 |
 |
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A
Few Words (And an Update) From a Disappointed Poker Pundit
|
|
Rank |
Player |
Chip Total |
|
1 |
Boston, Alan |
$65,075 |
|
2 |
Gardner,
Julian |
$64,675 |
|
3 |
Eskimo Clark |
$60,900 |
|
4 |
Feter, Michael |
$59,350 |
|
5 |
Cozen,
Glenn |
$56,125 |
|
6 |
Hadden, Gilles |
$51,775 |
|
7 |
Perry, Rafael |
$51,550 |
|
8 |
Vaswani,
Ram |
$50,075 |
|
9 |
Booth, Douglas |
$49,950 |
|
10 |
Badimansour, Faribouz |
$48,950 |
|
11 |
Kramer, James |
$48,950 |
|
12 |
Flack,
Layne |
$47,250 |
|
13 |
Melton, Steve |
$47,375 |
|
14 |
Hellmuth,
Phil |
$46,400 |
|
15 |
Benelli, Otto |
$45,525 |
|
16 |
Demetriou, Harry |
$43,700 |
|
17 |
Spino, Robert |
$43,000 |
|
18 |
Inashima, John |
$42,350 |
|
19 |
La, Meng |
$42,100 |
|
20 |
Jordan, Jerry |
$41,725 |
I italicized a few players because of past or recent achievements. Julian Gardner might be the youngest player in the tournament, a terrific British player who still has a long, long way to go, but who could break player #14's record for becoming poker's youngest World Champion. Glenn Cozen is remembered because he was the fellow who got the $210,000 ladder climb with virtually no chips when John Bonetti went to war with fellow chip leader Jim Bechtel (Bonetti had A-K and Bechtel 6-6 and the flop came with both an ace and a six.
Vaswani gets mention not merely because he's another British star, but because he's a member of The Hendon Mob, the four Brits (including Joe Beevers <64th>, Ross Boatman <54th>, and Barney Boatman <roughly 290th>) who are all friendly and who have done a nice job of both playing well and marketing themselves here. Nice to see all of them still in action.
HOW ABOUT THIS FOR A REMATCH: FLACK, CHAN, AND HELLMUTH
Flack has already won TWO no-limit tournaments this year, and while Hellmuth has not had a big Series thus far, with only one final table, he is also in the finals of the Bracelet Winners Tournament, in a yet-to-be played rematch of his final opponent from his 1989 World Championship, the red hot Johnny Chan (who is 22nd in chips!).
If Hellmuth beats Chan, he'll tie Doyle Brunson for most bracelets in a career, with eight, but if he wants to re-take the all-time money lead he took last year, he'll need to do something in the Big One also, because Cloutier re-passed him on the first event of the tournament and Chan then passed both of them with the very consistent Series he had (five final tables, although no wins yet).
WELL, IT'S LESS THAN A BILLION-ZILLION TO ONE, BUT...
The odds against it are insanely unlikely, even with their immense talent and early strong chip positions, but a final three of Flack, Chan, and Hellmuth would be poker's variation of a triple-double rematch, and it would be so much fun to watch that I would donate a major hunk of my writer's fee from poker.casino.com to charity.
Chan and Hellmuth already have that rematch from 1989 set up in the Bracelet Winners final, and Chan and Flack each made the final three of a major no-limit hold'em event in 2001-2002. In 2001, in the $2,000 No-Limit, the final three were Cloutier, Hellmuth, and Flack, with Hellmuth winning, and in the 2002 $1,500 No-Limit, the final three were Cloutier, Chan, and Flack, with Flack winning.
Hey, as long as I'm dreaming, why not have Phil Ivey as the fourth guy left in that final four...although I have many poker friends I would love to see in there, especially John Juanda, who "finally" (he's awfully young for a "finally," but he's awfully talented) got his first bracelet the day before the Big One started, in the Lowball Triple-Draw event. It would be awfully tough for John to get there, because he starts Day Two with only $3,950 in chips. I'd list some others but there isn't supposed to be any rooting from the press box.
SOME OTHER NOTABLES NEAR THE TOP
Players 45-51 feature a few rather well known names. In order, they are "Miami" John Cernuto, Dewey Tomko, David Sklansky, Samuel Arzoin, Minh Nguyen, Allen Cunningham, and Phil Ivey. Should Ivey win, he would grab a record fourth bracelet one year and clearly own the finest World Series ever put together by one player. Tomko has finished second in this event twice, including last year, and Cunningham, at 25, could win 20 bracelets in his career if he chooses to stick with poker that long (I've a feeling he won't). Ivey could do the same, although he will probably have to expand his range of games to do it, because Cunningham plays all the games well and Ivey is more of a stud specialist.
Jim McManus, the superb novelist who became the Y2K miracle when he made the final table after coming here to cover the event for Harpers Magazine, is 68th, so maybe it wasn't such a miracle.
A BAD DAY FOR THE RECENT CHAMPIONS
It wasn't a good day for recent World Champions. Amongst those who did not make Day Two include 2001 Champ Carlos Mortensen; 2000 Champ Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and his final opponent, T.J. Cloutier; 1999 Champ Noel Furlong; 1996 Champ Huck Seed ('97 Champ Stu Ungar is deceased and I don't know if '95 Champ Dan Harrington entered).
Other
90s champs who didn't make it include Mansour Matloubi, Russ Hamilton,
Brad Daugherty, and Jim Bechtel. Hellmuth may be the second most
recent champ to still be in the tournament, and his win was in 1989,
proving just how hard it has become to repeat in this event and
how much stronger the average player in the field has become. Unless
I missed someone on the sheet, the only champ since Hellmuth who
is still in the field is '98 Champ Scotty Nguyen, who is in good
shape with $39,175 (23rd place, right behind Chan).
AND FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF IRONY DEPARTMENT (A SUBSIDIARY OF
THE DEPARMENT OF REDUNDANCY DEPARTMENT)
My starting table offered some oddball coincidences. Seats three
and four were occupied by Jennifer Harman and Annie Duke, and seats
five and six were Mark Napolitano and me. It was a pretty strange
"next-to-next-to" combination. We also had actor/comedian Gabe Kaplan,
who very nearly made the final table in the $5,000 Limit Hold'em
event won by Harman, "Crocodile" Bill Argyros, a super Australian
player with whom I'd become friends at this tournament, and someone
who violated one of my most basic poker principles.
I didn't know the gent's name, but we hooked up (that's for you,
George) on a hand relatively early when I flopped something pretty
good, bet the flop and got called, and then on the turn, with me
still holding a pretty good hand, my opponent bet out, and I stared
him down for about a minute, trying to get a read. I finally decided
that certain as aspects of his body language meant he had something
monstrous, and passed, and he turned over K-Q, which with the nine
that had hit the turn gave him the stone cold nut straight.
Why someone should want to tell me that I could read him correctly
(especially in a situation where it was extremely clear that I was
trying to read him) I don't know, but I was happy with the information.
Unfortunately for both him and me, he busted out about 20 minutes
later, rendering the information worthless. His mistake wasn't anywhere
nearly as bad as the one I made when I busted out, but I'm not ready
to go into the details of that one yet. I will eventually.
AN APOLOGY TO O'NEIL LONGSON
One player who is still alive is O'Neil Longson, whom I believe
I wronged in my report on the 2002 Deuce-to-Seven tournament when
I described the events that surrounded his knocking out Huck Seed.
Watching that event, I saw Longson take an extremely long time deciding
whether or not to call Seed's last $35,000 all-in raise when the
pot had $95,000 in it and Longson still would have had $55,000 even
if he lost with his extremely powerful hand, an 8-7 low.
It seemed inconceivable to me that Longson could need that much
time to call with such a strong hand, and Seed's anger as he departed
helped convince me that Longson had "slowrolled" Seed, a breach
of poker etiquette, and I reported that.
Several readers, including my friend and lowball expert Michael
Wiesenberg, wrote to me to explain they were pretty sure I had it
wrong. They believed that Longson took that long to disguise his
hand's strength, because Seed still had a decision to make: whether
or not he wanted to break up a made hand.
If Seed held something like a 10-7, for example, Longson would certainly
want him to stand pat on it, and not draw to the seven low. So in
the same story, honor dictates that I both apologize to Mr. Longson
and admit I'm out of the 2002 Big One because of a mistake I still
can't believe. I guess my diet is going to have to wait a while,
because that's one large piece of humble pie for Mr. Glazer to eat.
Comments & Contact
I love getting reader feedback and questions. Don't be shy about disagreeing with anything you read in Wednesday Nite Poker. If I decide you're right, readers will hear about it (with attribution or without, as you prefer); if you're wrong, you'll probably learn something important when you hear why you're wrong.
Email me at: wednesdaynitepoker@casino.com
If you would like to read previous issues of Wednesday Nite Poker you can find them here.
Interested in advertising in this newsletter? Contact us at: ads@casino.com.
Wednesday
Nite Poker is is published by the Casino.com Network
(http://www.casino.com) twice
a month. The Casino.com Network publishes other popular newsletters;
Craps Companion, Slots Report, Blackjack Insider, Casino Travel
Showcase, CasinoWire Newsletter and The Casino.com Spin. If you
wish to subscribe sign
up here!
If you wish to unsubscribe from this newsletter please click here.