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$1,500
No-Limit Hold'em
|
|
Seat |
Name |
Chips |
|
1 |
Jeff Norman |
$75,300 |
|
2 |
Carlos Mortensen |
$107,200 |
|
3 |
Layne Flack |
$88,700 |
|
4 |
T.J. Cloutier |
$140,500 |
|
5 |
Roger Guerrette |
$17,700 |
|
6 |
Chris Bjorin |
$26,300 |
|
7 |
Phillip Marmorstein |
$48,500 |
|
8 |
Adeline Shayegan |
$62,900 |
|
9 |
John Pires |
$60,300 |
|
10 |
Johnny Chan |
$168,000 |
After we finished two hands at the previous blind-ante level, the clock went off signaling it was time to play a little higher. We would now play with $500 antes and $1,500-$3,000 blinds, meaning that ten-handed, there would be $9,500 in dead money on the table before any hand was dealt.
The short-stacked Guerrette knew he had to engage in a little war early, and he did, but he picked a strange hand with which to do it. John Pires, a San Jose/Bay 101 player who finished second in the mammoth opening $2,000 Limit Hold'em event last year, opened from early position on hand #5 with a raise to $12,000, and Guerrette decided to call all-in from the small blind for his last $11,000 with pocket threes.
Short stack or not, this is a bad call, because with a hand like pocket threes, you're either a tiny favorite (even if Pires is bluffing with a piece of junk like 7-4) or a huge underdog (roughly 4.5-1 if Pires holds any higher pair).
NOT ONLY THAT, IT RE-SUCKS
Pires wasn't bluffing with a piece of junk: he turned over A-A. Guerrette was briefly rewarded for his weak play when the flop came 3-6-Q, giving him a set, but an ace hit the turn, and we were nine-handed.
"Aw, that sucks," said Guerrette quietly, referring of course to the brief moment of hope the cards had given him before they took it back. Pires started with the best hand, lost the lead, and then got it back, a situation frequently referred to in poker as "the old suck and re-suck."
Chris Bjorin is a great European player who now calls London home, and he too owned a short stack that was going to have to make a move. Three hands later he made it, shoving his $18,500 all-in from late position. Shayegan, the lone woman at the final table and a native of Bath, England who now calls Huntington Beach, CA home, decided to call from the button.
TWO VERY DIFFERENT STORIES FOR SIMILAR POCKET PAIRS
The blinds got out of the way, and Bjorin turned over 4-4, while Shayegan turned over Kc-Qc. If you're learning, make sure you understand the difference between what Bjorin did and what Guerrette did. Bjorin bet, giving himself a chance to win if not called. Guerrette's only chance to win was if his hand managed to hold up, an immense difference, especially since $18,500 was a large enough bet to require someone rational to have some kind of real hand to call.
The board came down 8-5-6-8-5, and with that final five, Bjorin's pocket fours had been counterfeited. He was stuck playing the board, while Shayegan won with eights and fives with a king kicker. Bjorin was out ninth.
"I knew it was coming. I could feel the five coming off," said a disappointed Bjorin as he collected his money. Even though Bjorin had made a play he probably needed to make, he'd demonstrated yet another problem with those little pairs. Put two bigger pair on the board and suddenly you have nothing.
The very next hand, with the packed throng seemingly pressing in closer every moment, the two blinds, Chan (small) and Norman (big) limped in to look at a cheap flop of Kc-6h-3s. Chan bet 6k, and Norman called. A probable blank, the 7h, hit the turn, and Chan bet 14k; surely this bet was going to incur a raise or fold. Nope. Norman called again. Another harmless looking card hit the river, the 8d, and Chan led out again, this time for a hefty $28,000, with the board now Kc-6h-3s-7h-8d
THE THIRD CALL'S THE CHARM
Norman called for the third and final time, said "king" and Chan said "that's good" as Norman turned over K-4 and Chan mucked. Nothing against Norman, who is an experienced no-limit player, but the other stars at the table had to be a bit relieved seeing nearly fifty grand move from Chan's stack to Norman's.
No big moves happened for more than an entire round, an oddity today, and that gave me time for a chip estimate after hand #20:
Norman, 115k
Mortensen, 80k
Flack, 100k
Cloutier, 145k
Marmorstein, 50k
Shayegan, 85k
Pires, 115k
Chan, 100k
It's always fun listening to the top players banter at a final table, and after hand #34, when Chan opened for 10k only to see defending World Champion Mortensen raise him 30k more, Chan threw his hand away, and said, "If he raises me $15,000, I move in on him."
Cloutier, the WSOP's all-time leading money winner (he regained the title from Phil Hellmuth one event into this year's WSOP) went searching for some information and doing a little kidding simultaneously. "How about if he raises you $13,000?" he asked Chan. "We got to be precise about these things," T.J. kidded.
TWO HANDS SHAYEGAN WILL REMEMBER BUT WOULD RATHER FORGET
Five and six hands later, Adeline Shayegan, the least experienced player at the final table, ran into two situations about which she isn't likely to be kidding for quite a while. Starting the situation with about 90, she ran into a two-hand disaster.
On the first, hand #39, Flack limped in for 3k, with Shayegan and Pires (the two blinds) coming along for the ride. Everyone checked the 10h-9h-8s flop, but when the 8c hit the turn, Shayegan checked, Pires bet 10k, Flack called, and Shayegan raised an odd amount, $20,000 more. It was one of those "surely one of you practically has to call me for the size of the pot raises," and while Pires got out of the way, Flack called. The Kd hit the river, and both players checked.
Shayegan turned over J-10, top pair on the flop and an open-ended straight draw. Flack turned over K-J, an open-ended straight draw that had turned into a winning pair of kings on the river. Given the scary board (straights, flushes and full houses were all possible), it's understandable why Shayegan might not have wanted to commit too much with a mere top pair, but she was probably better off either checking the turn or (better still, says the resulto-spectroscope) raising more than the 20k she did.
On the very next hand, Shayegan got into trouble on another limper pot, this one with Flack, Cloutier and Chan as her companions. The flop came 9d-4c-5c, Cloutier bet 15k, Shayegan moved her remaining 55k or so all-in, and Chan decided to move all-in as well. Cloutier showed a nine and folded, as they turned the hands up.
Shayegan held Kh-Qh, a pure bluff, and Chan held 4-5, two pair. "I was calling her for sure, Johnny," Cloutier said, "but once you were in there, I didn't think jack-nine was worth anything anymore." It turns out it would have been worth quite a bit, because the final two cards were both deuces, good enough for Chan to eliminate Shayegan but which would have counterfeited one of Chan's two pair if Cloutier had been silly enough to call Chan's all-in move.
NEWMAN MESSED WITH JOHNNY CHAN AGAIN...GUESS WHAT HAPPENED?
Four hands later, Chan raised a pot to $10,000, and Newman, who had earlier hurt Chan by calling him down with the K-4 top pair hand but who had bluffed 20k of the money back to Chan a little while later, made another of those funny raises ("another" only in that it resembled Shayegan's play), only $15,000 more. It's one of those bets that means the raiser has either a monster hand or absolutely nothing.
Chan studied his opponent briefly, and then raised enough to put him all-in. Newman folded instantly. "It's part of the game," Chan said to Newman. "You try to outplay me, I try to outplay you." Later, in a chance encounter by the elevator, Newman rued his play on this hand. "I was trying to make it look like a monster hand, but he saw through the play," Newman said. "I guess that's why he's Johnny Chan."
Newman was ruing his play on that hand because he ran into bigger trouble on hand #56. Cloutier opened the hand with a raise to 10k, and Newman moved all-in from the small blind, a total of about 30k, and Mortensen called instantly from the big blind. Once again Cloutier had started something that two others were going to finish, as he souped his cards and we got to see the "classic confrontation," As-Ks for Newman, pocket queens for Mortensen.
Cloutier claimed he had folded A-J, which probably wasn't much consolation to Mortensen when the flop came 10s-3s-4d, giving Newman outs not merely to his overcards but also a flush draw. It was now virtually a coin flip hand, with Newman about a 1% favorite if Cloutier was telling the truth about his hand and about 5% if he was fibbing about an ace being unavailable.
"HEY, LET'S HAVE DINNER WHEN THE ELEVATORS AREN'T WORKING"
Two harmless cards, the 7h-8d, finished off Jeff Newman in seventh place, and after several inconsequential battles, we hit the dinner break, originally scheduled for 8:00 but moved up to 6:45 when all players agreed to a Cloutier request for that time (so it could coincide with the dinner break from the main tournament).
Little did I know that the timing of this break meant I was to arrive back at the table the beneficiary of my first real exercise of 2002, thinking I was late but finding that Cloutier, who had been a couple floors higher in the steak house, still wasn't back yet, as they had managed to get one elevator operating. My winded state from running DOWN 20 floors (and, I should add, carrying a notebook that must have weighed at least 1/2000th of a ton) made me as red-faced as a bad bluffer, but it gave me time to record an official chip count:
Mortensen, 183.5k
Flack, 206.5k
Cloutier, 165k
Marmorstein, 47k
Pires, 64k
Chan, 125k
Four of the six finalist were true poker titans, but I knew backgammon great Marmorstein could play poker brilliantly from his disappointing 3rd place finish in the pot-limit Omaha a few days earlier, and also knew Pires had a lot of game from his second place finish last year, as well as our many personal battles in my Bay 101 days. This table was not for the weak-hearted.
PLEADING, MAYBE, BUT NO BEGGING
The antes remained at $500, and the blinds moved to $2,000-$4,000 as Cloutier finally arrived. Marmorstein had made a move during the break by donning a "Don't steal my blind" cap, but Flack, to whose honor the task would fall, given their table positions, admonished him with a laughing reply of "no begging."
Only Pires had remained silent as a stone throughout the competition, and he had played his chips very cautiously, too, generally gaining respect when he did bet but not raising quite enough to keep pace with the losses he was taking in blinds and antes. Pires saw a chance to make a move when Marmorstein, who had made a number of all-in moves with his short stack through the opening part of the session, made a slightly different kind of move on hand #71, from small blind, when he raised it to 16k.
Pires shoved his stack all in from the big blind, and Marmorstein called fairly quickly. Pocket sevens for Pires, As-Qs for Marmorstein, and while the Jd-6h-2h flop was harmless enough, the Qd hit the turn, and Pires couldn't roll seven on the last card to recover. Marmorstein had more than doubled his 41k to something approaching 90k, and Pires was down to a bit more than 20k.
Pires was able to double through a few hands later, but on hand #78, one of those dangerous limp pots got him in trouble. Flack limped in, Pires limped from the small blind, and Chan tapped the table to see a flop of 7s-3c-3h. Everyone checked, and when the 5h hit the turn, Pires moved his 47.5k all-in, as Chan dropped a chip on top of his cards and appeared to study Pires.
THE MAGICIAN MAKES YOU LOOK OVER HERE, BUT HE'S LOOKING OVER THERE
After a little while, Chan finally decided to call, and Flack folded. As soon as they turned the cards up, I realized Chan hadn't been studying Pires at all: he'd been hoping Flack might have been thinking that and in turn make some kind of move of his own, because Chan turned over 5-3 offsuit. He'd gotten a free look at the flop and been rewarded with trips, and his free look at the turn had given him a full house.
Pires turned over A-7, once again needing a seven on the river to survive, and once again failing to get one. We were five-handed, with a chip count of
Mortensen, 170k
Flack, 195k
Cloutier, 175k
Marmorstein, 80k
Chan, 170k
Cloutier grabbed the chip lead back in an odd dustup with Flack four hands later, when Flack raised to 12k, Cloutier re-raised 38k more, and Flack flat-called. The flop came Kh-7s-4c, Cloutier moved all-in, and Flack threw his hand away. I tried to guess Flack's hand, and my best were Q-Q or J-J. Other opinions are welcome.
If the dustup on hand #82 was "odd," the battle we saw on #84 was downright abnormal.
DON'T THEY USUALLY RESERVE THIS KIND OF HAND FOR THE MOVIES?
With Marmorstein holding the button, Flack opened for 15k, and Marmorstein called. The flop came 10s-10c-8c, and both players checked. The 4d hit the turn, Flack bet 15k, and Marmorstein called again. Another four, the 4s, hit the river, and Flack moved all-in. Marmorstein practically beat him into the pot, and who could blame him, because the hands were a stunning
Flack, 10-10 (quad tens)
Marmorstein 4-4 (quad fours)
Marmorstein was out, and everyone was talking. Cloutier said he'd never seen it. Chan said he'd never seen it. Erik Seidel, sitting behind me, said he'd never seen it and I'd never seen it either, certainly not in a real poker game where it meant anything. Quads over quads.
"Can you imagine," Cloutier said to the remaining players, "the moment of exhilaration that man must have gone through when he saw that river card, and then to find out a second later that he's gone from the tournament?"
Star player Paul Phillips, sitting behind me, quickly calculated on his cell phone (no, he didn't call anyone, he just used the calculator function) that it was 999-1 for Marmorstein to catch runner-runner for quads, but that was nothing.
"Assuming you start with pair vs. pair, which is a pretty rare event to start with," Phillips told me, "I make the odds at 38,915-1 against it coming out quads vs. quads. Naturally, the odds of it happening are much higher when you crank in the five-handed pair vs. pair start. And if I'm wrong, make sure you tell people I figured this out on a cell phone, instead of a pocket computer," the energetic Phillips added.
THE PERFECT STORM
A couple of years ago, actor George Clooney, to whom Marmorstein bears a slight resemblance, played the leading role in a film called "The Perfect Storm," a "natural weather bomb" so named because it took three highly unusual and powerful weather conditions combining simultaneously to develop into a storm of frightening and deadly proportions.
Our quads vs. quads hand had eliminated the Clooney look-alike, but it certainly was a combination of two incredibly powerful hands that left us with a perfect storm of a final:
- Layne Flack, owner of two WSOP bracelets, one already this year and who would become yet another WSOP millionaire were he to win.
- T.J. Cloutier, owner of four WSOP bracelets, three terribly close and heartbreaking attempts to win the Big One, and the winner of more money in tournament poker than anyone else ever.
- Carlos Mortensen, the defending World Champion.
- Johnny Chan, two-time World Champion, six time bracelet winner, and who, like Cloutier, would become the WSOP's first Three Million Dollar Man if he could win.
I was starting to think about Final Four metaphors, but only three hands later, The Perfect Storm took precedence, as after hand #87, we were indeed left with three forces of nature.
With Flack holding the button, Mortensen opened for 15k, and Cloutier fairly quickly made it a total of 55k. Mortensen instantly moved all-in, and Cloutier couldn't have taken more than two seconds to call him.
Cloutier turned over A-Q, a hand he's often said he doesn't like, and Mortensen turned over pocket eights, a small favorite. There were no cruel turn cards this time. The very first card off the deck was an ace, the final board was A-5-6-2-7, and the defending World Champion was out. Flack, who had been feeling confident all day, half-jokingly and (thus) half-seriously asked if we could make the game winner take all, but the original prize amounts were left in place.
The chip totals as we began our perfect storm were
Flack, 220k
Cloutier, 390k
Chan, 180k
In a bit of an odd move, the players decided amongst themselves to forego using antes, so they could get the $500 chips off the table. Antes don't add much to the battle three-handed, so Co-Tournament Director Matt Savage agreed.
OH, IT'S ONLY $267,000
After ten hands of sparring, Flack made it 18k to go from the button, and Cloutier moved all-in from the small blind. Chan folded and Flack called instantly. As-Ks for Cloutier, pocket nines for Flack, and with Flack exclaiming "Yes!" as the flop came Jh-9s-8h, a seven hit the turn that gave Cloutier a chance to escape with a split if a ten could hit the river. Tens and Layne Flack were being kind to one another today, though, and the 8s came instead, requiring Cloutier to ship $267,000 over to Flack, the new chip leader.
Cloutier got himself right back into the game two hands later, when Chan made it 18k to go from the button, Cloutier moved his remaining 80k all-in, and Chan called. A-A for Cloutier, 7-7 for Chan, no accidents, and suddenly Cloutier had 160k to Chan's 64k.
"I really get the final tables, don't I?" asked Cloutier rhetorically. "Last year, this tournament came down to me, Phil Hellmuth, and Layne, and this year, it's me, Johnny Chan, and Layne."
It was good that I'd practiced that oxygen-debt exercise right after dinner, because this group really wasn't letting us breathe. A whole seven hands later, Flack made it 19k to go from the button, Cloutier moved all-in, Chan moved all-in, and then I thought I was hallucinating when Flack said he was all-in, too. It was entirely possible the whole tournament was going to be decided on hand #106: If Flack won, he'd be the champ, with Cloutier getting second based on starting with more chips. Calling as the third all-in, Flack had to have some kind of real hand. He did.
A "COOLER" LEAVES CLOUTIER A LITTLE HOT
Cloutier turned over A-Q offsuit, and both Chan and Flack turned over A-K offsuit. The flop came 6-5-3, bringing brief thoughts of a straight that might chop the pot, but instead a king hit the turn, ending Cloutier's day. Because Chan had started with such a small stack, the lion's share of Cloutier's chips ended up in Flack's stack.
"What a cooler," a disappointed Cloutier said on the way out. He'd survived his long-disliked A-Q once (he disliked the hand long before he held it when Chris "Jesus" Ferguson" beat it by spiking a nine to his A-9 for the 2000 World Championship), but not twice.
It was now Flack vs. Chan for all the marbles, but there were two problems. First, Flack owned most of the marbles (710k-80k), and second, as Flack explained, "Unfortunately for Johnny he's the one who taught me how to finish someone off when I have a lead like this," a fact Chan confirmed after the match.
COULD A PERFECT TEN END A PERFECT STORM?
Chan lost a little ground in 13 hands of sparring, and then, on #120, Flack limped in from the small blind on the button, Chan checked, and we saw one more of those dangerous unraised flops. This one came Jd-10d-3d. Chan checked, Flack bet 9k, Chan moved in, and Flack, after considering briefly, decided to call.
Chan held Js-8d, top pair and a flush draw.
Flack held 10h-7c, middle pair and a lot of momentum.
The Ah hit the turn, leaving Flack needing a ten or a seven that wasn't a diamond, but this was the man who'd beaten quad fours with quad tens, and the tens weren't going to let him down this time. The 10c it was, three tens, about as appropriate a finishing hand (ten, after all, is a perfect score in gymnastics and Bo Derek movies) for this trio of superstars as you could find.
TIME OUT FOR A REALITY BREAK
Before I finish babbling about how great the poker was, we did have a moment that helped put poker into perspective about halfway through the final table, when announcer Diego Cordovez told the crowd that four NYC firemen were sitting in the front row at the final table, Vin Tovella, Jim Sandas, Duane Weed, and Paul Somin, and the four received the loudest applause I've ever heard at a WSOP final table. Winner and runner-up alike each wanted his picture taken with the real life heroes.
Chan was disappointed after the match, even though his second place finish catapulted him past Cloutier into the top spot in career WSOP winnings. "That's not a big deal to me," Chan said. "I held the money lead for what, 15 years, before TJ and then Phil got it. It'll keep going back and forth. I'm just disappointed about that last hand. If he doesn't catch on the end, when he's a 10-1 dog, I have what, $120,000? That's enough chips for me to play with."
Flack, who had impressed me by showing up at the final table wearing a University of Michigan (my alma mater) sweatshirt, only to unimpress me when he told he he'd been given the shirt free when he bought a bowl of soup somewhere (the forever kidding kid later changed his story to "it's the only sweatshirt I own, and it's cold in here."), talked about the quads vs. quads hand.
ONE FOUR PROBABLY WOULD HAVE BEEN ENOUGH, BUT TWO...
"Nope, I haven't seen anything like it either," the Montana native said. "I checked the flop, hoping someone would catch something, with some straights and flushes possible, and I just got lucky that he (Marmorstein) caught about as much as he could catch."
Flack has now won both no-limit events at this year's Series, and there are two more to go: a $3,000 buy-in event, and the Big One. Any chance the Flack Attack could win two more?
"That's asking an awful lot," he said, "you know that as well as I do." Flack stopped to look me in the eye, with a twinkle in his own. "I tell you what, though, I wouldn't bet a lot of money against me."
Flack isn't going to win four straight no-limit tournaments...I don't think...but I probably will follow his advice, and after this perfect storm, I think the one lightning bolt I'd like to see before we're done with this WSOP is a match-up between our dual bracelet winners, Flack and Phillip Ivey. It might not be a perfect storm, but the poker would be perfectly electrifying.
Final Official Results, Event #19, $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em
Total Entries: 528
Total Prize Pool: $744,480
|
Finish |
Name |
Prize Money |
|
1 |
Layne Flack |
$268,020 |
|
2 |
Johnny Chan |
$137,720 |
|
3 |
T.J. Cloutier |
$70,720 |
|
4 |
Carlos Mortensen |
$40,940 |
|
5 |
Phillip Marmorstein |
$29,780 |
|
6 |
John Pires |
$23,820 |
|
7 |
Jeff Newman |
$17,860 |
|
8 |
Adeline Shayegan |
$13,400 |
|
9 |
Chris Bjorin |
$10,420 |
|
10 |
Roger Guerrette |
$8,280 |
11th-12th, $8,180 each: Erik Seidel, Roman Abinsay.
13th-15th, $7,440 each: Minh Nguyen, Ken Goldstein, David Pham.
16th-18th, $5,960 each: Alexander Dietrich, Bruce Atkinson, Ian Murphy.
19th-27th, $4,460 each: David Toymasyan, Perry Friedman, Ron Stanley, Melissa Hayden, John Inashima, Pierre Perrault, Charles Tsolakides, Paul Spitalnic, Mel Weiner.
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