Main Event Memories

Been back on the farm more than a week now from Las Vegas. I snapped that pic to the left as I left the Rio for the last time following a 16-night stay.

It took me a while, but finally I’m sharing links to some of my favorite features posted during the World Series of Poker Main Event.

Early on I had the chance to chat with New York Times best selling author Maria Konnikova about her current book project. You might have heard something about it -- the story has been passed around the poker world the last few month’s as Konnikova writing a book “about” Erik Seidel, although that isn’t exactly what she’s doing.

Rather, the author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes and The Confidence Game is spending a year playing poker on the professional poker tournament circuit as part of an inquiry into how humans make decisions, including when faced with elements outside of our control (such as happens in poker).

Talking with Konnikova was one of my favorite half-hours of the entire trip, to be honest, and while not everything we talked about made it into this post, a lot of it did, including a fuller introduction to her study. You can read it here: “Konnikova seeking answers in the cards about life, poker, and everything.”

A couple of days after that I had another fun conversation with Vanessa Selbst, a player I’ve been covering in tournaments for nearly a decade now.

If you followed the Main Event you probably remember how Selbst found herself in a highly unusual spot only an hour or so into the tournament, running into Gaelle Baumann’s quads to be eliminated halfway through the very first level.

We talked about that hand, of course, but also about one of the very first tournaments I ever covered, the $1,500 pot-limit Omaha event at the 2008 WSOP in which Selbst won her first bracelet. That remains one of my favorite reporting experiences ever -- thanks in large part to the crazy finish -- and it was fun inviting Selbst to remember the scene.

She also neatly tied together with her comments the end of that tournament and her exit hand in this year’s Main -- check it out: “Vanessa embraces the variance.”

The cash bubble burst at the end of Day 3, and just before the start of Day 4 I spoke with one of those who’d made the money -- Kenneth “K.L.” Cleeton.

You might have heard something about this story, too. Cleeton is a 27-year-old player from Illinois who suffers from a rare neuromuscular disorder that leaves him essentially paralyzed from the neck down. He’s anything but handicapped otherwise, though -- very quick-witted and gregarious and also a good poker player, too.

Cleeton entered a contest put together by Daniel Negreanu and along with a couple of other entrants was put into the the Main Event by Kid Poker. With his father at the table providing assistance looking at cards and making bets, Cleeton survived the bubble bursting with a short stack, and both of them were unsurprisingly ecstatic about it all when we chatted just before Day 4 began.

Negreanu shared some comments as well for the post. Read about Cleeton and be energized by one of the cooler stories of the whole Main: “K.L. Cleeton continues inspiring run into Day 4.”

As the tournament wore on, a player named Mickey Craft started to get everyone’s attention thanks to his big stack and especially loose style of play. He was also kind of a character at the tables, chatting it up and obviously enjoying himself immensely.

I happened to be around when Craft won a big pot on Day 4 in an especially nutty hand. I remember watching it play out alongside the ESPN crew, talking a bit with one of them who was marveling at how crazy the poker was. I knew right then they’d be finding a way to get Craft onto a feature table soon, and sure enough that’s what happened later in the day.

Here’s that post describing the wacky hand: “Mickey Craft is must-see poker.”

Finally, if you paid any attention at all to the Main Event -- particularly to the final table -- you certainly heard about the 64-year-old amateur from Bridlington, England named John Hesp.

You couldn’t miss Hesp in his multi-colored, patchwork shirt and jacket and Panama hat. His personality was just as colorful, and by chance I ended up chatting with him on multiple occasions during his deep Main Event run, including about how the Main was a “bucket list” item for him, a bit of a diversion from his usual 10-pound tournaments in Hull.

Just before the final table (where he’d go on to finish fourth to earn $2.6 million), I posted a piece sharing some of what Hesp and I chatted about: “John Hesp’s Vegas vaction continues; or ‘When I’m Sixty-Four.’”

These are just some of my favorites among the nearly 100 posts Howard Swains and I wrote over the course of the Main Event. Wanted to kind of bookmark them here, though, and also invite some more eyes to ‘em in case folks missed them before.

Poker’s Possible Worlds; or, “Easy Fold for Jesse”

Was watching ESPN’s coverage earlier this week of the last moments of Day 7 of the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event. A memorable finish to the night, of course, with both of the remaining women -- Elisabeth Hille and Gaelle Baumann -- going out in the last two spots shy of the nine-handed final table.

In yesterday’s post I was writing about “hand-for-hand” coverage at the WSOP. Once Hille was eliminated and the remaining 10 players assembled around a single table, those of us doing the PokerNews live blog decided to take turns reporting every hand from that point forward. As it happened, it would be over in just 15 hands when Baumann was finally eliminated by Andras Koroknai.

As I wrote about here last July, it was kind of a manic scene. I had been on the secondary feature table, and so once Hille was knocked out I raced over and hastily set up in one of the media towers by the main table. The action went quickly, and it would take just over half an hour for those last 15 hands to be played.

On just the fifth hand of ten-handed play, Russell Thomas made a big preflop all-in shove following a lot of action and everyone folded. He showed his hand afterwards -- pocket aces. It had been my turn to write that one, and as so as I watched it again the other night, I remembered the hand. I looked back after and saw I’d given the post a pretty generic title: “Thomas Pushes With Aces.”

In truth, the hand didn’t seem all that notable at the time. Sure, we were surprised to see significant action so quickly after ten-handed play had begun. But the way the hand ended made it seem not so remarkable, and soon we’d forgotten about it as we became preoccupied with subsequent hands and the plight of Baumann and her short stack.

Watching the same hand on ESPN this week, though, revealed just how dramatic and unusual it was. And how a decision made by one player -- chip leader Jesse Sylvia -- might well have affected the ultimate outcome that evening regarding who among the ten players would not be coming back next week for the official final table.

That picture to the left is a screen shot from ESPN’s coverage showing the chip counts at the start of ten-handed play. The first four hands had been blind steals, and so the stacks hadn’t changed a lot by the start of Hand #5.

The blinds were 150,000/300,000 with a 40,000 ante, so there was 850,000 in the middle to start. First to act, Russell Thomas opened with a 2.5x raise for 750,000 from under the gun. Jacob Balsiger, sitting to Thomas's left, called the raise. It then folded over to Greg Merson who reraised to 1.85 million from middle position.

Baumann quickly folded, then Sylvia made a four-bet to 4.6 million from the cutoff seat, pushing the total pot up to 8.8 million.

Everyone else quickly got out, and that’s when Merson responded by pushing his stack of about 17.6 million all in. The remaining players didn’t waste a lot of time folding, Thomas showed his aces, and Timmy the dealer was soon shuffling and dealing the next hand.

Check this out, though. In ESPN’s coverage, we got to see all ten players’ hands in this one (not just Thomas’s). Look at what they had:

Seat 1: Russell Thomas (UTG) -- (raises, shoves)
Seat 2: Jacob Balsiger -- (calls raise, folds)
Seat 3: Jeremy Ausmus -- (folds)
Seat 4: Steven Gee -- (folds)
Seat 5: Greg Merson -- (reraises, folds)
Seat 6: Gaelle Baumann -- (folds)
Seat 7: Jesse Sylvia (CO) -- (re-reraises, folds)
Seat 8: Robert Salaburu (B) -- (folds)
Seat 9: Andras Koroknai (SB) -- (folds)
Seat 10: Michael Esposito (BB) -- (folds)

Wild, huh? Three “premium” hands -- A-A, Q-Q, and A-K -- plus another big pocket pair (T-T). And the chip leader with 10-5-offsuit getting cheeky with a big four-bet.

On the show we can hear the players revealing their hands to each other afterwards. “Oh my God, I’m so happy,” says Balsiger, glad he avoided danger and was able to fold his A-K. Both Merson and Esposito tell the table about their respective pocket pairs. “What’d you have?” asks Thomas of Sylvia. “Like 5-3-off?”

“Something like that,” answers Sylvia with a grin.

Incidentally, if we had been closer to the table, I probably would have reported that chatter afterwards, which would’ve certainly helped suggest more about the hand and its significance -- although not everything.

Talk about “what if”! If Sylvia doesn’t make his play, how do you think the preflop action might have played out? Does someone get his stack in against Thomas’s aces? Do they get to a flop (at which point any number of possibilities could play out)?

At the time, Baumann had just a little more than 2 million, not even seven big blinds. If Sylvia doesn’t make his four-bet, might she have made the final table?

“Easy fold for Jesse,” says Norman Chad, initially describing Sylvia’s decision. “Easy fold for Jesse,” repeats Lon McEachern somewhat comically when it becomes apparent Sylvia isn’t folding right away.

And then he doesn’t. Proving again that poker is a game of many possible worlds. There’s what happens. Then there’s what might have happened. And then there’s what we all think happened.

Proved something else, too. Nothing is easy.

2012 WSOP, Day 51: C’est Fini

It kind of snuck up on me. The end, I mean.

The day was about as intense a one as I can ever remember, when it came to reporting from the World Series of Poker.

It took a long time, nearly 12 hours including the dinner break, for them to play down from 27 to the final nine at the Main Event yesterday, the final day of poker for the summer. For nearly all of it I was stationed at the secondary feature table, at first one of three tables, then one of two. Initially I was reporting on my own, then had Mickey helping me considerably in the passing along of many of the hands played there.

Nonstop scribbling meant I hadn’t really looked up a lot from the immediate tasks at hand to pay much attention to what was happening on the main feature table where the two remaining women in the Main Event, Elisabeth Hille of Norway and Gaelle Baumann of France, spent most of the day and night. Hille was there throughout, and Baumann was only at the secondary table for a short while during the first part of the day before moving to the main.

Suddenly it was late evening, and they’d played down to just 11 players. I looked up and realized both women were still in the sucker. I knew Baumann had been nursing a short stack the entire day, but hadn’t really paid attention to Hille slipping down the counts. I checked and saw both names at the bottom of the list, in 10th and 11th. The idea that they both might go out shy of the end occurred to me and everyone else.

And then it happened. What we were all thinking, I mean. They did go out -- both of them.

During Hille’s elimination, even the players on the secondary table weren’t paying attention to their own hand, most standing and looking over their shoulders in the direction of the raucous noise of the crowd reacting to the flop, turn, and river being dealt. It was an utterly electric atmosphere, with hundreds there, including fans of most of the players -- not just the women -- providing a barely-controlled cacophony all along the way.

Down to 10, there was a redraw to arrange the remaining players around a single table on the main stage, and I scurried over to a new location from which I would help report hand-for-hand play from that point forward with Rich and Chad. Before they resumed, Hille was asked to come out for a round of applause, and she waved and even appeared to curtsy while everyone cheered.

Then came the hands, which were punctuated by more chants and cheers, especially when the one arose in which Steven Gee raised from the button, Greg Merson reraised in the small blind, and Baumann had woken up in the big blind with pocket kings.

When the action had gotten to her, people all around were saying how great it would be if she had a hand, given her short stack of about six big blinds. Then it happened. And when the cards came out the crowd was chanting “Deuce! Deuce! Deuce!” before the river was dealt... and a deuce arrived.

It was as though the collective will had somehow translated into the cards coming out utterly perfectly for Baumann. The media tower was literally shaking as I typed, and I might have used an exclamation point or two more than was needed when doing so. But with everyone exclaiming what seemed utter elation all around me, it was hard not to get caught up in it all.

I mean it was something else, man.

Baumann would shove again and get no callers, though she was still on an extreme short stack. Then, as if to prove in the most dramatic fashion that the cards really don’t care, the end abruptly arrived. Baumann would shove with , get called by Andras Koroknai’s , and the community cards didn’t help her.

That Koroknai had been the one involved in that controversial Day 5 hand -- against Baumann, in fact -- in which he’d made a mistake that if ruled upon differently might’ve spelled the end of his tournament life only added another wrinkle to the drama of his ousting Baumann.

It was over. Hille and Baumann had gotten as close as they possibly could to that final table, something a woman has only done once in 43 years at the WSOP Main Event. But neither will be coming back in October.

Neither will I, most likely, unless perhaps I get invited to do so. Like past years, my WSOP essentially ends in July, at least as far as live reporting goes. And as I was saying might happen, it all went so fast. It was like that “mothership” of an arena really was flying, transporting us all for a few wondrous moments.

And just like that it’s time to pack up and go home. Safe travels, everyone. See you again soon.

2012 WSOP, Day 49: Running Out of Chips, Players, Days

Yesterday’s Day 5 at the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event saw things running relatively smoothly, a bit of a contrast from the day before. Made for a less strange, less stressful day, with everyone starting to share in the excitement necessarily caused by the end coming ever closer.

ESPN has set up what are essentially five feature tables this time. There’s the main one in the “mothership” plus the secondary one positioned over on the side like last year. Additionally, three tables are set up over in the area where the first two days of the “Big One for One Drop” played out before. In terms of watching the action live in the Amazon, none are particularly great for spectators, but the arrangement will make it a lot easier for ESPN later to show lots of different players and hands during these days leading up to the final table.

I spent yesterday roaming around all of the other tables in the room (the “Purple” and “Orange” sections). The day began with 282 players seated at 32 tables and ended with 97 players seated at 11. Thus with the five feature tables constantly in use, that meant the area I was helping cover began with 27 tables’ full of players and ended with just a half-dozen.

As the field gets reduced and tables get broken, tables are then literally broken down and carted off to the side or out of the room altogether. There’s more media here now, too, filling the extra space between tables.

That picture to the left was during an interesting all-in hand from late in the day. Between the camera crew and all of the reporters, there were probably 30 or so people surrounding the table as the players were waiting for the turn and river cards to be dealt.

As players were busting during the first part of the day and the remaining ones moved to and fro to keep tables balanced, the empty seat belonging to Jarrett Nash began to become more and more conspicuous. I finally posted something near the end of the first two-hour level about his having not showed up and the fact that blinds and antes had by then claimed about a third of his starting stack.

Eventually it became apparent he wasn’t coming to play Day 5, and later in the day the story finally came out regarding how his faith prevented him from continuing his Main Event run on Saturday. CardPlayer ended up talking to him to get the entire story, if you’re curious. Eventually Nash ran out of chips to finish in 171st place.

Watching Nash’s stack dwindle down and finally disappear altogether reminded me a little of being at LAPT Lima last year when Andre Akkari had to leave the tourney early because his father had died, and in his absence his stack lasted long enough for him to cash.

My attention at day’s end would become occupied by another player’s stack becoming super short, putting him on the verge of elimination. Only in this case the player was there sitting behind his stack.

Fred Vogt is one of several older players still in the Main Event. Late in the day he’d become short-stacked, then essentially began auto-folding until making it to the top 99. Those finishing 100th through 162nd all earned $52,718, while getting to 99th meant taking away at least $62,021, so his strategy ended up earning him enough extra cabbage almost to equal the buy-in.

When the elimination of a player in 100th was announced, the scene at Vogt’s table was one of the coolest I’ve witnessed in a long while in poker, with all of his opponents giddy with excitement over his having lasted long enough to make that pay jump. Amid the craziness of Day 5 concluding, I wrote a quick post about Vogt titled “A Small Stack and Big Smile” and Joe Giron snapped the perfect photo to go with it.

The other story that started to emerge in earnest yesterday was the fact that at night’s end there are still five women among the final 97, a couple of whom spent time right around the chip lead during part of Day 5.

Those five are Gaelle Baumann (pictured, currently in 8th position), Elisabeth Hille (18th), Marcia Topp (49th), Vanessa Selbst (70th), and Susie Zhao (88th).

Last year Erika Moutinho made it the farthest of any woman in the Main Event by finishing 29th. The year before no woman made the top 100 at all. A woman has only made the ME final table once in its 43-year history (Barbara Enright, who finished fifth in 1995).

We all know Selbst is more than capable of getting there, even with a below average stack to start Day 6. I watched Baumann dominate the Ladies event this summer for much of the first two days before finishing 15th, and she’s continued to impress in the Main Event.

By the way, Baumann was involved in a somewhat controversial hand near the end of play yesterday that got some buzzing, one in which she’d raised, another player went all in from the small blind, then when the big blind folded the all-in player mistakenly mucked not realizing she was still in the hand. Read more about that one here.

Hille seems like another candidate possibly to make it further, especially since she has chips. In any event, the story of how those five women fare will no doubt be one of several getting a lot of attention today.

Just two more days of poker, then I fly home on Tuesday. Tired and eager to get to the end, although am very much enjoying these last days, both because of the excitement of the tournament and because I’m getting to share the experience with a lot of terrific, supportive people once again. Such as these two guys to the left who may or may not be brothers.

I think we’re all kind of feeling like those guys at Fred Vogt’s table yesterday, excited and happy to see we’ve all made it this far. And glad to keep it going just a little longer, too.