also gone from checking his email once a week to checking it once a day, checking in with his agent two times a week, and participating in numerous interviews (too numerous to count) with press from all realms of media, both mainstream and poker related. Due to the fact that Merson is a recovering drug addict, many of the reporters want to talk about his past in addition to his poker power, but he says he doesn’t mind all the attention from the media.

He explains the difference in mainstream media and poker-related press interviews: “Any interview that has to do with poker, it is so much easier to talk about, because they kind of understand it a little bit more. The mainstream media is so ignorant to both sides of poker and the drug thing. They don’t know much about either, so it is kind of difficult to explain myself without sounding crazy. I’m a professional gambler who is a drug addict, you know what I mean?”

Because Merson has been so recognized in the media after winning the $10K Six-Handed NL event this summer and then earning one of the nine most coveted seats in poker, people are actually starting to recognize him in public. After buying some drinks for a friend at a bar in Baltimore, when he went to pay the tab, the bartender said, “Don’t worry about it man, good luck.”

When the Main Event closed out in July and the October Nine was set to continue in October, Merson was the frontrunner of the Player of the Year, but after the World Series of Poker Europe last month, Phil Hellmuth and Antonio Esfandiari passed him on the list. Then when Hellmuth won the WSOPE, it left only one option—for Merson to be the last man standing at the WSOP Main Event Final Table at the end of this month.

And while Merson is focused on winning, he’s not doing the usual prep work that past November Niners and his fellow October Niners have participated in. He says, “I don’t really think about too much strategy. We’ve had some discussions, but everything is just going to change so quickly that discussing things too much is going to be overload.”

As for the jersey he will wear on opening night at the Penn and Teller Theater October 29^th, he’s got the black Adam Jones Baltimore Orioles picked out.

Will South Point Be Pro-Worthy?

While South Point Poker will undoubtedly be the first legal and regulated online poker site available to US players (Nevada residents specifically), some wonder if the intrastate poker operation will be able to sustain US poker pros with enough action to make a living. And will the former PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker mega-players relocate to Nevada in order to participate in legal online poker in the US?

These questions remain as Nevada ranks at only 35 in the nation for population at about 2.8 million residents, and it is unlikely that the millions of tourists who flock to Nevada each year will be offer enough participation in South Point Poker to compare to the numbers that flooded the tables at former US-friendly poker rooms.

Justin Truesdell, two-time WSOP bracelet winner, says, “I don’t think I could play online poker for a living if it is intrastate. I don’t think if it was limited to a state with the population of Nevada that it would be able to maintain the player base that is needed.”

Another career poker player Jeffe “ICuRaRook” Sluzinksi doesn’t believe that there will be adequate MTTs or players, mainly fish, to provide enough play for him to make a living playing poker like he’s accustomed to, but he’s willing to give it a chance.

He says, “It’s the same reason I am not playing on Bovada or Merge in addition to their cashout issues.”

Other pro status players, who have been travelling abroad since Black Friday in order to play Internet poker, like Kevin Iacofono and David Randall, say they will not jump at the opportunity, but will keep an eye out for it, and consider it if the stakes are right once the site gets established. Randall says, “The field sizes would just have to create good enough value to make more sense than playing on PokerStars. I definitely think that initially it will be state based and that it is not likely that it will have large enough fields.”

Full Tilt Positions Itself to Relaunch with Dwan and Blom

Things seem to be happening in the online poker realm this year that many never believed possible. The intrastate licensing granted to South Point by the state of Nevada sounds even less far-fetched than Full Tilt Poker open for business again. But it’s true. As of November 6, 2012, Full Tilt Poker will relaunch and be open for real-money online poker business.

PokerStars, who acquired all Full Tilt Poker assets (including accounts payable to former players) confirmed the news via email that after November 6^th, Full Tilt player accounts will again be active. Existing usernames passwords that players held pre-Black Friday will still work, and withdrawals will be made possible.

Also, in an effort to get the room going, Gus Hansen has been assigned as the site’s Ambassador and the face of the new, old online poker site. In addition, Full Tilt Poker has signed two big-name poker celebrity players, Viktor “Isildur1” Blom and Tom “durrrr” Dwan, two of the most famous online poker players in the world, Dwan being a former Full Tilt Poker pro before the Black Friday saga started. So the new Full Tilt Poker room is all set to relaunch with a bang.

The Head of Marketing at Full Tilt Sarne Lightman released a statement on the new partnerships: “The game of poker is always evolving. Through our continual innovations, Full Tilt Poker is proud to have been at the forefront of that evolution. In choosing our Pros we approached the three poker players whose unique and innovative styles have had the most impact on how modern poker is played.”

Blom had signed with PokerStars back in 2011 following the reveal of his identity, which remained a mystery for months, generating quite a buzz about who he was and where he was from. He conveniently left Stars back in August for no apparent reason, but was now just seems as if it was part of the plan to reignite the Full Tilt Poker brand for the relaunch. He said, “I always loved playing on the Full Tilt Poker software, it is where I made my name and enjoyed some of my greatest victories. When they approached me about joining the team I knew this was the right fit for me.”

Dwan said on the rejoining, “I’m very excited that Full Tilt Poker is relaunching. I think it is great for poker and I’m excited to be a part of it.”

Secret New Online Poker Pro Added at PokerStars

If you think you’ve got what it takes to identify an online poker pro, check out the PokerStars contest that will pay you $50 for guessing the name of the next PokerStars pro Internet poker player. While PokerStars has been busy getting Full Tilt’s name out of the gutter, execs have some new things in mind for Stars as well. They have announced that a new Team Online Pro will soon be unmasked to the poker realm.

The PokerStars blog has recently announced that they will soon reveal the newest member of Team Online PokerStars, but are giving current players the chance to guess the identity of this player. A shadow photo and a video clip on the blog offer clues to who this player is.

To participate, players may submit their guess to the PokerStars Blog Twitter account (@PSTeamOnline). To enter, tweet the following message: “I’m (PS Username) on @PokerStars, and I think the new @PSTeamOnline member is (PS Username or Real Name of Player) # GuessTeamOnline.” One guess per player.

Correct guesses will earn players an entry into a drawing that will award up to 50 players $50. Remember what Chris Moneymaker did with less than $50. It’s obviously no Dwan or Blom, who just recently announced they have signed with the new Full Tilt Poker. Take a guess. It could be the easiest $50 you’ve ever made.

View clues here: http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/team_pokerstars_online/2012/guess-the-next-member-of-team-pokerstars-123282.html

Hellmuth’s Lucky 13th

What began with a field of 420 players, turned out to be a 13^th WSOP bracelet win for NLH tournament specialist Phil Hellmuth. The 2012 World Series of Poker Europe Main Event title goes to Hellmuth, who won his 12^th bracelet this year at the WSOP. Hellmuth has managed to make a comeback this year, proving the critics wrong who said he was washed out and used up. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Following his win, Hellmuth commented, “”This was the best poker I’ve ever played in my life, I know that for certain. I played as good as I can possibly play, caught a few breaks, and here I am. I’m very thankful.”

Apparently his best was good enough and landed him a prize worth €1.02 million. According to commentator Antonio Esfandiari, Hellmuth’s playing style throughout this tournament was unexpected. Redefining his game may be just the strategy that Hellmuth needed to get back on top.

Entering the final table as chip leader, Hellmuth managed to stay that way most of the day. Only second place Sergii Baranov was able to give the Poker Brat a run for his money. But ultimately, Baranov was no match for Hellmuth’s aggressive and extremely loose game.

Ukrainian Baranov had predicted the WSOPE Main Event would lead to a heads up match between himself and Hellmuth. What he didn’t foresee though was coming in second.

“I know people don’t expect me to use this word, but I’m humbled,” Hellmuth said. “I’m trying to figure out if this is real or not.”

The conservative Hellmuth was in hiding, as he was calling out of position with less than hopeful cards (something he’s always shamed other players for doing—apparently he figured it must have some strategic value to it), and making large bets to intimidate his opponents.

This makes Hellmuth’s 95^th WSOP cash and tops him out at more than $17 million in tourney winnings.

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