This is a special issue of WNP. Andrew N.S. Glazer reports live from the WSOP - World Series of Poker Apr 22 to May 24, 2002.

$10,000 No-Limit Hold'em Championship, Day Two:

"Survive and Advance"
By Andrew N.S. Glazer

If some of you felt confused by receiving two reports yesterday, join the club. There was some confusion on both the Swedish and American shores, and casino.com wound up sending out a column I had intended as an addendum to Lee Munzer's story as a story in and of itself. Lee hit all of his deadlines and did nothing wrong other than agreeing to help out his friend Andy.

The second day of the 2002 World Series of Poker Championship Event is the "weird day." There isn't the excitement of the first day, with all the hopefuls and all the statistics and the new records and all of that, and there aren't the battles for the money that will take place Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Today it was just a battle to survive and advance, ideally putting oneself in good chip position.

THOSE WHO LEAVE FEEL DOGGONE TIRED

We started Day One with 631 players. 348 remained after Day One, and 131 remain after Day Two. Tomorrow we will play down to the magic 45 who make the money. Today, there isn't too much dramatic news, unless you're one of the 217 people who got eliminated. I almost called this piece "217 Dalmatians," not because someone who busts out on Day Two is a dog, but he or she sure feels like one. As I can tell you from firsthand experience, it's a sick feeling when you have to get up from the table.

Although I promise that of the 586 players who don't make the money, roughly 580 will have stories about how they got knocked out because they were horribly unlucky, I'm one of the six who will admit to have made a mistake, and it was a whopper, because it went against my game plan.

Here was the situation, and the options I faced. You can rank them according to how much you like/dislike each choice, and why. I didn't have a supertight image, but I didn't have a loose one either, and I hadn't attacked the blinds too much from the button in the first two hours, but had started doing so more in the second two. The player seated to my direct left kept winning chips from me that I had won from Gabe Kaplan or Annie Duke (three significant pots, including one where he did get very lucky). Still, we were nearing the end of the fourth hour, with the blinds at $50-$100, when the following hand came up.

IT'S EASIER FROM THE SIDELINES, BUT YOU MAKE THE CALL

I found myself on the button with pocket eights, and raised "the table standard" $300 (actually that's a raise OF $200 TO $300). My small blind nemesis re-raised it to $1,150 total, and the big blind folded.

My choices at this point are:

Fold, surrendering the $300 I have in the pot to this point, and keeping $9,200 in front of me, while facing some image advantages and disadvantages as a result of the fold.
Call the $850, taking a look at the flop, getting thrilled if I flop a set, never really knowing where I am if I get a good flop like 6-3-2, and facing the almost certain likelihood of needing to dump the hand if two or more overcards come.
Re-raise to something like $4,000, signaling a strong hand, a bet that might win the pot then and there, and if not, and I get moved in on, throwing the hand away. If I just get called then I'm pretty sure I'm beat and I'm done with the hand unless I flop a set or something like 5-6-7 (an overpair and an open-end straight draw).
Move all-in for the $9,200 I have left in front of me, risking that sum to win the $1,750 that's already in the pot. My opponent has about $15,000, so he won't be all-in if he calls. Probably he can't call unless he has Q-Q, K-K, A-A, or possibly A-K, but if he has one of the first three hands I'm in disastrous shape. Now, seeing as how you know this was the hand I exited on, you were able to eliminated Choice A from what I might have done fairly quickly, even though in retrospect I think Choice A is the best of the lot.

WELL, IT WASN'T CHOICE "A", SO...

Choice B is a reasonable option if I think I can outplay my opponent after the flop. I sure don't want to call for almost 10% of my stack on the chance that I flop a set. This isn't limit hold'em where I might get all kinds of implied odds if I do flop the monster. I might not get paid another nickel. There's also some small chance I could lose to a bigger set or hand if I do make the set, but I can't spend too much time worrying about that. We'll come back to this one.

Choice C seems pretty strong. The raise to $4,000 is an announcement of a strong hand, and unless my opponent is a wildman, he's not going to move in with something that can't beat pocket eights. He probably (though not definitely) won't even move in with Queens, although he would certainly call with them. I think it would take kings or aces to get re-raised here, and as I said, I would then dump the hand and wish I'd gone with option A.

Choice D is the boldest plan, but there's a saying: you've got bold poker players and old poker players, but very few old, bold poker players. An all-in move (and for context's sake I had only done that once before, when Annie Duke had bet out for $800 on the turn on a raggy board and I moved in for her last $2,500 holding K-K; she mucked) rates to make me a nice profit most of the time, but also rates to run me into disaster occasionally, and before you say "the odds against A-A, K-K, Q-Q or A-K aren't very high," remember, this fellow has already re-popped me $850 more.

I think the best choices are (for a player with my game plan and my table) in order from best to worst A, C, B, and D. Unfortunately I picked "D", my opponent had pocket queens, called and won, like he was supposed to. I actually think there is a much better chance he would muck the two queens had I raised to $4,000 than had I raised to $9,500, which, while it could be one of those tricky overbetting the pot plays (which I had earlier tried without Jennifer Harman going for it: in the first round, she had raised to $150, and I made it $1,500 with aces, hoping to convince her I was making a move with a small pair, but she didn't bite), looks more like exactly what it is: a good hand that doesn't want to look at a flop.

HONESTY DOESN'T ALWAYS FEEL LIKE THE BEST POLICY IN THE SHORT RUN, BUT LONG TERM, IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO GO

I really, really hate talking about my bad plays, much less making them, and I guess I should talk about some of the cute good ones that worked to counterbalance it, but I'm still not in the mood. There have been distractions, too, nothing like what I faced last year, but all-in-all, I'm mad at myself. At least my friend Michael Konik, who was the third or fourth player out, could say he went out honorably with K-K against J-J with all the money going in on the flop and a jack hitting the flop. I have to live with a mistake. Taking responsibility for one's actions is quite good for one in the long run, but in the short run it, as Homer Simpson would say while imitating Ned Flanders, suck-diddley-ucks.

I think it would be interesting to get descriptions from everyone who busted out and see how close my "bad beat" to "admitted bad play" ratio holds up, although you would probably need two more categories, "unfortunate result" and "I'm lying through my teeth."

THE CHAMPIONSHIP ISN'T "QUITE" THE FINAL EVENT

I'm going to give you the remaining players, first by chip count, and then review a few tables that offer interesting match-ups. One match-up that won't take place for a while yet is Phil Hellmuth vs. Johnny Chan in the Bracelet Winners tournament. Chan is out of the main event, and Hellmuth is still in. Chan, naturally, wanted to play the match after play halted for the day today, and Hellmuth, naturally enough, didn't want a distraction with $2,000,000 at stake. So we wait either for Hellmuth to bust out or win, in which case the match will probably take place Saturday or Sunday.

There are supposed to be 131 players left. Nonetheless, I did better than Santa Claus, who makes a list and checks it twice. I checked mine four times, and still came up with 130.
Because my addition of the chip totals is off from the expected number by only $900, probably someone was eliminated from the tournament right near the end and someone else forgot to hit the "minus" sign on the keyboard that Paul Westley's clock uses to track players. A list of the 130 remaining players, ranked by chips, follows, as well as a few notes about player of interest who are still in or out:

Rank	Player	Chip Total
1	Gardner, Julian	$199,700
2	*Chip Reese*	$176,100
3	Josef Klinger	$153,700
4	Heimiller, Dan	$149,200
5	January, Ray	$130,200
6	*Hellmuth, Phil Jr.*	$126,900
7	*Betson, Alan*	$124,900
8	*Ivey, Phillip*	$118,300
9	Feter, Michael	$110,300
10	Korson, Alan	$99,800
11	Shipley, John	$98,700
12	Perry, Rafael	$94,400
13	Holum, Eric	$91,800
14	Amos, Scott	$86,900
15	Nasseri, Amir	$86,600
16	Cozen, Glenn	$86,300
17	Mullin, Owen	$83,300
18	D, Tony	$82,400
19	Booth, Douglass	$80,900
20	Deknijiff, Martin	$80,500
21	Varkonyi, Robert	$79,500
22	Giordino, Peter	$77,500
23	La, Hung	$77,500
24	Thoaily, Minh	$76,800
25	Neely, James	$75,300
26	Hall, Harley	$73,600
27	Melton, Steve	$72,300
28	Hartman, Tony	$71,500
29	Boatman, Ross	$71,100
30	Gray, Peter	$70,600
31	Phan, Trang	$69,500
32	Manno, Julius	$64,200
33	Vincent, Stephen	$63,500
34	Ko, Bernard	$62,500
35	Bega, Sokrat	$62,500
36	O'Bryan, Wesly	$59,300
37	Calvert, Guy	$59,000
38	Jassinowsky, Cy	$54,100
39	Karriman, Joe	$52,900
40	Garland, Daniel	$52,700
41	Phu, Luan	$51,200
42	Lennard, Ken	$50,800
43	Greenstein, Barry	$50,000
44	Zaleweski, Herschel	$49,900
45	Yoak, Jeffrey	$49,800
46	Magdalinos, Dimitrious	$49,600
47	Stockinger, Sigi	$48,500
48	Kaufman, Pete	$48,000
49	Wilkinson, Lamar	$47,000
50	Esposito, John	$46,300
51	Singer, David	$46,300
52	Holland, Randy	$45,700
53	Raymer, Georgory P.	$45,600
54	Habib, Hasan	$45,400
55	Frydman, Michael	$45,200
56	Studer, Daniel	$44,800
57	Paseka, Kurt	$44,400
58	Thomas, Harry, Jr.	$44,000
59	Cuschieri, Charles	$43,900
60	Brandenberg, Joseph	$42,200
61	Hawkins, Philip	$40,700
62	Crunkleton, Dave	$40,100
63	Bonyadi, Farzad	$39,800
64	Laing, Mike	$39,800
65	Sai, Rameen	$37,800
66	Johnstson, Crews	$37,500
67	Haveson, Brian	$36,700
68	Alvarez, Leo	$36,300
69	Nguyen, Minh	$35,800
70	McDonald, Tristan	$35,500
71	La, Meng	$35,300
72	Sklansky, David	$35,300
73	Oules, Martina	$34,500
74	Hopkins, Greg	$34,200
75	Rosenblum, Russell	$33,900
76	Rubin, David	$33,400
77	Longson, O'Neil	$33,200
78	Wilsdon, Stephen	$33,200
79	Thung, Roy	$33,100
80	Kramer, James	$33,000
81	Henderson, Frank	$32,700
82	Qatami, Danny	$31,500
83	Wynn, Greg	$31,500
84	Cousineau, Tony	$31,300
85	Do, Cong	$31,100
86	Lane, Jason	$31,100
87	Lechich, Tino	$30,900
88	Roberts, Ben	$30,500
89	Luber, Mike	$29,800
90	Karp, Warren	$29,100
91	McMillian, Ronald	$27,700
92	Badimansour, Fariborz	$27,600
93	Michael, John	$27,600
94	Pilkington, Flan	$26,900
95	Lincoln, Vesna	$26,300
96	Heimowitz, Jay	$24,800
97	Fox, Jack	$24,000
98	McKinney, Paul	$23,700
99	Schneider, Tom	$23,600
100	Rechnitzer, George	$23,200
101	Burchell, Donald	$23,100
102	Barton, Don	$23,000
103	Beilfuss, Larry	$21,900
104	Golser, Marcus	$21,000
105	Shanley, Doug	$21,000
106	Berger, Fred	$20,200
107	Allen, Randy	$20,100
108	Sunar, Surinder	$19,900
109	Wolfe, Paul	$19,400
110	Cunningham, Allen	$19,100
111	Bach, Christopher	$18,700
112	*Inashima, John*	$18,600
113	Jacobs, Ken	$18,600
114	Hori, Kent	$18,500
115	Mustanoglu, Osman	$18,200
116	Clark, Eskimo	$17,200
117	Whitt, Samuel	$17,200
118	Grey, David	$17,100
119	Sarkeshik, Ali	$16,900
120	Nakano, Yosh	$16,600
121	Dykstra, Kevin	$16,000
122	Popejoy, Anthony	$14,400
123	May, Mike	$11,200
124	Elias, Eldon	$10,900
125	Parrott, Shelby	$10,900
126	Custer, Charles	$10,700
127	Appling, Mike	$8,600
128	Calkins, Jeff	$5,000
129	Ward, Jim	$4,300
130	Alston, Greg	$3,200
	TOTAL CHIPS	$6,310,900

If the 130 player figure is right (a $900 discrepancy is tiny for this many chips in play and is easily explicable from stacks that never got used and from chip ups during race-offs), an average stack is $48,545. One thing is for sure: don't count the short stacks out. With antes in play, if any of them survive their initial necessary all-ins, another quick double-up gets them right back in the ballgame.

Reese, Hellmuth and Betson drew italics because they have three of the seven largest stacks in the tournament (in addition to being three of the 20 best players left) and all drew the same table, #59, a bad break for each of them as well as for the other six at their table,

Boatman, Ross, $71,100
Ko, $62,500
Hellmuth, $126,900
La, Meng $35,300
Betson, $124,900
Custer, $10,700
Henderson, Frank $32,700
Inashima, $18,600
Reese, $176,100

Inashima's italics weren't for drawing this table: he and Hellmuth are the only survivors from last year's final nine. Ivey drew italics because he made a big move towards the front and even though he is a stud specialist and even though there is still a LONG way to go, his talent and chip position are making that unthinkable fourth bracelet now thinkable.

SO WHERE WAS INDIANA JONES AT THIS TABLE OF DOOM?

The other members of table #59 aren't exactly chopped liver. Ross Boatman is a British star and the last surviving member of The Hendon Mob. Ko is hot, just off his win in the Shooting Stars tournament (an event in which he finished second last year). La is hot off a big finish in the Commerce no-limit Championship event (although he is a far more experienced high stakes limit player than a tournament no-limit player and I would not expect him to make the money even at an easier table), Henderson is a seasoned veteran, and I've already mentioned Inashima's accomplishment last year. Custer seems to be in as bad a position as his more famous namesake, and all this table would need to make it a complete nightmare is his elimination along with a couple of other short stacks and to have someone like Ivey or Gardner come along to fill the empty spot.

Hellmuth is at his best with a big stack, but he won't be able to push around Betson, who has lots of talent and also has position on Hellmuth, and while many consider Chip Reese one of the top money players in the world, if you possess the zero tilt factor that is among the many weapons in Reese's arsenal, you can play tournaments, too.

Hellmuth, Betson and Reese will probably be smart enough to stay out of each other's way and work over the shorter stacks, but if Fate deals two of them big hands simultaneously, the survivor will have enough chips to blast his way through to the money with ease and very likely to the final table. Hellmuth is not going to like having the fearless Betson on his left, and he probably won't like the amount of time La tends to take to make decisions, either.

Although one hand or indeed one card can change matters in a hurry in no-limit, Day One major talents who also had a lot of chips but who did not make Day Two include Johnny Chan, Layne Flack, Scotty Nguyen, Ram Vaswani, "Miami" John Cernuto and Dewey Tomko. Day One leader Alan Boston also didn't make it.

A MUCH-TOO-EARLY FINAL TABLE PREDICTION

Last year I waited until Day Three to pick a final table, and I will pick again tomorrow, when some of my picks from today undoubtedly won't be around, but for right now I'll predict a final table of Gardner, Reese, Hellmuth, Betson, Ivey, D, Laing, and Fox, It's just not fair or particularly bold to predict all big stacks...although come to think of it, "bold" didn't serve me very well yesterday! Had Boatman not drawn the Table of Doom, he'd have been a strong candidate, but stuck between those big stacks, he's going to have to get lucky at least once.

I'm really looking forward to watching Gardner. I've been hearing about this prodigy for years, and he's living up to his billing. Hellmuth's record as the youngest winner is in genuine jeopardy, although it looks like he will be around to help defend it himself, unless Betson's re-raises frustrate him.

Finally, with Chan and Flack exiting, although whoever wins the Big One will certainly have had the best WSOP financially and earned a place in history, the winner for Best Overall Series is clear as a bell. Congratulations, Sir Phillip Ivey, Knight of the Oval Table. If you make the money, I think we'll advance your rank to Lord. If you make the final table you'll become the Duke of Ivey, and if you win...long live the King.

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