Big Hands (the 2008 WSOP Main Event final table)

Have been over on the Bluff site “watching” the coverage of the WSOP Main Event final table. Not such a bad way to go, although a live video feed would obviously be preferable. The hand-for-hand narratives by F-Train and Change100 over on PokerNews have been helpful, too, in the effort to get an idea what is going on there in the Penn & Teller Theater at the Rio.

There are currently six players left, with David Rheem just getting knocked out in seventh. Just before that, Dennis Phillips managed to double up again to climb back over the 20 million mark, having spiked an ace on the flop with A-Q to outlast Ylon Schwartz’ pocket queens.

That early hand in which Phillips lost a whopping 12.5 million to Ivan Demidov was gut-wrenching. Definitely one to watch for on Tuesday when we get to see some hole cards.

I’m thinking it had to be an aces versus kings situation, though there are other possibilities there, too. When the hand began, Phillips had 21.6 million, while Demidov had a bit more with almost 22.4 million. They were the chip leaders at the time (with Eastgate close behind with 20.3 million). Phillips limped under the gun (for 300,000), and it folded around to Demidov who raised to 1.025 million from the button. The blinds folded, then Phillips repopped it to 3.525 million. Demidov then four-bet to 8.225 million.

I was surprised when Phillips just called. I had thought he must have aces, but the call made that seem much, much less likely. Now the pot was over 17 million, and Phillips had about 13.4 million left. (Demidov had 14 million-plus.)

The flop came . I was again surprised by Phillips’ meek-seeming continuation bet of 4.5 million. Demidov pushed, of course, and Phillips ended up letting it go.

What do you think the players had? Demidov could have a number of different hands here, I think, including jacks, queens, kings, aces, or even A-K or A-Q. Of all of those, though, aces seems most likely given the preflop action.

What about Phillips? On the audio commentary, Barry Greenstein speculated that Phillips must have had queens, which seems very possible. My gut feeling was he had kings, even though one might think with kings he’d have gone ahead and shoved preflop. Whatever he had, this was a nightmarish situation for Phillips, for sure.

Phillips dribbled down under 5 million after that, but doubled back up with queens against David Rheem’s jacks. Then he doubled up again with that fortunate hand versus Schwartz. Back in business!

Exciting stuff. Sounds like they are coming back from the break. You can tune in here. Remember, Dr. Pauly is also live-blogging the sucker over at Tao of Poker. And of course, head back over to PokerNews for more of them live reports.