Lets go Gulf Coast Poker Players!


The main event is shaping up to be a good one for railbirds and hopefully television watchers for those that follow local players. We have a slew of them still alive in the WSOP No Limit Texas Holdem Main Event. Our magazine stretches the Gulf Coast a big.
Sure we take the entire coast from Florida to the tip of Texas, though we probably should do more for our friends in Tampa and players closer to Brownsville but we also think of ourselves as a hub that stretches up the Mississippi to Tunica, and count Arkansas players, Georgians, Tennesseeans (sp?), Alabamaians and others as our own.

Basically, if you routinely play the tournaments in our area we'll include you too. King of the WSOP Circuit Dwyte Pilgrim may be a New Yorker but he's also kind of one of us. I mean he's always here winning our money so why not. Lol.

However, with the likes John Dolan of Florida, Gabe Costner and Pejmanpatric Eskander of Mississippi, Jacob Tyler and Bill Melvin of Alabama, and Jared Ingles of Louisiana we have plenty of bona fide locals to sweat. Can't forget the good Texans like David Baker of Katy, and Thomas Vinas and Gary Dishongh of Houston, nor Karga Holt of Atlanta, Georgia as rooting interests.

Shannon Shorr’s elimination was painfully brutal. Though in a tournament this huge you kind of feel for some of these guys to get knocked out it will take that kind of hand. Shannon had a very sober blog post (link off of www.gulfcoastpoker.net) in retrospect about his series but I also hope he follows up with all the things he did well in the Main Event. You need some luck to go deep in a massive field (even if the luck is just escaping coolers and avoiding bad beats) but with the volume of hands you play the great players are utilizing a great amount of skill at the same time.

Phil Ivey last year said, he learned more in his main event run than he had in any other poker tournament. Wading through fields that large with such rampant disparity in the abilities of any given table much less any two players is an art form. Anyway, I’ll be rooting hard for those guys listed above to make it to the final table.

Gene and I have been saying for a while just how great the Gulf Coast is as a breeding ground for players and there are a lot of youngish guys out there proving it on the international spotlight. The best thing is regarding most of these guys all I keep hearing is what quality individuals they are.

I don’t personally know Jonathan Little or Shannon Shorr but I do know as they’ve grown before our eyes they have become two class acts. And every interaction I've had with them they've been nothing but gentlemen. There isn’t a person I’ve met that has really spoken ill of either. Not to mention they are tremenduous on the felt. So I felt Shannon's painful elimination like a punch to the gut when it happened just as it hurt when Jonathan just missed his bracelet earlier this series.

I don’t know Gabe Costner very well either, nor John Dolan at all but everybody I’ve spoken to only says the best about each of them too. Gabe has seen the best poker has to offer and probably the worst, he’s gone through as much a roller-coaster in this game as anybody and now he’s making his second deep World Series run in the same summer. Makes it easy to pull for people like them, go get ‘em guys.

While on the subject of these locals, who I feel like I'm going a little overboard about, I want to take a moment and mention some of the teaching that’s out there courtesy of Jonathan Little. The kid from Pensacola has a ton of insight into the game and was one of the first to “solve” Sit'n go tournaments. If you haven't checked out his teaching sites, like http://www.FloatTheTurn.com and http://www.sngicons.com do so, do so right now. If you want to get better as an online player or as a live player there is no better teacher.

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