Final table
Here is a hand my friend Greg recently played at the final table of a WPT event.
With Level 24 and blinds of 25K/50K + 5K, Greg continued to dominate the table with his trademark, “This much…” when indicating a raise and pushing in an indiscriminate stack or two from his mountain. Karim from Calgary, AB was no stranger to the short table, having come in 2nd place at the $5,000 2006 Heads-Up Canadian Open Poker Championship in his home town last March. Cutting through a field rife with pros such as Andy Bloch, Huck Seed, Brad Booth and Antonio Esfandiari among others, he claimed the guaranteed $125,000 runner-up prize.
Although getting a little desperate with his remaining 190K in chips, Karim got it all-in preflop with K♠Q&hearts. Calling for another 140K in the big blind, was no other than the player-eater himself, Greg, calling with A⋄6♠. With a bricked-up board, Ace-high was enough for my friend to eliminate his third victim. Involved in sales and marketing, he enjoys fishing and collecting exotic pets but right now all he was collecting was skulls.
Chip leader at the start of the day was Brian Wilson but you would hardly know he was there. A quiet and reserved player, there was no doubt he was playing tight, but was also a little card-dead as well. For the next little while he was chipped away until Hand #41. Sharing a flop with Derrick, they each caught a piece of the 2♣ J♣ 8♥ – Brian with 8♥9♥ and Derrick with A♠J⋄. Brian check-raises a 250K bet all-in with another 647K. Derrick couldn’t have asked for anything better but he thought carefully, considering Brian’s usual tight play throughout the day.
With top pair and top kicker he makes the call and with no improvement, Derrick doubles through and leaves Brian with less than 200K. In a battle of small blind versus big blind on the next hand, Atsushi takes the Chilliwack native out 7th with a monstrous hand of 9♠6♣ over 7♣4⋄. Brian earns $62,000 for the tourney.
Once play got down to 5-handed the complexion of the table changed and the strategy seemed to reverse itself. Greg tightened up and stopped putting pressure on the shorter stacks while David became more aggressive, picking up blinds on more than one occasion with less-than-stellar hands. There was very little slow-playing and players were protecting their big hands. On different occasions Atsushi flopped a set and promptly raised all-in. Greg flopped a set of 6s when they were 4-handed and bet all-in without check-raising or trying to maximize the hand. Surely these hands will make for some great analysis from Terry Dennis and Adam Schwartz when the episodes air on the television.
Noah had been playing cautiously up to Hand #44 where he made a preflop raise all-in for 229K. Any Ace looks good 5-handed but his A⋄9⋄ was more than a 2:1 underdog when Greg called him on the puck with 10♥10♠. A board of 3♠ J♥2♥ still left him an Ace for an out – A♥ on the turn and that’s why poker relies on some luck. Then a 10♣ on the river to give Greg a set of 10s is really why poker relies on luck. After earning his way in with a satellite entry, Noah is out in 6th, collecting the biggest payday to date for the real estate assistant who also fancies himself a part-time poker pro.
He said that he enjoyed myself a lot and would like to come back for next year’s event. Starting to play poker 5 years ago, the 25-year-old was given another 72,000 reasons to make River Rock his favourite cardroom to play in.