2009 November Nine Just Hours Away... Time for Special Tactics!
Today was listening back to some of these interviews with November Nine-alists on The Poker Edge from the past few weeks. Great stuff, and Andrew Feldman and the crew is continuing to produce shows right up until tomorrow’s final table. Don’t forget Feldman’s also got a blog goin’ over there on the ESPN Poker Club with polls and other whatnot, so check that out as well.One of the eps I was listening to today was that one with chip leader Darvin Moon (the 9/25/09 episode). Just as we read earlier this week in Matt Waldron’s interview with Moon (from a while back), Moon insists on The Poker Edge that in that huge hand with Billy Kopp that his impression was the board had not paired on the turn. No shinola!
You’ll recall that when the flop came
both he and Kopp had flopped diamond flushes, with Moon holding 
, and Kopp 
. The turn brought the 
, Moon checked, Kopp bet 2 million, Moon check-raised to 6 million, Kopp shoved, and Moon called. Kopp was drawing dead.“The flop come
,” says Moon to Feldman and co-host Phil Gordon, getting that third card wrong. “I checked and he checked.” Actually, Moon checked, Kopp bet 750,000 (a little under half the pot), and Moon called.
“Turn card come ,” Moon continues. (Photo courtesy the great Flipchip.) “I checked, he bet 2 million, so I went all in, and when he said ‘all in’ my heart ’bout jumped on the table.” I don’t believe Moon was misremembering the final sequence of bets -- he didn’t go all in first. Rather, he was just stumbling a little in the retelling, as made clear by his subsequent words. “When that happened, I mean I just leaned back in my chair, leaned back forward, and I said ‘I call.’”
Moon goes on to say how Kopp turned over
. “Didn’t the board pair on the turn?” asks Feldman. “No,” says Moon. Gordon reiterates that the board paired on the turn, but Moon insists “No, the board didn’t pair. It might’ve paired on the river. But it didn’t pair on the turn. The turn come the . I’m very confident of that.”“Interesting,” says Gordon.
After the interview was over Gordon and Feldman revisit the issue, and both seem ready to believe Moon, though as we all saw back in July -- and as was confirmed by the ESPN telecast earlier this week -- the original reports of the hand were correct.
In other words, Kopp, for whom the board pairing on the turn absolutely dictated his play on that street (see his explanation here), was playing against a guy who hadn’t noticed the board had paired! Doomed, he was.
Gotta love Moon, though. “Are you paying much attention to the telecasts?” Gordon asks him. There’s a pause.
“On the teevee?” Moon responds.
Moon has absolutely no desire to change his lifestyle one iota, regardless of how this sucker turns out. “I’ve got everything I want,” he says. “I don’t need anything. I mean, I’m 45 years old. I’ve live my first 45 years like this. Why change?”
That attitude similarly applies to his decision not to seek any sort of coaching for the final table.
“See, I’m not hiring no coach. I don’t understand all that. I’ve been called and asked if I would like to have coaching, and... naw. I mean, I’m going in there the same way I went in the last time. Just with a game plan of my own and if it works, it works, and if it don’t, it don’t.”
Speaking of coaches, the interview with Phil Hellmuth -- who is coaching Jeff Shulman -- from yesterday (the 11/5/09 episode) is pretty fascinating as well. Do note the Poker Brat has supplied Shulman with a “special tactic” that will “shock the world” when used. Awesome!
(Of course, one wonders how well them special tactics will work if the opponent ain’t clear on the community cards!)
Can’t wait.
Labels: *high society, 2009 WSOP Main Event, Andrew Feldman, Darvin Moon, Phil Gordon, Phil Hellmuth, The Poker Edge
posted by Short-Stacked Shamus at 11/06/2009 05:43:00 PM
2 Comments:
That special tactic line is pure Hellmuth gold. If there's one thing he's not lacking, it's an overinflated sense of self-importance.
According to Dennis Phillip's recent tweets, the Brat "stormed out" on PAD tonight and DP was a last minute replacement. Maybe he realized he needed to prep for the poker earthquake to come after Shulman puts the tactic in play.
Dunno if you noticed this, but in the Inside Deal episode of 9/29 he also mis-recollected--and wrongly corrected Bernard Lee's account of--the final table bubble hand where he cracked Jordan Smith's aces with his eights. Lee was right in saying that Smith checked the (8-high) flop to him, but Moon corrects him, then recounts the rest of the betting sequence incorrectly, saying that he checked, Smith bet, and he called. In fact, Smith checked, Moon bet, Smith raised all-in and Moon called. An odd guy, but he seems to be what he claims to be--a novice player on a hot streak. The televised portions of his play at the final table showed a man out of his depth making many huge errors. When Cada complimented him on his play, I think (to put in nicely) that he was either being polite, or that it was another levelling mistake--he was crediting Moon with a high level of gear-changing, whereas Darvin's play was in fact naively erratic--though his unpredictability was no less difficult to counter for being the product more of cluelessness than of savviness.
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