When the 2007 World Series of Poker main event sets off in the beginning of July, a never ending line of entering players each have the firm conviction that they are going to win. Several thousands of players are bound to be wrong. On the other hand, one of them is equally bound to win the whole caboodle, the question is just: who will it be.
If old merits matter, the players in the ten bracelets club should be our favorites: Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, Phil Hellmuth. Their tournament records are like a blueprint of poker history - but none of them has figured on a main event final table since 2001 when Phil Hellmuth finished in fifth place.
Then there are the players who have done the best results in the last months. Here we find players like Gus Hansen, Ted Forrest, and Paul Wasicka who are in the top ten on the 2007 money list, so far. Hansen recently won the AS$ 10,000 main event of the 2007 Aussie Millions in Melbourne, Forrest won the $9,600 WPT Championship Event of the Bay 101 Shooting Stars festival in San Jose, and Paul Wasicka won the $25,000 National Heads-Up Championship in Las Vegas.
Most WSOP players are still Americans, but the cohorts from other continents have been growing rapidly lately, lead by the Europeans. Looking at the latest European Poker Tour events, players such as Ram Vaswani, Noah Boeken, Luca Pagano, Bertrand Grospellier and Patrik Antonius have done consistently well and must be given full respect in the upcoming WSOP. Of course, a player like Carlos Mortensen with four final tables in WSOP 2006 is also not a bad tip.
The list of players for whose chances to win you might argue with a certain weight can be made much longer. Add to it all unknown players who know how to play poker and may find a good run at the right time, and predicting the 2007 WSOP winner with any kind of precision gets all but impossible.
