Posts Tagged ‘2013 World Series of Poker’

Sports Stars Roberto Luongo and Paul Pierce turn out for 2013 WSOP

Saturday, July 6th, 2013

It’s taken a while, but the sports stars have finally turned out for the 2013 World Series of Poker. Both 10-time NBA All-Star Paul Pierce and two-time NHL Second All-Star Roberto Luongo have descended upon Las Vegas in hopes of winning a gold bracelet for the athletes.

Pierce is particularly notable because he’s already playing in the Event #61 $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship. 172 players began this event and 143 are still alive, including Pierce. In fact, the 6’7″ small forward is more than alive since he’s currently 12th in chips with 195,000. Pierce has never cashed in a WSOP event, but judging from the early going, he’s got a solid chance to do so now.

Just last week, the 2008 NBA Finals MVP found out where he’ll be playing basketball next season. His team of 15 seasons, the Boston Celtics, sent Pierce and teammate Kevin Garnett to the Brooklyn Nets in exchange for three first round draft picks and expiring contracts.

As for Luongo, he’s in Las Vegas for the start of the 2013 WSOP Main Event. The 6’3″ goalie will be hoping to continue his success from last year, when he finished 643rd and cashed for $19,227.

At the moment, most people aren’t concerned about Luongo’s poker play, but rather his NHL future. Once a mainstay in the Vancouver Canucks’ net, he was demoted to the number two goalie in favor of Cory Schneider. However, Schneider was injured towards the end of the regular season and had a shaky playoff performance when he did play.

Vancouver then traded Schneider to the New Jersey Devils for the 9th overall pick in the 2013 NHL Draft. After this shocking turn of events, it’s unclear what the Canucks will do with Luongo, who still has nine years left on his 12-year, $64 million deal.

Gus Hansen loses Passport, prevented from playing 2013 WSOP

Thursday, June 13th, 2013

The 2013 World Series of Poker is one-third of the way finished and almost all of poker’s biggest names are in attendance…the keyword being “almost” every star player.

Gus Hansen has been one of the most notable absentees from the 2013 WSOP thus far, and he’s got a very good reason for missing the early portion. A couple of weeks ago, the Great Dane was in Macau to play the HK$1 million (US$130,000) buy-in GuangDong Ltd Asia Millions Main Event. After finishing up at the 2013 GDAM, Hansen was all set to travel to the United States for the WSOP. But there was just one problem – he lost his passport.

As PokerNYHederne reported, Hansen was traveling in a Hong Kong taxi and somehow lost his passport in the cab. Unable to recover this important document, the Danish poker star was prevented from flying to the US. He passed the time by playing high stakes FLO8 and 2-7 Triple Draw games at Full Tilt Poker and making $176,696 in profits.

After a week of being stuck in Hong Kong, Hansen obtained a new passport and has finally departed for Las Vegas. Now he’ll have a chance to build on his very impressive career, which includes $11,210,072 in live poker tournament winnings – $1,192,748 of which has come through WSOP cashes.

In proportion to his overall tourney winnings, Hansen’s single WSOP gold bracelet isn’t that great. So earning another bracelet will definitely be on the Dane’s mind when he takes the felt at the Rio.

Of course, you can’t measure Hansen’s career in terms of bracelets since he has some other very notable accomplishments. He became the first man to win three World Poker Tour titles, doing so in less than a year’s time. Plus Hansen’s $11.2 million in tournament earnings rank first on Denmark’s all-time list, which is no small feat when you consider that 2008 WSOP Main Event champ Peter Eastgate ($11.13 million) is also Danish.