WSOP Update

It's true that I've been slacking off from writing summaries of World Series of Poker tournaments. The highlight of the entire production for me, so far, has been Phil Hellmuth's reaction to getting knocked out of a pot-limit hold'em tournament that aired last week (though to be fair to Phil, he took two pretty bad beats): He got up from the table mumbling about how he "knew" he'd get sucked out on, which I guess is better than throwing furniture around, then walked over to his sister and said "I just cannot play any better than that...If there wasn't luck involved, I'd win every time." That's really the apotheosis of poker-cuntitude, if you think about it. There's something fundamentally wrong with Hellmuth's math: namely, if he goes all-in in a situation where his hand will win six times out of ten, he expects it to win ten times out of ten, and gets really pissed off (or cries) if things don't turn out that way.

Last night, ESPN broadcast a limit hold'em tournament and a pot-limit Omaha tournament, apparently the last two competitions they'll air before the main event. I was surprised by how well limit hold'em can play on TV---but my biases are obvious, since almost all the TV poker you see these days is no-limit, and more importantly, just about every poker player under the age of say, 30, is primarily a no-limit hold'em player. The limit structure really did a lot to convey the grind of a long tournament. One thing limit hold'em is really good at is buffering good players from getting knocked out on a single bad beat, and you really get the sense that everybody at the final table earned their place, and that the eventual winner deserved his championship in a way that, I dunno, Robert Varkonyi didn't.

Among the top finishers was everybody's old friend Jim McManus, who finished fourth. McManus has graced my game at school with his presence, and though I wasn't there at the time, I've been told by trustworthy sources that he continually made sucker calls on straight draws. No doubt he knows better than that, so it's unclear why he would do so. Maybe there wasn't enough money involved to get him interested.

The third place finisher was Patty Gallagher, one of several women to cash out at open events at this year's WSOP. She played very well indeed, holding the chip lead going into three-handed play, and lost when An Tran turned and then flopped nut straights against her on consecutive hands. Interestingly, she allowed herself to be defeated by playing too aggressively against the traps Tran had set for her. Kind of a role reversal, no? I would think that successful female players thrive on executing trapping plays. (I also think that women could potentially dominate the game, but more on that later.)

The winner, in the end, was John Hennigan, who was lucky enough to be holding the ace of spades when a four-flush in spades appeared on the board, and his opponent, Tran, was holding the king. But Hennigan had played better poker than anyone else at the final table, and unlike quite a few of the tournaments this year, there was no injustice involved in his victory.