During the boom years, railbirds who weren’t well versed in poker would often ask questions that seemed strange to those of us firmly implanted inside the bubble. They’d fumble over player names and they’d want to know what place they were when they busted in Level 4. Sometimes they wanted to know the simplest thing of all: who’s winning?
Even post-boom, people sometimes want to know who’s winning. If only there were an easy and simple answer.
If you were to go by straight chip count, then currently Nicolas Malandre of Chile is winning.
“Call him malandro,” said the player to Malandre’s right. Malandre certainly seems to be thuggishly stealing from everyone else on Table 10. He started the day 20th in chips, with 116,500, and has climbed all the way to 400,000 as we begin the 1,500-3,000 level.
Chip count doesn’t always tell the whole story though, especially at this stage of the tournament. You might say that PokerStars is winning, for example, as three of its four Team Pros are still alive in the tournament with above-average stacks. Leo Fernandez and Angel Guillen both have about 150,000 in chips. Cristian de Leon, who started the day as chip leader, has fallen back to the pack a little. Despite the setback, his 221,000 in chips are double the average.
Maybe Tournament Director Mike Ward is winning. He seems to be the only one enjoying the “easy listening” music being piped into the tournament floor. A few minutes ago I caught him crooning away to Roberta Flack’s 1973 hit, “Killing Me Softly with His Song.” He was, indeed, killing all of us softly with his song.
There are people that I can tell you definitely aren’t winning. Team Pro Jose “Nacho” Barbero and Team Online player Freddy Torres are both out. They’re not winning. The media have encountered several technical problems this afternoon, which has led to a lot of colorful phrases being bandied about the media room. It’s safe to say we’re not winning either.
Is Charlie Sheen still winning? Was he ever? I’m going to put him in the “not winning” column too.
Maybe it comes down to this: Latin America is winning. This tournament produced 629 total entries. It’s not a record for the tour or even for the Colombia National Poker Championship, but it’s still a figure that shows that poker is doing quite fine in this part of the world. When you draw more than 600 to a tournament that’s counter-programmed against the WSOP, it’s a success by every definition.
Now if I could just figure out who Daniel Negreenstein is…
Dave Behr is a freelance contributor to the PokerStars Blog.
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