Donev Poker
Donev studied the poker books of David Sklansky, Mason Malmuth and Tom McEvoy and practiced using poker computer software. Donev won a bracelet in the $1,500 Limit Omaha event at the 2000 World Series of Poker (WSOP), where he took home $85,800 for his first-place finish. In 2002, Donev made his one and only appearance on Late Night Poker. Donev, whose first cash in tournament poker dates to 1999, for years was at the top of the ratings for Austrian poker players until the “big money” in poker took over the past decade or so.
- Ivo Donev (born 25 December 1959) is a Bulgarian, with Austrian passport, who is a professional chess and poker player.
- Donev took a horrible beat when his K-K lost to A-Q – making a straight when the board showed 2-3-4-5-x. Donev couldn’t bear to watch and was standing on the rail when the final card was dealt. He fell to his knees when the crowd exploded upon seeing the straight. Donev walked away in a daze and received $47,700.
The World Series of Poker returned 15 players to Day 4 of the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, all of them in the money, and played down to the final table of six. The most prestigious bracelet of the summer comes with $1.3 million and leading the field is none other than Poker Central Ambassador Daniel Negreanu with 5.9 million going for his seventh bracelet.
“I helped create this event when it was originally created years ago,” Negreanu said after the day finished. “I always was so disappointed I hadn’t done better. I had a couple of cashes and last year came in 12th. I always felt, especially this year more than ever, that it’s something I wanted to win.”
“I’ve won Player of the Year twice, but this is the best year I’ve ever had, especially if I can top it off with a bracelet – I’d have six top 20 finishes,” he added. “This whole tournament’s unique. You have some of the players that clearly don’t know how to play some of the games very well, so they make up for it in other games where they play overly aggressive and stuff like that. So, I’ve been trying to avoid the landmines.”
“Paul Volpe plays all of the games at the high stakes,” said Negreanu. “There’s a couple of guys like Ike and Johnny who are very, very good at a couple of the games and they’re going to play high variance. But, there’s some weaknesses in terms of experience in some of the others. On my left is Crazy Elior, who is good at everything too. He would be the guy I think is the most well-rounded outside of myself.”
Isaac Haxton brings a ton of experience to the final table. (Photo: PokerPhotoArchive.com)
Trailing Negreanu is Isaac Haxton in second place – who is still looking for his first WSOP bracelet. Haxton brings 5.2 million to the final table, ahead of Elior Sion – who isn’t a household name, but did finish in ninth place in the 2016 PPC.
Johannes Becker is a German player with only one previous WSOP Las Vegas cash, 178th in a 2015 $1,500 No Limit Hold’em event, however, he did finish in ninth place in the 2015 WSOP Europe Main Event.
Ivo Donev is a professional poker and chess player. (Photo: PokerPhotoArchive.com)
Ivo Donev is an Austrian player with 16 WSOP cashes stretching back to 2000 and $1.6 million in live tournament earnings. He’s also an International Chess Master and wrote the book “The Most Important Ideas in the End Game.”
Volpe has two bracelets to his credit and 38 total WSOP cashes for $1.9 million. Outside the WSOP Volpe has won over $6 million in tournaments and finished in 11th place in the 2016 PPC for $92,702. Sixteen of Volpe’s WSOP cashes have come in events where the buy-in was $10,000 or higher.
Paul Volpe is short-stacked but poses a tough challenge for Negreanu. (Photo: PokerPhotoArchive.com)
Play resumes at 2 pm PT (5 pm ET) where they’ll play down to a winner. Here’s a look at the breakdown of payouts:
1st – $1,395,767
2nd – $862,649
3rd – $595,812
4th – $419,337
5th – $300,852
6th – $220,11
The last former PPC champion standing was Matthew Ashton in eighth place, Shaun Deeb bubbled the final table in seventh place, Scott Seiver finished in ninth place and Mike Matusow turned in a 12th place finish.
Final Table Chip Counts
1. Daniel Negreanu – 5,930,000
2. Isaac Haxton – 5,205,000
3. Elior Sion – 4,750,000
4. Johannes Becker – 4,560,000
5. Ivo Donev – 2,990,000
6. Paul Volpe – 1,570,000
Few know how to truly compare and contrast the games of chess and poker like Ivo Donev, a World Series of Poker bracelet winner and International Master in chess.
Donev, who hails from Austria, was one of 100 players to put up $50,000 to compete in the 2017 WSOP Poker Players Championship, an eight-game mix that pit some of the game’s deepest thinkers against each other over five days of action. Donev, who won his bracelet 17 years ago, ended up finishing fourth on Thursday for a score of $419,337. The event was won by high-stakes online poker pro Elior Scion of the United Kingdom for nearly $1.4 million.
The 57-year-old Donev has a chess rating of more than 2,300, making him one of the top players in the world. The only step up from International Master is Grandmaster.
Card Player had the chance to speak to Donev after he busted the Players Championship to talk about why he plays more poker than chess these days, as well as the limitations of comparing the two strategy games.
Ivo Donev Poker
Brian Pempus: How did you feel at the final table?
Ivo Donev: It was a very strong final table. I’m a professional chess player; I’m an International Master. The eight-game mix is a strategy game like chess. I felt very good in the [Players Championship]. This tournament takes more skill than the no-limit hold’em main event. You have to change the gears in any game. You have to change your strategy.
BP: Poker has a significant amount of gambling in it. Can you compare it to chess?
ID: In chess, the luck is about three percent, while in poker it is 10 times more. Maybe 20-30 percent luck in poker. In one tournament, in the very beginning of the main event, the skill is 90 percent or more, but if the blinds get very high, the luck goes up and the skill goes down. In chess, the luck is only if you get a special variant in your defense or you draw a weaker player [to play against]. About 97 percent of chess is skill. Now computers are so strong in chess that they can beat every player. In chess there isn’t a lot of action, so it’s not so popular. In poker there is a lot of action, and a lot of money. It makes for good TV.
BP: Can chess do anything to increase the luck factor to give the game more action? I’ve heard of randomizing the position of the pieces in the back row.
ID: Yeah, that’s the rule from Bobby Fischer to make a little action. Maybe speed chess is more interesting for TV. The skill is very strong and luck is very small. It is too much work in chess for not a lot of money. I was a professional chess player for many years. I played [all over Europe]. I was a chess trainer and coach. I lived off of chess for over 10 years. It’s very difficult [these days] because sponsorship is very low. You can make more in one year from poker than in 20 years of chess. I still play in a chess league in Germany. It’s just once a month. I wrote a chess book, and now I’m writing a book on strategy in no-limit hold’em tournaments. I’ll finish it next year maybe. I work as a poker coach and a chess coach. You can find me on Facebook.
BP: Earlier this year there was a computer from a school in Pittsburgh that beat a group of four poker players in heads-up no-limit hold’em. Did you follow that?
ID: Yes, of course. I know in no-limit hold’em, heads-up, the computer is very strong, 100 percent. You don’t need too much skill like in the big tournaments, because you don’t have to change gears based on new players. It’s more complicated [at a nine-handed table]. Computers are best in heads-up.
BP: What was a bigger milestone for AI, when a computer beat the best chess player, Garry Kasparov in 1997, or some of the best poker players?
ID: They are similar, but I think it was more important when the computer beat the poker player because poker [is a more popular game]. Maybe one day we will see a computer play the WSOPmain event. It’s very interesting. Now everyone can have a computer in their phone that can beat the best chess players.
Ivo Donev Pokerstars
BP: Which game is more of an emotional roller coaster to play for a living?
ID: I think poker is more emotional, because in chess it’s one versus one. Also, if you lose, you lose very slowly. In poker there is big jumping. Sometimes you get lucky, boom, boom, boom, but other times you don’t play hands or you lose. In chess, everyone is friendly, every time. In poker, you have a lot of bad losers. Maybe he cries. In chess everything is quiet. People play for fun and not for a living. Here [at the casino], a lot of players try to play for a living and emotion is very high.
For more coverage from the summer series, visit the 2017 WSOP landing page complete with a full schedule, news, player interviews and event recaps.
source credit: http://www.cardplayer.com/