Brags. Beats. Battlestar Galactica.

Right now they're playing out the November Nine and I'm watching it live online (they've kindly done a video stream this time instead of just audio like the last two years.) 

This year is somewhat unique in that I followed the WSOP ME over the previous two years, so I had a good idea about all the members of the Nine, their backgrounds, how they played and how they got there to the final table. This year, however, I barely read the updates on pokernews and I didn't even watch the ESPN coverage this time. Besides knowing that Michael Mizrachi made it to the FT, which is a pretty impressive feat given that he won the $50k Championship, I didn't know who any of the final table players were until tonight. 

It is pretty interesting that all the players remaining are professionals; it definitely shows how the shape of the player field has changed over the last few years. In terms of watching though, it's kinda less fun because there isn't anyone like Darvin Moon who's going to do some super funky plays like last year. Instead, we sort of have this war of attrition, with a lot of single raised pots being passed around, and occasionally there is some sort of AK vs JJ all-in. Even though this sounds pretty boring, it still manages to be pretty tense and there are still a lot of interesting spots to analyse. Getting to see every hand you really get an idea of what's going on in these players' heads, making it far more interesting than the heavily edited ESPN coverage.

In terms of which winner would be the best for poker, it's probably either the Grinder just for the story, or Candio, an Italian player and the only one not from North America, even though I personally don't like the way he conducts himself. In terms of favourites, it's probably Mizrachi, even though his technical game is probably the weakest, he has by far the most live experience and clearly has very good instincts, as well as having a very intimidating image. I think Cheong has a good shot because he seems to have that killer instinct that usually creates an edge between a field of similarly skilled players. Candio seems to have that too, but he seems way more spewy from what I've seen. 

Anyone else watching and have any thoughts?