WHO IS THE OCTOBER NINE FAVORITE?

Just in case you’re completely uninitiated, the main event just played its way down from 6,598 players to nine, with the survivors assured at least a $754,798 payout with the potential to win about $7.8 million more by winning the world championship. Before that can happen though, the “October Nine” must wait for ESPN’s pre-taped shows to catch up so they can play the final table live with the TV audience aware of the storylines heading into that final table.

This year’s programming is going to be an interesting challenge for the producers because, simply, there isn’t a lot in the way of recognizable player brands. Past delayed final table installments have featured pros Phil Ivey or Michael “Grinder” Mizrachi, and the programming and other build-up has gravitated towards their charisma, catering to the fan base who already knew the stars. This year, there is no Ivey or Mizrachi. In fact, the final table, usually a den of diversity, features eight American men (and one Hungarian), each of them equally faceless to the masses. It leaves us with a lot of educating to do in trying to figure out who the favorites are going in.

The October 9:

The obvious choice is Jesse Sylvia, for the simple fact he has approximately 30% more chips than anyone else at the table. Sylvia’s been a professional for around three years and there’s little doubt that the broadcasts will at least look at the friendship shard by he and (former roommate)Russell Thomas. Working against Thomas though is a complete lack of exposure to this kind of situation. Primarily an online pro prior to Black Friday, Thomas has exactly four live tournament cashes prior to this one for a total of $23,777. It’s not exactly the kind of tournament experience one hopes to bring into the final table of the year’s biggest tournament, and the pressures of the light, cameras and action might be a factor.

So, not to say it’s not Sylvia, but the lack of experience at least opens the debate some. Working our way down the list, the next obvious choice is Andras Koroknai, the one non-American at the table. Our second-chip leader only has one more live tournament cash than Sylvia, but there’s a big difference there in that one of Koroknai’s cashes was a $1,788,040 first-place finish at the 2010 LA Poker Classic, annually on of the calendar’s ten biggest tournaments. There, Koroknai dealt with the pressure of facing those environmental factors Sylvia hasn’t. He brings that experience to the final table, which should leave him far more accustomed to the entirely different environment those factors create, and it could prove a difference maker.

Beyond Koroknai, two more names stand out for the excellent summers they had even prior to the main event:Greg Merson and Jeremy Ausmus. Ausmus can’t be a real odds-on consideration because he starts the final table as the smallest stack, but it’s worth noting that the main event was his ninth cash of the summer and that along with Merson, he is one of only two players at this final table who were rated in the GPI’s top 300 players heading into the main event. Four cashes at the 2011 WSOP provided a foundation for this year’s performance to build upon, good enough to put him in 147^th place on the July 16^th GPI update. Making the final table is a fluke for anyone, but his ranking makes his survival seem a little more logical.

That leaves us with Merson, our top GPI-rated November Niner at #112. The Maryland native had never scored more than $22,000 in any live tournament heading into WSOP, which makes sense when you consider he’s a short-table specialist who has spent the vast majority of his poker in the realms of cash games and online play. Really, the main event is about as far from his usual haunts as it gets. So why does he get his mention here? A few reasons really:

1. At the beginning of July, Merson got his fourth cash of this WSOP, a $1,136,197 victory in event 57 – $10,000 NL hold ‘em – six-handed.
2. As evidenced by that buy-in, Merson is playing in his element, where so many at this final table aren’t accustomed to $10,000 buy-in climates.
3. He’s third in chips.
4. Heading into the final table, Merson is the leader for WSOP Player of the Year. Granted, that distinction will bring with it extra attention and therefore added pressure, but it goes to show the caliber of the poker he played to make it to this final table.

The question for Merson is whether he’ll be able to maintain that level of play…stay in the zone. November Nine participants have often commented on the inability to maintain one’s headspace. Too much time to think about the possibilities only adds to the pressure, making this gauntlet all the more difficult. If Merson is able to stay on the straight and narrow though, given the size of his stack and his prior success, calling him at least the co-favorite makes a whole lot of sense.

Of course, this is all conjecture. No one could have predicted Jerry Yang going from small stack to champion in 2007, or the fact that GPIPlayer id=”72039″]Jonathan Duhamel[/GPIPlayer] would be the only start-of-final table chipleader since Jamie Gold in 2006 to emerge victorious. All we can do is wait and watch and make our best guesses. It’ll be fun to watch how these nine stories develop over the next three months; given WSOP Europe and the other events in the mean time, we could be talking about entirely new favorites by the time the action starts.

Gary Wise is a regular contributor to ESPN.com/poker and globalpokerindex.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @GaryWise1.