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Opening Day has passed, and all of MLB's teams are in the middle of their second series, putting the order of summer predictions and forecasts into touch with the pandemonium of reality. It can be difficult to get past the icy surety of who was good last year and who has been good the past several years in an age when the Houston Astros, Los Angeles Dodgers, or Atlanta Braves have appeared in every World Series since 2017.
Their supremacy is such that, despite spending nearly a billion dollars on players, the Philadelphia Phillies and San Diego Padres were considered surprise postseason teams in the highly stratified National League in 2022. When the baseball staff at Yahoo Sports projected the postseason field for this season previous to Opening Day, four out of five anticipated the same six NL teams that made it there last year. We went chalk, in the language of March's other favored prediction activity.
But in baseball, like this year's March Madness, a year without a surprise has traditionally been the greatest surprise of all. Since the inclusion of the second wild card in 2012, 47.6% of postseason teams have skipped the playoffs the prior season (excluding 2020 and 2021 due to the anomalous field in 2020). And 21.7% of playoff clubs had a losing record the year before.
There has yet to be a tournament in the wild-card period without at least one team coming off a losing season and at least three teams missing the playoffs the previous year.
Last year, when each league had three wild cards, a full half of the playoff participants were coming off home Octobers, and three teams made it after ending under.500 in 2021. Not to frighten already frightened Philadelphia Phillies supporters, but the point is that some favored teams will fall off, and some new teams will emerge to claim postseason tickets. Consider who might be heading in which way on baseball's unpredictability lift.
Daniel Weinman was crowned winner of the 2023 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event on Monday, taking home a record breaking $12.1 million in winnings. Weinman had to outlast the other 10,043 entrants to take home the prize and get his hands on his share of live poker’s largest ever prize pool – a staggering $93,399,900. As well as taking home the prize money, 35-year-old Weinman also got his hands on the WSOP Main Event bracelet. The huge bracelet contains 500 grams of 10-karat yellow gold, as well as 2,352 various precious gemstones.
Daniel Weinman won the World Series of Poker's main event world championship on Monday in Las Vegas, earning $12.1 million along the way. Playing in the tournament for a 16th year, Weinman was tops in a deep pool of 10,043 players vying for $93.39 million. His victory came after just 164 hands at the final table. "I was honestly on the fence about even coming back and playing this tournament," the 35-year-old Atlanta native told reporters afterward. Weinman's final table featured Jan-Peter Jachtmann, who landed in fourth place and took home $3 million, as well as Toby Lewis, who finished seventh and secured $1.42 million. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the main event's entry pool far outpaced the previous record of 8,773 set in 2006. "I've always kind of felt that poker was kind of going in a dying direction, but to see the numbers at the World Series this year has been incredible," Weinman said. "And to win this main event, it doesn't feel real. I mean, [there's] so much luck in a poker tournament. I thought I played very well." Steven Jones finished second, securing $6.5 million. And Adam Walton settled for third and a $4 million prize.
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