Eight Years, Eight Hands: Looking Back Through the 2007-2014 Main Events

Readying here for the Fourth of July tomorrow, and for the start of World Series of Poker Main Event on Sunday. Hard to believe the whole sucker has almost played out again already.

Thinking about the Main Event inspired me to rummage around a little through the last eight years’ worth of live reporting from the WSOP on PokerNews -- a pretty cool, easy-to-navigate archive. From each of the eight years I chose a single hand from either the final table or close to it and presented all of them in a compilation over in the PokerNews Strategy section.

Some of the hands were more consequential than others, but each featured some interesting, even fascinating decisions made by the players involved, thus inspiring the title of the compilation “The Second-Guessing Game: Key Decisions from WSOP Main Events (2007-2014).”

Part 1 covers the following hands:

2007 - The elimination of Philip Hilm in ninth place by Jerry Yang in just the 15th hand of the final table. Recall how Yang began that final table in seventh while Hilm was in first.

2008 - A huge hand early on from the final table between Dennis Phillips (with A-K) and Ivan Demidov (with A-Q) that suddenly sent start-of-final-table chip leader Phillips down to ninth of nine.

2009 - The wild Billy Kopp-Darvin Moon hand with 12 players left that saw both flop flushes and Kopp suddenly ousted in 12th.

2010 - The dramatic hand in which Jonathan Duhamel knocked out Matt Affleck in 15th, cracking Affleck’s aces after they were all in on the turn and Duhamel filled a straight on the river.

Part 2 then carried things forward with these hands:

2011 - Kind of a cool hand from heads-up between Martin Staszko and Pius Heinz in which both were bluffing away without a pair and Staszko finally pushed Heinz off his hand.

2012 - Andras Koroknai’s huge six-bet shove with K-Q-offsuit, called by Greg Merson called who held A-K-suited to knock Koroknai out in sixth.

2013 - J.C. Tran’s fold with six players left to Jay Farber’s four-bet in a blind-versus-blind hand. Tran had A-Q while Farber had pocket sixes.

2014 - Mark Newhouse’s elimination hand in which he battled to the river versus William Tonking, finally pushing his last chips in with pocket tens on a 2-4-J-4-J board, and Tonking found a call with pocket queens.

Remember those hands? Click over to relive ‘em and/or think about some of the strategy followed in each.