Posts Tagged ‘Maria Ho’

Maria Ho not Worried about Last Woman Standing Honor

Sunday, July 13th, 2014

Back in 2007, Maria Ho took 38th place in the WSOP Main Event, which made her the “Last Woman Standing.” Now, seven years later, Ho has earned this honor once again since she’s the only female player alive in the 2014 WSOP Main Event.

Going into Day 6 of the Main Event, there are just 79 players left from the original 6,683 entrants. Ho happens to be one of these players, though she’s on the fringe of busting out with 435,000 chips (79th place). Even still, she doesn’t seem to be thinking about anything other than the November Nine.

Ho told PokerNews that it was an honor to receive the Last Woman Standing title again and interest more ladies in the game. This definitely won’t be enough to satisfy her, though. “I’m playing for something that’s much, much more than that, right,” she said. “There’s bigger goals ahead for me in terms of how I wanna finish here.”

The famed female poker pro also explained the difference from her 38th place effort in 2007 and what she’s done this year. Ho said that not many players really knew what they were doing in ’07, and she “knew just a little bit more” about what she was doing. The 31-year-old added that she’d like to think her game has improved up to her 2014 Main Event run.

Ho needs to hope for a little luck if she’s going to make a realistic run at the November Nine. Assuming she can pull off the feat, it would make her the first female November Niner in history. However, her 435k chips are quite a ways off of the current leader, Mark Newhouse, who has 7.4 million chips.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kRDpHckYwA

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Amanda Musumeci falls short in 2012 WSOP Event #9

Friday, June 8th, 2012

To say that there’s a drought among female winners at the WSOP is an understatement. In fact, the last woman to win an open-entry WSOP tournament came in 2008, when Vanessa Selbst won a $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event. Maria Ho came close to ending this drought last year when she finished runner-up to Allen Bari in a 2011 WSOP $5,000 NLHE tournament – but again, no dice.

So it’s no surprise that plenty of people were excited when Amanda Musumeci made a deep run in the recent 2012 WSOP Event #9. The Philadelphia native burst onto the poker scene last year when she made a deep run in the 2011 Main Event; she ended up finishing 62nd and earning $130,997. So many poker fans were already well aware of Musumeci by the time the Event #9 final table rolled around.

Unfortunately for her, Ashkan Razavi was busy steam-rolling opponents at the final table, and by the time he and Musumeci met heads-up, he had built over a 6:1 chip advantage on her. She managed to make things entertaining by doubling up at one point and prolonging the heads-up match for a while; however, it wasn’t enough as Musumeci finished in second with a sizable $481,643 prize.

Seeing as how she was runner-up, this signifies another miss for the ladies when it comes to open WSOP tournaments. Of course, things aren’t over by a long shot for the women because there are still 50 bracelet events left to be played, which leaves them with plenty of time to end the dry spell.

As for Musumeci, there’s no reason to be sad because she’s proven to be quite the grinder over the past year. In between her 62nd Main Event finish and the 2nd place finish in the 2012 WSOP, she managed to cash in 15 different tournaments – including eight WSOP Circuit events. Taking all of this into account, she’s now earned $748,223 in career tournament winnings.

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NBA Players in 2011 WSOP

Sunday, July 10th, 2011

While we’ve seen plenty of rappers, rock stars and Hollywood A-listers in past WSOP’s, we haven’t seen a whole lot of NBA stars enter the world’s biggest poker event. However, all of this changed in the 2011 WSOP since two stars in Paul Pierce and Shawn Marion both played in tournaments this year.

Pierce is the big headliner here because he registered in the 2011 WSOP Main Event, and actually managed to survive the first day. The Boston Celtics forward played in Day 1c, which included over 2,100 players, and he was one of the lucky 800 players to move on. In addition to playing some good poker, Pierce also managed to maintain a relaxed attitude at the table. He casually talked to people on the rail, while also keeping a solid focus on the poker action.

During a break from the action, Pierce told reporters, “Solid day. I’ve gotta pick it up if I want to compete. It’s a good first day. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Regardless of who I am in the NBA, I’m everybody’s equal at the table. I’m fair game. You’ve got to be able to play.”

Another star who showed up earlier in the 2011 WSOP was Shawn Marion. Fresh off of winning a championship with the Dallas Mavericks in June, Marion jumped in a $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em tournament. He ended up taking 800th out of 3,389 players, and spoke about his finish by saying, “Tournaments are hard to play. I’m a cash game type of guy. You have to be patient, wait for cards and sometimes you wait for so long, you get antsy.”

It’s no surprise that Marion played in a WSOP event since he’s been making some forays into the poker world. The power forward has been spotted hanging out with Maria Ho and Tiffany Michele recently.

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