2008 WSOP Main Event Final Table Resumes Tomorrow

In just a little over 24 hours they will be gathering over at the Penn & Teller Theater at the Rio to resume the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event final table. Almost forgot all about it, didn’t you?

As one who regularly follows podcasts, reads forums and blogs, and keeps up with other varieties of poker media, I suppose I’ve become somewhat familiar with the nine players’ personalities over the last 100-plus days. Can’t really claim to have that much knowledge of playing styles beyond the few hands we saw on the ESPN shows. While I was there covering the action up through Day 5 this summer -- and I watched the feature table for a few hours on both Day 6 and Day 7 -- I can’t really claim to have picked up all that much extra information that yr average ESPN viewer wouldn’t already have.

My limited knowledge ain’t gonna stop me, though, from offering a few thoughts about the remaining players here on the eve of the final table.

1. Dennis Phillips (26,295,000) -- The 53-year-old account manager for Broadway Truck Centers in St. Louis will most definitely be easy to root for tomorrow. His humble nature and dedication to charity work has won him a lot of fans during the long lead-up to tomorrow’s final table. He definitely caught some cards during those last two days of play in July -- we all saw him flop a couple of flushes there in the ESPN telecasts. But we also saw him get paid on those hands, and show a willingness to bluff (and catch others’ bluffs), too. I definitely like Phillips’ chances, though a lot depends on the table draw (not to mention how the cards go). In any event, he’s certainly one of about five players who will be seriously gunning for the bracelet and not merely to finish in the top five or six. (Check out my interview with Phillips here.)

2. Ivan Demidov (24,400,000) -- His big chip stack and third-place finish in the World Series of Poker Europe Main Event most certainly affords Demidov some extra credibility as a contender tomorrow. Some have mentioned how good it would be for poker should the 27-year-old from Moscow -- or one of the other three non-Americans still alve -- manage to take the bracelet. The fact that he played 242 hands at that WSOPE final table might mean his opponents tomorrow have gained a bit of extra knowledge about how he approaches the endgame, although without knowing hole cards it is hard to estimate the significance of such information. I’d expect Demidov to maintain his healthy chip stack early on, although he has expressed in at least one interview a willingness to flip with a shorter-stack, especially if it is with a more formidable opponent like Rheem.

3. Scott Montgomery (19,690,000) -- We all saw Montgomery luck out a couple of times on ESPN to survive, but so did most of the other nine at some point in their respective journeys. The 26-year-old Canadian finished fifth in the WPT L.A. Poker Classic early in the year. He has a mathematics degree and has done some teaching (in Japan, actually), so has a bit of smarts about him. Also has a winning, self-effacing personality, too, as evidenced on ESPN and on the 10/30/08 episode of the Pocket Fives podcast. Seems willing to take some chances and gamble it up, and so might be a target for the short stacks early on.

4. Peter Eastgate (18,375,000) -- The youngest (aged 22) of the nine, and looks it. Eastgate is the only one of the group I don’t believe I’ve actually listened to being interviewed. On the few hands shown on ESPN telecasts, he appeared to have the sort of bold, aggressive style you’d expect of a young internet-trained player. Being from Denmark, expect a lot more comparisons with Gus Hansen to be thrown around tomorrow, especially if Eastgate goes deep (which I think is very likely). Has an effective, non-expressive poker face, too, which helped him in the hand in which he knocked out Tiffany Michelle. Would not be surprised at all to see Eastgate playing on Monday when they return for heads up.

5. Ylon Schwartz (12,525,000) -- The 38-year-old chess master from Brooklyn was probably the most idiosyncratic-seeming of the nine in interviews, tossing off strange, off-the-wall comments that suggested he either wasn’t affected by the whole delayed-final-table spectacle or was pretending such. When Phil Gordon asked him what his future plans were on The Poker Edge, Schwartz responded with something about jumping off the Rio roof if he didn’t win. (As I wrote about yesterday, Schwartz also has some interesting things to say about how chess compares to poker.) From what I saw on Day 7 when watching from the stands, Schwartz was playing uber-tight in an effort to make the final table -- probably only Kelly Kim was tighter there at the end. While many think he’ll continue in that vein tomorrow and be content to finish in the top five, I’m thinking he could surprise people and play more aggressively early on. Not in a wild Jerry Yang-fashion, but be active enough that he could well accumulate chips and be around to contend at the end.

6. Darus Suharto (12,520,000) -- I heard Suharto interviewed on The Poker Edge about a month back. The 39-year-old Canadian was back at his accounting job and in fact sounded as though his job had a much more prominent place in his life than did poker or even the WSOP. The impression might be misleading, however. Even though Suharto is an amateur who only plays part-time, he has gathered some experience here lately at the EPT London and the North American Poker Championship. Even so, of all the final nine, he seems to me the most likely to sit tight from the beginning tomorrow and just try to survive the first couple of eliminations.

7. David Rheem (10,230,000) -- The Los Angeles pro was easily the most prominent of the nine both on the ESPN shows and elsewhere, thanks both to his earlier poker successes (including one televised final table at this year’s WSOP) and that bit of news about his having had an outstanding arrest warrant. Until Demidov’s deep WSOPE run, the 28-year-old seemed to be a favorite pick among many to win, but with the relatively-shorter starting stack his fate depends heavily on his being fortunate whenever he decides to make that first big gamble tomorrow. I don’t see Rheem being content to sit on his below-average stack very long tomorrow. Indeed, Rheem seems to me the most likely of the remaining players to make a Philip Hilm-like early exit.

8. Craig Marquis (10,210,000) -- The 24-year-old from Arlington, Texas was most conspicuous at the ten-handed table in July, showing an obvious willingness to go busto in his effort to exploit what had been hyped as the biggest bubble in poker tourney history. Seems like a smart, funny guy. Is a prominent contributor over on Two Plus Two where he started a Q&A thread about a month ago titled “Ask a member of the November Nine.” He didn’t answer all of the questions posed there, but did respond to many (perhaps too many, actually). A complete wild card, really, who could flame out early or gather chips and go deep.

9. Kelly Kim (2,620,000) -- The 31-year-old Californian endured a lot of ups and downs during the seven days of play, nearly busting right at the money bubble (and on a few other occasions), then limping to the finish at the very end. Sounds like a savvy tourney player who may well endure into the top six or seven spots, should he manage to double up during the first orbit or two (and then hang on after that).

I’ve established already that I’m pulling for Phillips to take it down, although as I say above I think the table draw has a lot to do with how things will go for him. Thought a little about making predictions, but taking a page from Phillips’ book of humility, I’m gonna refrain other than to say I think the non-Americans are all gonna do well tomorrow.

Unless you plan to keep yr head in the sand until the ESPN “plausibly live” show on Tuesday night, be sure to head over to PokerNews’ live reporting tomorrow to follow all of the action.

The Geometry of Poker

Two more days and the “November Nine” will finally get back at it over at the Rio. I remember being very disappointed back in early May when those rumors about having a delayed final table were finally confirmed. I was about to go cover my first World Series of Poker. I’d scheduled my return flight on July 17, planning to be there to watch the final table go down (whether or not I’d be involved in covering it). Then came the news.

No way for me to be back in Vegas this weekend, so I’m feeling some vague disappointment again at not being able to see how it all finishes up. I suppose I have gotten to “know” the nine players a bit more than I would have had the table been played back in July. I even interviewed the chip leader, Dennis Phillips, something I surely wouldn’t have been able to do without the delay.

Even so, as Lou Krieger was writing about this week, the planned hype has been fairly underwhelming. Not much in the way of non-poker media coverage, other than perhaps some extra local coverage for each of the nine (as Phillips told me about in his case).

There has been some, scant “mainstream” coverage here and there, if one looks for it. For example, there was an interesting article in The New York Times on Monday about Ylon Schwartz, the 38-year-old chess master who currently sits in fifth place with 12.5 million chips.

I’d heard Schwartz interviewed on a couple of podcasts, where he’s definitely come off as an interesting character. Kind of a hippy type, having worked a succession of low-paying jobs before getting into chess where he excelled, then poker where it sounds like he’s had an up-and-down career. Has cashed a dozen times in WSOP events, though, including more than few tourneys where he’d come close to final tables before.

In those podcast interviews, Schwartz was asked about how chess compares to poker, and the subject comes up again in the New York Times piece. In each case, Schwartz especially emphasizes two parallels.

The first is how both games reward players with good memories. “Chess players are trained to have excellent memories,” says Schwartz in the NYT article. In his interview with Phil Gordon on The Poker Edge (the 10/31/08 episode), Schwartz elaborates that chess players memorize many, many openings and endgames, as well as the history with a particular opponent, and thus must be able to draw on those memories to recognize what one’s adversary might be up to.

That parallel seems fairly understandable. The other one Schwartz makes is perhaps somewhat less straightforward (pun intended). As the author of the NYT article reports, “He said that both games have geometrical aspects. In chess, it is the shape and size of the board and positions of the pieces. In poker, it is the positions of the players betting on the hand and the number of chips they have.”

For those of us who play a lot of poker but have only a rudimentary knowledge of chess, that explanation of the poker’s “geometrical aspects” might not be crystal clear. Indeed, when I first heard him bring it up in the podcasts, I thought he might be using the word “geometrical” in the same way Harrington and Robertie do in the Harrington on Cash Games books, where they talk about the betting in no-limit hold’em being “geometrical” insofar as the bets increase dramatically from street to street (essentially using the word to indicate a steep progression, not to refer to physical space).

But that’s not what Schwartz is talking about. In the Phil Gordon interview, Schwartz elaborated a bit more on the comparison:

“Poker’s a very geometrical game,” Schwartz told Gordon. “You have to slice through a certain portion of a pie to get to a player you may feel is weak. You have to make bets and pot size properly to maybe carve out an angle to that player. And chess is also geometrical. You’re constantly trying to figure out ways to gain space and take over your opponent’s territory.”

That explanation makes a bit more sense to me. Indeed, just yesterday I had a session of PLO where I’d spotted a particularly weak player sitting to my right, and thus became very conscious about trying to size bets and maneuver my way into pots where I could challenge him heads up. Eventually, thanks to his having enjoyed a few very fortunate hands against others at the table, he’d built up a decent-sized stack, thus making him all the more inviting a target.

There are other parallels between chess and poker, such as the need for patience. And important differences, too, such as the fact that chess is a game of “complete information” while poker is not. I do like that point, though, about the “geometrical” aspects of poker. That idea of trying to “carve out an angle” or “gain space” is definitely applicable, I think.

In a way, the importance of poker’s “geometry” has been further underscored by the decision not to redraw for the seating at the final table until right before they start up again on Sunday morning. As most of the players have noted in their interviews, that will be a huge factor -- at least as important as stack sizes (if not more) -- that will influence how the tourney will go.

Will definitely be following my buds’ hand-for-hand coverage over on PokerNews. Wish there was a pay-per-view live telecast or some other way to bridge even further this “space” between myself and that final table. Oh, well. I guess we have to live with the angle ESPN has carved out here.