Phil Ivey To Only Play Main Event and $50k H.O.R.S.E. Event at This Year's World Series of Poker

Phil Ivey has publicly stated that he only intends on playing the Main Event and the $50k H.O.R.S.E. event at this year's World Series of Poker.

At first, this may not seem to make much sense. Why would a player as good as Phil Ivey, with multiple World Series of Poker bracelets and countless cashes under his belt, want to miss all of these events where there will presumably be hundreds, if not thousands of fish in each event?

In order to understand Ivey's decision, you need to consider Phil Ivey's projected earnings rate per hour. If you take the total number of hours needed to play as many World Series of Poker events, divided by the amount of money he will make playing these events, I am sure that Phil Ivey would make more playing at his standard cash games or playing out on the golf course, or even playing online. Let's say that Phil Ivey takes down $750k in total cashes at this year's World Series of Poker, and plays 20 events. After buyins, he makes $650k profit. Let's say that for each event, he plays an average of ten hours. So, in total, he plays 200 hours worth of events. Sounds like a lot of money to you and me, but that is an hourly earn of $3250 per hour. I guarantee you that Phil Ivey makes more than that playing cash games at the Bellagio; he probably makes more than that playing online, and he doesn't need to be bothered by autograph seekers and the like.

Ivey is going to play the $50k H.O.R.S.E. and the main event, where his hourly earning rate will be much higher. Ivey is a gambler at heart, and he will not pass up the opportunity to take down a $12 million dollar first place prize at the main event. For the smaller buyin events though, forget it; Ivey can make more playing cash games.


Filed Under: World Series of Poker