The Main Event final table.
Never done anything like this before! It helps having a juicy broadband internet connection which is able to cope with live video and audio streaming. So I bought the package thru ESPN (which I'm already a member of coz I LUUUURVE my NBA Hoops) and waited for the action to roll around.
I actually woke early yesterday morning Western Oz time (6.30am) and decided to get up, coz I'm not a sleeper-inner. Logged on, and low and behold it was underway, in fact I missed the first few Final Table eliminations. When I logged on, already Hilm, Childs and Watkinson had been eliminated and Yang had a brutal chip stack.
Now I've got to qualify my comments below by saying that anyone who makes it thru a minefield of some 6000+ competitors to make the final table of something like the Main Event HAS to have some serious card knowledge. You just couldn't get thru without it.
HOWEVER .....
There seemed to be some SERIOUS donking going on! I dunno whether it was the pressure of being on the final table and on the telly, but there seemed to be an inordinate number of rediculous plays.
'Rain' Khan pushing with a pair of THREES?!! What a dickhead! You see a flop (and then only sometimes) with threes!
Kravchenko (... who I admire. Typical Ruski tho. Personality of a house brick, but a serious player and played the short stack BRILLIANTLY) pushing all in with 2-3c? Must've been a 'read' situation!!! One he totally fugged up and then got incredibly lucky, flopping two pair!
Yang. Now here's a real tough one. To be honest, he seemed like a very AVERAGE player who couldn't stop getting cards! He was a brutal calling station ... but with cards! Having a gargantuan chip stack seemed to make up for a lot of his inadequacies as a poker player. He called TWO all ins with EIGHTS! Am I alone here? EIGHTS?!!! Must be his 'lucky hand'. And his play was sooooooooo fugging slow. Was it deliberate?! Even his hand movements! It would've driven me batty if I was at the table with him. Keep in mind this man is couselling poor souls in the good ol' US of A!
Kalmar, Lam and Rahme all seemed to be very decent players. Poor Rahme, he totally butchered those pocket Kings, but even then, calling station Yang would've won that hand anyway. And as for Lam, in heads up play, I would've gone to war with A-Q sooooted too. Dunno that I'd be calling with eights! And if you would, I'd love to hear why.
Great to watch most of it over the course of the day. At home and at work. Dunno what I learned from it tho. Maybe that even some really great players make first rate mistakes at times. I'd love to get your thoughts.
And before I go .... I understand that they can't have pocket card cameras operating during the Main Event .... but it definitely took away from some of the theatre of the broadcast. Phil Gordon's comments were good too. Just my two cents!
Over to you.
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I didn't watch it live, but followed along on pokernews throughout the day. Yang got lucky early, and I knew once he had 1/3 of the chips that it was over with. There's no shame in call a push with ATo when you have so many chips you aren't afraid of losing... or 88 when you have over 100 million in chips vs your opponent's 20mil. Final table, and every time you knock somebody out, you're guaranteed more and become even more dominating, with minimal risk to your stack.
That said, I was pulling for Tuan Lam. Gotta root for the Canadian after all :).
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