[csquard]

I covered the WSOP ME for Stars Blog as well as PokerWorks. Take this for what it's worth, a view over the last three days of the event, except for Khan (I didn't cover him much but watched him from early on). Also, this is based more on watching interactions with other players, friends, and family. The only players I had direct contact with were Yang (asked a few questions about his faith after he won), Khan (couple brief conversations), Rahme (one discussion plus questioned his posse), and Lam (was on him most of the FT, talked a good bit to him before he left for dinner break and before he started HU).

1. Kalmar I may have only spoken to him once, but he was definitely living the dream from the time he got down to the final hundred or so. He's a guy I assume you'd want to head to a pub with or to a EPL match with.
2. Yang My buddy John Armbrust (out in 18th with AK vs AQ to Lee Childs) told me I should get on him when they got down to fifty players or so (Beat for me...). I've read alot about phoniness of his words and antics in a variety of threads, but I would definitely disagree. I too am a Christian and asked him several questions about his faith after he won (some in the Media had already started ridiculing him during the FT). I do question some of his actions, make no mistake (prayer for a card seems fairly bizarre to me). Having said that, he seems like an extremely humble man who had a very tough life doing what he wanted to do and not making any money. With Chris Ferguson watching him, I was struck by how out of place he would be with FullTilt vs. Stars, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
3. Hilm I have little to go on with this other than general persona around the table.
4. Khan I may get flamed a bit for this, but I think his antics had little to do with who he seemed to be away from the table. He was extremely generous in his support of other Stars players and qualifiers who were making it deep, and he was a real pleasure almost all of the time. He played extremely well for much of the tourney, which gets lost in all of his antics.
5. Watkinson Again, very little to go on here. Maybe that means he should be lower in likability, I don't know.
6. Lam I may have him too high or too low, I'm not sure. He definitely got schooled HU, he played extremely tight throughout the end game. In the heat of the last two days, he really seemed focused and reveled in all of it with his friends and family. I actually thought he had a great chance to make a run HU, but he was either so card dead or couldn't pull trigger to get in there with Yang. I used to buy into the whole I'm-here-to-win-not-to-move-up logic of MTT's. After this year's WSOP, I'm now more convinced that being a patient nit most of the time is a pathway to success unless you have the game of Strasser or Jacob. Yang obviously showed what you can do with a big dose of blind aggression in the face of tight play, and I'm sure last year's Gold FT hands were in the minds of some like Childs with his laydown. So I don't fault Lam with how he played except HU, when he should have changed gears.
7. Rahme He seemed nice enough, so maybe he should be higher. Maybe I was just depressed that someone who almost could be my grandfather got so deep and I was sitting there writing hands down in a notebook.
8. Kravchenko Little to go on here, although I thought he, Khan, and Yang would be the three to watch at the FT.
9. Childs Granted, his busting out my buddy didn't help much in my eyes, and I'm actually sure he's a nice guy. But somebody had to be last.