Doyle Brunson joins Phil Ivey in Missing the WSOP 2011 Main Event

The after-shocks from April 15’s ‘Black Friday’ continue to be felt around the world of poker, with poker legend Doyle Brunson stating that he won’t participate in the World Series of Poker (WSOP)’s main event, which starts on Thursday in Las Vegas.

The $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Championship is the final event of this year’s WSOP and will now be minus two of poker’s biggest names in Doyle Brunson and Phil Ivey, with the US Department of Justice (DoJ) decision to shut down several poker websites being cited as the reasons behind this duo’s absence.

Brunson took to microblogging website Twitter last night to state that there will be “no main event for me” this year – unless “the DOJ (Department of Justice) will stake me”.

The 78-year-old will, of course, join 35-year-old Ivey on the sidelines following the eight-time WSOP bracelet winner’s decision to boycott the series as he gave his backing to American players unable to access their accounts with poker website Full Tilt Poker.

Brunson – who has 10 WSOP gold bracelets to his name, with the last coming at the 2005 $5,000 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em event for $367,800 – recently cut his ties with poker website Doyles Room following its seizure in accordance with an investigation into the violation of online gambling laws.

However, those sequence of events seem to have affected The Godfather of Poker, with Brunson – following his receipt of numerous questions asking him why he has decided to give the WSOP main event a miss – tweeting that, while money is not an issue, he has “lost a lot of passion for the game since Black Friday”.

The Poker Hall of Fame inductee hasn’t enjoyed his best year at the WSOP, having failed to go deep in any of the events he has entered, with Bronson – soon after his exit from the $50,000 Player’s Championship – tweeting: “Busted… Total nightmare… Goodbye WSOP”.

He then followed that up just a few hours later with: And BTW, Murphy’s Law is in full force, ‘If anything can go wrong, it will’.”, before adding that “at least it seems to be for me, but be careful for a few days:-).

However, the Las Vegas pro – who has more than 50 years’ experience at poker tables – felt compelled to quash any rumors circulating that he would be quitting live poker completely, even though he tweeted last weekend that “you might be watching my last tournament. If I don’t play well (up to my standards), I may retire from tournament poker”.

Additionally, following a tweet asking Brunson why the events of Black Friday – when Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and Absolute Poker were shut down by the US government – had hit him so hard, he responded by writing that maybe because I’m getting old….. Mother Nature is a bitch!

Certainly, the prestige of the WSOP’s main event will be significantly reduced without Brunson and Ivey – who is considered by many to be the greatest poker player of all time – in attendance.

Hopefully by this time next year we’ll see those two poker superstars back in the main event field at the 43rd staging of the WSOP at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino.