 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
$10,000 No-Limit Hold'em Championship, Day Four:"Think About It"By Andrew N.S. Glazer When the 45 players who had started Day Four of the 33rd Annual World Series of Poker had eliminated 35 of their brethren, we had two five player tables left, and one more play to eliminate before the final nine could go try to get some sleep and ready themselves for The Final Battle. Co-Tournament Director Matt Savage, who has offered the spectators considerable helpful commentary throughout the month, and who has never been afraid to poke a little fun at those he thinks can take it, was handling the microphone duties at this extremely tense time and told both the crowd and the players "By this time tomorrow, one of these players is going to be $2,000,000 richer. Think about it." The crowd, which had grandstands set up on one side but which ringed the tables on all sides, cracked up as they realized Savage hadn't been able to resist putting just a LITTLE more pressure on the final ten. He probably helped break a little tension with the remark too, depending on who you were and what kind of pressure you were feeling, but I think everyone at the tables, whether they wanted to or not, succumbed to Savage's suggestion and "thought about it" at least briefly. There's nothing quite like fantasizing about a life-changing event to focus the mind. Before I tell you the final ten, lets go back to the beginning, and see who started the day where and owning what, because the chip equities swung rapidly through the early action.
SOME PRELIMINARY HELP FOR ANDY I know we did this yesterday, but some of you cheated by voting more than once, and a bunch more of you probably put the 15 second task aside, planning on getting back to it later. Please do me a favor and take the 15 seconds now, and play by the rules and vote in only one category. Normally, after the World Series ends, Wednesday Nite Poker reverts to being an instructional, bi-weekly newsletter. A number of people requested varying kinds of World Series information aside from type and variety I usually include about final tables. In the week or two following the WSOP, I plan to put one or more special pieces together about some of the other atmosphere and flavor of the WSOP, and I'd like my readers to tell me what they want. If you'd like to see a piece describing the high stakes side action, click on pokerpundit@aol.com, and just write "high stakes action" in the subject line. If you'd like to see a piece describing all of the side action as well as the constant flow of satellites and supersatellites, click AndrewNSGlazer@aol.com and just write "all side action" in the subject line. If you'd like to see a special interview with the Champion, click andyglazer@aol.com, and just write "interview champ" in the subject line. You can, if you want, include other information in the body of the email explaining what else you want to see in WNP over the next few months, I'll do my best to follow as many of your suggestions as possible. THE EARLY ACTION Yesterday I didn't play it safe and picked a final table that included an unusual number of then-short chipped players. To review, my picks were Gardner, D, Ivey, Fox, Shipley, Perry, Crunkleton, Boatman and Holland. Let's see how I (and they) did. I'm not going to fib to you: Day Four is grueling, and I also figured to lose my dinner break to cover the Hellmuth-Chan Bracelet Winners Tournament Finals (I did, too: there's a separate story about that after this article), so I skipped the first couple of hours, figuring we'd lose some short stacks and knowing that the article couldn't possibly include the details on the elimination of every player. I arrived just after the first nine players had busted out, and the only real surprises there were that Jason Lane, who'd started the day in ninth place with $218,000, was already gone, as was Hertzel Zaleweski. Sometimes players who have reached the money decide they really want to go for the gold and make bold plays to reach the final table, but you can't make the final table if you don't make the fourth table, and sometimes players take this laudable goal a bit too far in the early going. BOATMAN SINKS SOONER THAN PREDICTED On the first hand I watched, I saw one of the players I'd picked to get to the finals, Ross Boatman, get the last few chips of a short stack into a four-way pot with the all-in Luan Phu, Yosh Nakano (who'd started the day 44th but who had moved up early, and Steve Melton. Phu was all-in before the flop, which came down Qd-6c-2d, and the other three players checked. The 8d hit the turn, and Boatman shoved his last 23k in, with Nakano playing along for the side pot, but Melton yielding. With no more action possible, we saw that the hands were Phu, A-Q Nakano, 10-10 Boatman, 7-8 The river changed nothing, and Phu's top pair survived, while Nakano wound up making a small profit off eliminating Boatman. Almost immediately thereafter, Eric Holum, who'd started the day in 5th place with $275,000 (and who was only one of five players out of the final 45 who had won a WSOP bracelet in his career), busted out when his few remaining chips and K-Q couldn't survive a three-way battle with Day Three Chip Leader Bob Varkonyi (K-10) and another big stack, John Shipley, who each checked as the board came down A-10-9-9-7. Somehow, Holum was 33rd, while Nakano, who'd started the day owning less than 8% of Holum's total, was still playing. Although it was startling to see Nakano still playing, in a strange way it was even more startling to see the young British phenomenon, Julian Gardner, still playing, because his starting stack of $274,000 had crumbled in the early going, and had shrunk to 130k when Russell Rosenblum made an error he isn't likely to forget anytime soon. POCKET JACKS...WELL, WE PROBABLY WON'T SEE THEM AGAIN With the blinds still small, Rosenblum held a hand he just wanted to win the antes with, J-J, but Gardner called his raise. The flop came 10-10-5, and Rosenblum bet 100k. Gardner, perhaps sensing a move with a missed A-K, moved all-in for his remaining chips, a raise of only $30,000. Four days of intense World Series pressure can and will do strange things to people. The moment Gardner moved in, Rosenblum grew agitated, got up from the table, shouted about his bad luck, and told the dealer to fold his hand. The dealer started to comply when Rosenblum came to his senses and rushed back to the table and tried to grab the cards back, while asking just how much of a raise Gardner's all-in bet had been. WHEN YOU DO SOMETHING UNFORGIVEABLE, YOU FORGIVE YOURSELF It had been only 30k, but that didn't matter. Savage quite correctly ruled that Rosenblum had verbally folded and that a verbal action was binding. Now here's the special part. I've already told you Rosenblum held pocket jacks. Gardner had moved in with pocket sixes. Rosenblum was a 92% favorite to win the hand, and he'd folded a pot containing more than $200,000 for $30,000. Barring a miracle, Gardner would have been gone early, Rosenblum would have been much richer, and Rosenblum wouldn't have had to try to recover emotionally from such a terrible blunder. On any given Sunday, it would have been a terrible blunder. On the fourth day of WSOP pressure (and the sleepless nights that go with it), I think we should cut Rosenblum a little slack. Giving away the ending a little at a time, Rosenblum may yet have time to regret this error, because both he and Gardner made the final table. Who knows: Gardner might hand Rosenblum a half million on an error of his own, but I'd hate to be Rosenblum and see Gardner sitting there. Scratch that. I wouldn't hate to be Rosenblum , because it would mean I'd be sitting at the final table, Gardner or no Gardner. Returning to the then-current action, the antes moved up to $1,000, and the blinds $3,000-$6,000. Gardner had recovered to the extent of sharing the chip lead, right near the half million mark, with Tony D and Varkonyi. I have the details on just about all the hands from here, but the eliminations alone would make this story too long, so let's stick with the high and low points. A BIG CALL FOR NASSERI Amir Nasseri, who had been one of the louder and more ribald characters in the tournament throughout, made a big call on a flop of 2-3-4. Nasseri held 2-6, bottom pair and a gutshot for a straight, when Rameen Sai moved all-in for his last 60k on this flop. Sai turned out to have A-10 and outs only to his ten, because if a five hit, Nasseri would hold a bigger straight. Sai missed, exiting 30th, and Nasseri started a climb that would eventually land him near the chip lead. We lost Samuel Whitt on the next big hand when Gardner made it 30k to go, Martin DeKnijff moved all-in for his 90k, Whitt came for the 120k or so he had, and Gardner covered the 120k, allowing us to see all three hands: DeKnijff, 7-7 Whitt, K-K Gardner, A-K The flop came 7-4-10, pretty much locking up the main pot for DeKnijff, a jack hit the turn, and an ace hit the river, turning the best starting hand into the worst finishing hand. Gardner lost a little ground but not too much because he did take the 60k side pot. SILLY BOY, THINKING A-A COULD BEAT A-6 Phu went next, foolishly moving his small stack all-in with two red aces, only to get called by Scott Gray, who turned over Ac-6d. Gray is Irish, something 1999 third place finisher Padraig Parkinson kept telling the world quite loudly later in the tournament, and he had the luck of the Irish going for him here, because his Ac combined with four clubs on the board to give him a flush. Gray's winning chances here before the flop were a lowly 5.6%, but every dog has his day, and today was the day for underdogs. Phu's exit caused a redraw to three tables, a jump in the money from $30,000 to $40,000, and a chance for players who didn't like their seating position to gain new life, and vice versa. In one of the tournament's more comical moments, Jack Fox thought he had gone out 27th when he moved his last 13k in under the gun, only to get called by the two blinds, who checked the hand down as the board came A-10-2-9-K. One of Fox's opponents turned over A-8, and Fox got up from the table, pumping his fist in frustration, and with a look of pure disgust at this final indignity on a card-dead day, Fox flipped over his K-10 and started to leave. IT HELPS TO LOOK AT THE CARDS, JACK Um, Jack, come back, you have two pair, he was informed. A red-faced Fox returned, having forgotten, he said, that he'd held a king to go with the ten he knew he had. He also had about 45k, and some onlookers were surprised that Fox was surprised, because they'd interpreted the fist pump as a gesture of power, rather than a punch Fox threw at Fate. One can only imagine where Fox might have punched himself if, when later reviewing a tape of the table, he'd remembered his hand and had mucked it instead of turning it over in frustration. It's a long four days, folks. We lost a few more, and Bay 101 Shooting Stars winner Bernard Ko started accumulating chips the way he'd acquired them in San Jose, with lots and lots of raises. On one of them, he raised it to 20k, and Lord Phillip Ivey, yes, the same Phil Ivey who had started the day in 37th place thanks mainly to an horrendous beat he'd suffered the day before. If you read yesterday's report, you saw that Ivey's flopped set of threes went down in flames when Shipley caught running aces on fourth and fifth streets to make quads. I mentioned in the report that Shipley also could have won with a K-K or A-K finish, and a reader pointed out that A-4 or 4-4 also would have done it, "reducing" the odds against the horrible quarter million dollar pot defeat to a mere 50-1. When it's a quarter million in the WSOP, a 50-1 bad beat is still horrible, folks: don't lose the forest for the trees, or even for the Ivey. Ivey re-raised all-in for about 55k more. IT TOOK THREE BAD BEATS, BUT THEY PUT PHIL IVEY OUT OF THIS TOURNAMENT Ko called, and turned over the Ac-3c. Ivey turned over the Ad-Qc. The three-time bracelet winner had patiently waited for the right moment: he was about a two and a half to one favorite. No problemo. The doorcard was a three, the board finished 3-5-8-8-10, and the man who probably just had the greatest WSOP in history (not in money won, but in overall performance) was out 23rd. There would be no record 4th bracelet in one Series for Ivey (who, barring the bad beat would have had about 160k, still below par but most definitely playable), and perhaps even more incredible than this series of bad beats (we've all had those, just not for these stakes), not a single one of the remaining 22 players had ever won even ONE bracelet. Even though we had a few star players left, every horse left in the running was on brand new turf. One of the stars remaining was Dave Crunkleton, who has made the final table of the Big One twice, and he had nearly a quarter million when he decided to get them all into play against Don Barton while holding A-J and looking at a flop of A-2-10. The only problem was that Barton held A-K and doubled his 195k stack through Crunkleton. Adding elimination to injury, Barton finished off Crunkleton on the very next hand when he took A-4 offsuit up against Crunkleton's As-5s. The flop hit them both hard, A-4-5, but Barton hit yet another four on the river to end Crunkleton's run for a third final table. ANOTHER SHOOTING STAR-WSOP COMBO? The clock went off soon thereafter (we were playing two hour rounds, as we had throughout the WSOP), and we moved to $1,000 antes and $4.000-$8,000 blinds. The Crunkleton-enriched Barton was the new chip leader with almost 600k, while four players (Gray, Varkonyi, Gardner, and Ko) all hovered near the 500k mark. It was an especially impressive move for Ko, who had fallen as low as 17k at one point during the day, and I started wondering if the Bay 101 Shooting Stars was going to pull off back-to-back miracles, as 2001 Champ Carlos Mortensen had won his seat for the Big One in 2001 by winning the Shooting Stars, just as Ko had this year. Another kind of clock struck for Jack Fox as we began the next round. Forced to nurse a small stack through most of the day, he shoved his remaining stack in when he found an actual hand, A-K, and got called by Minh Ly, who had pocket eights. Fox is a wonderful human being and poker player, but he has to work on his eyesight. The man who had failed to notice his kings and tens started to celebrate when the flop came A-8-9, his ecstasy in spotting that he had hit his ace turning to agony when he finally noticed that Ly had flopped a set. Fox exited a game (no pun intended) 21st. OK, ONCE MORE, BUT NO MORE POCKET JACKS, I PROMISE Maybe the story of this whole tournament should be called the Week of the Jacksals. Pocket jacks played a key role numerous times in setting the Final 45, and twice in the next 20 minutes Julian Gardner picked them up at the same moment an opponent picked up two queens. Nakano was the second opponent to lift the ladies at the same moment Gardner found jacks, and the man who'd started 44th was now approaching 200k. It couldn't happen...could it? Nakano, one of the few well-known players left amongst the field of relative unknowns, got a bit closer when Paul Wilsdon, who had survived literally about eight all-in situations, finally couldn't survive one when the still climbing Nasseri found two queens and Wilsdon couldn't escape with A-J. With Wilsdon's exit, we had 19 players left, and when Mike Fetter couldn't beat two queens with As-5s, we redrew for two new tables. The chip counts at this point were roughly: Barton, 670k D, 440k Shipley, 550k Perry, 345k Nasseri, 550k Varkonyi, 510k Ko, 275k Ly, 475k Gardner, 540k Neely, 300k Mullin, 320k Rosenblum, 200k Nakano, 60k Rubin, 150k DeKnijff, 270k Stockinger, 100k Gray, 300k Hall, 160k "HEY, REF, SEND SHAPIRO IN FOR GLAZER" The redraw took place just before the dinner break, but it wasn't a dinner break for all. Phil Hellmuth and Johnny Chan finally found a moment when each was available to play the championship of the Bracelet Winners Tournament, and this was it. I headed downstairs to cover that, and asked Max Shapiro to give me bare-bones highlights of whatever happened when play resumed upstairs, in case the heads-up match outlasted the 90-minute dinner break. It wouldn't have, except it took the two champs a while to get started, and no, I'm not revealing that winner here. Wait until the end like a good reader. Meanwhile, courtesy of Max, I learned, when I returned, that Russell had struck a mighty early blow at the new 2k ante, $6,000-$12,000 blind level. Somehow, Max reported with his usual keen eye for detail ("Andy ‘paid by the word' Glazer," eh, Shapiro? Never take shots at the guy who has the last word, even if you are doing him a favor by keeping an eye on the store), Rosenblum, Stockinger and Rubin all managed to get their entire stacks in before the flop, with the hands Rosenblum, A-J Stockinger, K-K Rubin, K-10 The board came 8-7-A-7-3, and Russell Rosenblum, who earlier had been Russell the Merciful when he ignored the size of Gardner's all-in raise, became Russell the Conqueror when he smote two with one blow. Nakano doubled up when he found two queens (two kings had been dropping like flies in this tournament, but queens were golden). Ko, whose stock had been dropping fast as the dinner break approached when players started playing back at his 30k and 40k raises, kept losing small pots and then lost a big one when he bluffed at the wrong time. Holding K-9, he got all his money in pre-flop against DeKnijff, who held A-A, and Mr. Ko's Wild Ride, from 118k to 17k to 500k to 0k, ended in 16th place. "REF! SEND SHAPIRO TO THE SHOWERS, KEEP HIM THERE UNTIL HE CLEANS UP HIS ACT, AND GET GLAZER BACK IN!" I returned from the Hellmuth-Chan match in time to see Gardner lose 120k to Varkonyi, who was inching his way back towards the lead at 600k, and then a rematch produced a similar result, and now Varkonyi, who had conquered Hellmuth's Ah-Kh the day before with Qc-10c, was starting to yard his way towards the lead rather than inch towards it, and had about 700k. Gardner continue to show no fear in mixing it up, and he took on Neely and his remaining 99k with A-K. Neely, who had played fairly conservatively, held the lead with pocket sevens, but an A-K-3-4-4 board sent him out 15th. Although Scarlett O'Hara (yes, Padraig, I'm sure she was Irish too) pointed out that "tomorrow is another day," today was just not the day for pocket kings. Tony D held them, only to be halted in his tracks by a scary Kc-Qc-Jc flop, checked and called a Barton bet for 40k on the flop, and then both players checked the rest of the way as the board finished 10h-9c. Nope, no one had the 10c for a straight flush. D's set of kings were rendered useless by the straight on board, and Barton and his pocket threes had escaped with a split. The lack of aggression was somewhat un-D-like, but if the flop wasn't scary enough, the turn card, which would have given anyone holding an ace a straight, did the job. A GREAK CLIMB, BUT NAKANO CAN'T QUITE SCALE EVEREST Finally, after a day long miraculous climb, Yosh Nakano ran out of miracles, trying to take on A-10 with A-4 and failing, the bad start growing worse when a ten hit the flop. Nakano actually picked up a straight draw when the board developed into 10-8-2-3, but a jack on the river left us with four to go. Ralph Perry made a small raise to 35k, and DeKnijff decided to call on the button. Oh, those flat calls. The flop came 6h-4s-3c, Perry led out for 20k, DeKnijff raised 40k more, and in one of those "uh-oh, this better be a bluff because otherwise I'm in big trouble" raises, Perry raised back only 50k more. This relatively tiny raise virtually demanded a call, given the size of the pot, but DeKnijff decided to move all-in, and Perry called in some amount of time that could only be measured in nanoseconds. PERRY LEAVES DeKNIJFF AT SIXES AND SEVENS DeKnijff flipped up the worst possible overpair: he was in trouble if Perry had any kind of big pair, but he was in even more trouble when Perry turned over a smaller one, two sixes for a set. The board finished 2-3, and after we verified that DeKnijff had only 335k left in front of him to Perry's 378k, DeKnijff was out, and Perry, once we added in all the money that had already been in the center before the final move in, was now the chip leader at more than 900k. With the tables growing shorthanded, the button started coming around faster, and that made at least some of the players want to start playing faster to collect (six-handed) the 30k in dead money sitting there every hand. Shipley tried to grab some with a raise of 110k, only to see Mullin move all-in for a raise of about 100k. This was a curious raise, because Shipley had a big stack, and he was going to be able to take a shot at a big pot for only a 100k call. He made it, and found out that he wasn't even trailing: Mullin had picked a bad time to move with Kc-Jc, while Shipley had K-Q. Mullin no doubt wished his hand was a little worse, Kc-10c lets say, because the flop came 10-10-10. After a six hit the turn, a six, ace, or king would have split the pot, and a jack would have given it to Mullin, but the river was dry, and Mullin was 12th. NOW the fun began. Nasseri had come back from the dinner break in a more aggressive mode, no doubt anxious to take advantage of players who were in "hang on" mode, but he got a little out of line when small blind Varkonyi raised it to 40k, Nasseri raised 100k more, and then had to lay it down when Varkonyi moved all-in. The clock ran out and so did the players, which let me get a reasonably accurate chip estimate: Table One Shipley, 900k Gardner, 580k Rosenblum, 560k Varkonyi, 640k Nasseri, 650k (Average stack at table: 666k) Table Two Ly, 440k Hall, 200k Gray, 450k Perry, 900k D, 330k Barton, 660k (Average stack at table: 497k) The antes moved up to 3k, and the blinds to $8,000-$16,000, and we weren't five minutes into the new round when the world turned upside down. OH YEAH, WELL, TAKE THAT! Nasseri opened a pot for a raise to 85k. Shipley, who would have had to have been blind not to notice Nasseri's newfound aggressiveness, raised back 140k more. That should have been the end of the hand for Nasseri, because he was holding Jd-9d, but he decided to flat call the huge bet. Nasseri felt pretty good about the his "mistake" on the flop, because it came Jc-3c-7c. Nasseri didn't have a club in his hand, but he did have a jack, and he decided to use his stack as if it were a club, moving all-in for a whopping 459k. He was putting Birmingham, England's John Shipley to the test. I'll have to admit, I didn't think Nasseri had a hand even as good as top pair: I read him for a stone cold missed flop and a guy who was trying to bully his way into taking down what had developed into a huge pot before the flop, nearly a half million bucks. Shipley thought for about a minute, and must have read about what I did, because he finally decided to call with pocket eights...one of which was a club. Nasseri was a 57-43 favorite, and that lead grew larger when the turn card was the 7d. Shipley needed an eight or a club, or Nasseri was the chip leader. NASSERI CAN'T JOIN SHIPLEY'S PRIVATE CLUB The Qc fell on the river, Nasseri was out, and John Shipley had about 1.6 million in chips, 1.4 of which had arrived along with the queen of clubs. Buzz-buzz-buzz, we were now hand-for-hand, with one "unlucky" player fated to take home $70,000 cash but miss his shot at TV and the really big money. With Table One now a player short, they moved Barton and his big stack in to Nasseri's seat, and it looked like we might get out final table very quickly. Gardner raised it to a total of 46k from the small blind, and Rosenblum, after thinking for a little while, moved all-in. Gardner called like a shot and turned over As-Ks. Rosenblum turned over that hand that kept shaping this tournament, J-J. If an ace or king were to hit the board, we were done, but the Q-4-9-2-Q board doubled Rosenblum through, and Gardner had 226k left after shipping 427k to a rather excited Rosenblum. DUST THOSE TABLE TWO GUYS OFF, PLEASE Over at Table Two, also know as the "Oh, are you guys playing also?" table, short-stacked Harley Hall, who had just missed the final table in the 3k no-limit event last week, bit his lip, realizing that had Gardner hit that ace or king, he'd be at the final table. Now he was going to have to hang on a while longer. For a moment, it looked like that "while longer" was only going to be just that, a moment, because on the very next hand, Barton raised to 50k from the button, and Gardner instantly moved the rest of his chips all-in from the small blind. Barton didn't hesitate for more than a couple of nanoseconds himself before calling. A-Q offsuit for Barton, and just the hand he and Hall wanted to see in Gardner's 23 year old hands, As-10s. What Barton and Hall didn't want to see was the very first card off the deck on the flop, a ten. Barton didn't even get any false hopes from seeing a paint card fall, because the final board was 10-8-8-7-5. Gardner was back in the hunt, and Barton was starting to see why Nasseri hadn't liked his chair the last couple of hands. Barton wasn't going to go out whimpering. He raised a pot a few hands later to 50k, only to see Shipley, the 1.6 Million Dollar Man, raise him back 100k more. Barton decided to flat call the bet. Meanwhile, they called for maid service to wipe the dust off of the players and chips at Table Two. The flop came Jh-10d-8d, and Barton moved in. You've heard the expression "he beat him into the pot." Shipley didn't. He just said "I call" faster than an auctioneer, and I'd never been so sure I was going to see a set of jacks in my life. I wasn't disappointed, but Barton had outs: he held A-Q, so a nine would give him a straight, and there's been this history of nines deciding big tournaments lately, especially red ones. Unfortunately for Barton, we weren't trying to decide the tournament, just the final table, and when the board finished 6h-2h, we had our final nine players for tomorrow:
ANDY'S ANALYSIS As I've indicated with my picks the last couple of days (I got four out of nine today), I tend to be more impressed with playing ability than stack size, and no, there is no correlation between that belief and the place where all of you with dirty minds immediately went with your metaphors. Although Gardner showed a chink or two in his youthful armor towards the end of the day, I think he's one of the two best players left. The problem is the Gardner and the other best player left, D, own two of the shortest stacks, and while skill is more important than size, as Godzilla would say, "size matters." Shipley is a talented player, even though many observers were shocked by his call with the pocket eights. For better or worse, I'd made the same read he had, and he possesses one skill I consider very important in no-limit, the willingness to go with one's read. When you combine his skills with his chips, Shipley is the pick. Rosenblum catches a break in that he gets position on Shipley, but you just can't make mistakes like failing to notice you've only been raised 30k in a 200k pot and expect to win the WSOP. He seems like a genuinely nice young man, but I figure him for fifth or sixth place. If D can double up early, he can win: the same can be said of Gardner, Gray, Perry, and Ly. Hall has a lot of game, but I don't think he's going to cut it loose and he will have to pick up a lot of hands to get into it. Off of a relatively brief time watching him play, I just don't see Varkonyi having what it takes, and even though Rosenblum has all those chips, I think he's going to have to get awfully lucky to win. I think the final will be a lot of fun if D and Gardner can double up: if they can find some chips, they can pull it off, although even with a double up, even Gardner is a decided underdog to Shipley. The turn of a card can change a lot, though: as T.J. Cloutier is fond of saying, "That's why they play the game." Two million bucks. Think about it. Results thus far, No-Limit Hold'em Championship Event 10th-12th, $70,000 each: Don Barton, Amir Nasseri, Owen Mullin. 13th-15th, $60,000 each: Martin Deknijff, Yosh Nakano, James Neely. 16th-18th, $50,000 each: Bernard Ko, Sigi Stockinger, David Rubin. 19th-27th, $40,000 each: Michael Fetter, Stephen Wilsdon, Jack Fox, Dave Crunkleton, Phil Ivey, Minh Nguyen, Lamar Wilkinson, Kurt Paseka, Dennis January. 28th-36th, $30,000 each: Luan Phu, Samuel Whitt, Rameen Sai, Scott Amos, Steve Melton, Eric Holum, Ross Boatman, Randy Holland, Tom Scheider. 37th-45th, $20,000 each: Hertzel Zalewski, Doug Booth, Jason Lane, Brian Haveson, Greg Alston, David Sklansky, Dan Heimiller, Tristan McDonald, Peter Giordino. THE HELLMUTH-CHAN MATCH I know I promised a story earlier, but it's now 7:25 a.m., there's a long day ahead of me, and I want to do justice to the winner of this event. If you want to wait for the story to learn the winner, stop reading right here. If you want to know the winner now, and will settle for the story tomorrow, scroll down a ways past the "Unpaid political announcement." UNPAID POLITICAL ANNOUNCEMENT EDITOR'S NOTE: Although you can provide me with any and all kinds of feedback about future WNP topics through the email addresses I listed in the middle of this piece, you should also know that I am finally starting to rev up my own website, www.casinoselfdefense.com, and in the weeks that follow, will start publishing a series of instructional columns there. If you like the sort of instruction you get in WNP, you'll probably like to visit casinoselfdefense.com on a regular basis. When that site was originally developed, it focused more on general gambling than on poker, and indeed the book that you can purchase there now, CASINO GAMBLING THE SMART WAY, is a general gaming book. In the weeks that follow the WSOP, I plan to start making other recommended poker books available there, so as an enticement, you'll start seeing a new weekly poker article.
Comments & ContactI 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 If you wish to unsubscribe from this newsletter please click here.
|
