2008 WSOP, Day 7: Last Night’s Final Table

Last night’s final table of Event No. 4, the $5,000 Mixed Limit/No-Limit Hold’em event, ended around 2:00 a.m. or thereabouts. I can’t remember. Was kind of a whirlwind from beginning to end as Steve and I tracked all 197 hands, right up to Erick Lindgren winning his first WSOP bracelet.

We got there well before the scheduled 3 p.m. start time, but the final table didn’t get crankin’ ‘til almost 5, the delay due (I think) to ESPN having to get everything in place to shoot the thing. Nine hours later or so and we were done. I got home too wired to sleep, but also too written out to write anything more over here. If yr curious, you can check out my sign-off post over on PokerNews detailing Lindgren’s triumph.

If you traipse back through the Day 3 blog, you’ll see descriptions of every hand, with the two of us only occasionally missing a card or bet amount. The limit rounds were especially unrelenting, as hands went by very quickly, about one per minute (or faster). Was kind of maddening at times as we were surrounded at the press table by a lot of folks yammering away, making it difficult to hear the announcer reporting the bets -- something we relied on utterly, as we could not see those perfectly from our vantage point.

We tried to add a few “color” posts along the way, but there really wasn’t much time for that. Phil Hellmuth did come around in his UltimateBet get-up at one point, which gave me a chance to write the following:

Hellmuth Cameo
Phil Hellmuth just stopped by to say hello to Erick Lindgren. The announcer asked the audience for a round of applause for Hellmuth, and after a pause a chorus of boos rained down, followed by laughter.

“Tough crowd, man!” said Hellmuth.

Oh, and there was this one from earlier in the evening, too:

Limit Hold'em Not Everyone's Fave
Just overheard near the press table:

“I’m going to bring a Chia pet next time we have a limit event so I can watch it grow.”

When it was over, there a genuine sense of joy and even a kind of weird camaraderie in the arena as everyone seemed to share in Lindgren’s triumph. At the start of heads up play, he had made some gestures toward buying everyone a Milwaukee’s Best Light (as we reported in the blog), which garnered him some cheers, though the waitresses never seemed to come around to take care of that. Lindgren didn’t need to buy the crowd’s support, though, as a lot of those present were already clearly on his side.

Was glad to have been a small part of the whole spectacle. I have the day off today, but frankly am so sapped I don’t know if I’ll do much of anything. Will try to come back on later with a bit more about today’s events. Once again, six different tourneys are in action. The WSOP express keeps rollin’ along, and, as always, you can follow everything over at PokerNews.