Paul Carrillo

Stephen Baines

Lars Graf

Alan Complainsaw Kessler

Aaron Szerencses

Daniel Walter

Nam Le

Andrew Brokos

That’s right, I’ve got Phil Ivey on my immediate left. To be honest, I’m pretty excited to play with the guy, though I wish it weren’t in a 10K. At least I don’t have many chips to lose to him.

I haven’t googled anyone yet, but I also recognize Kessler and Le.

My first reaction was that, this close call notwithstanding, this was a pretty good spot for Bloch. Granted everything I’ve heard about Ivey is that he’s both incredibly good at poker and insanely intimidating in person, but is he really 24 times more likely than the average player to take it down? The one thing I don’t know, which would make a big difference, is what his chip stack was like at the time. I guess if he was already at like three times the average when he took the bet, it might not be so unreasonable to think he’d close out eight times as often as anyone else sitting on a stack that big.

Even against bad players in a great structure, that’s an awfully huge edge. Then again, if Ivey does make it to the final four with a decent stack, I imagine he takes it down a large percentage of the time.

What do you think? Was Ivey getting the best of Bloch when he took 99:1?