The ESPN.com poker franchise “Inside Deal” made its triumphant return to a weekly telecast and featured a race among four online poker pros to become the next member of the DoylesRoom Brunson 10. Three of the four joined “Inside Deal” host Laura Lane and fill-in Andrew Feldman, who held down the fort while regular host Bernard Lee was in Las Vegas for the 2010 World Series of Poker (WSOP).
The episode began with a rundown of the ongoing WSOP, which featured brothers Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi and Robert Mizrachi making the final table of the $50,000 Player’s Championship. In addition, UB.com pro Phil Hellmuth fell just shy of recording his 12th bracelet after finishing 15th in Event #8. Feldman predicted that Hellmuth would be in the spotlight often this year: “We’re talking about one of the best poker players ever to play the game. He has more WSOP bracelets than anyone else and more cashes than anyone else. He’s going to be at a final table and it’s going to be this summer.”
Lee then joined “Inside Deal” from Las Vegas and relayed the mood inside the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino as Hellmuth was gunning for his 12th piece of hardware: “There was a tremendous excitement here at the Rio, not only among the fans, but among the players as well. People were just talking about how incredible it is that Phil can get through these 1,000-person fields consistently. When he was among the chip leaders on Day 3, people were expecting him to make the final table.” Hellmuth also took 50th in Event #17.
An ongoing WSOP leaderboard contest features four online poker superstars vying for a spot in the Brunson 10, a group of DoylesRoom pros handpicked by Doyle Brunson himself. Dan “djk123” Kelly and David “Doc Sands” Sands appeared on screen together and the latter detailed his deep run in Event #5: “I got pretty close, but I was happy to make my first World Series final table. After that, I felt like anything between ninth and second was pretty much the same to me. I played pretty well and was actually pretty card dead from about 30 players on in. I played the short stack pretty effectively, something online players do well.”
Kelly, a former #1 player on the prestigious PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankings, explained why he became involved with the DoylesRoom Brunson 10: “I like the idea of the Brunson 10. I know pretty much all of the guys who are in it, I am friends with them, and I think it would be really cool to be a part of it.” Whoever finishes first on the leaderboard at the end of the 2010 WSOP will claim the seventh spot in the Brunson 10.
The soft-spoken Kelly has been a fixture near the top of the PocketFives.com Rankings since mid-2007 and currently resides at #11 worldwide. On his longevity, Kelly told “Inside Deal” viewers, “The most important thing in poker is you have to realize that the game’s always changing. Before, no one would shove more than 10 big blinds, but then once everyone else starts doing it, you have to adjust. You always have to be adjusting your game and not playing one set style.”
Also looking for a spot in the Brunson 10 is Faraz “The-Toilet” Jaka, who made the final table of the PokerStars North American Poker Tour (NAPT) High-Roller Bounty Shootouts at the Venetian and Mohegan Sun. On his shootout success, Jaka remarked, “Lately, I’ve been running amazing in them. I think I’m getting a good feel in them. I’ve actually won my starting table at the last three shootouts I’ve played in. I love the winner-take-all format. Even when I play in MTTs, I’m always going for the win, so I think my experience doing that has helped in the shootouts.”
Finally, Jaka recalled how he became involved with DoylesRoom after previously wearing patches for several other online poker sites including PokerStars and UB.com: “I met Pamela Brunson at a couple of other events and she really liked my game and how I was playing. I heard about what the site was trying to do with the Brunson 10 and loved the idea of being able to represent Doyle. He’s the one guy in the poker world that no one has a bad thing to say about.”
Catch new episodes of “Inside Deal” on ESPN.com weekly through November.
