POKER MILLION DEFIES THE ODDS AND CHANGES THE FACE OF POKER AS WE KNOW IT!
It is with great pleasure that I sit down this morning to write this article. Yesterday it was my privilege to be a part of a poker event that I feel will be instrumental in the future growth of poker, and more importantly the introduction of Corporate Sponsorship.
The "Ladbrokes Poker Million" held on the tiny island of The Isle of Man was a huge success. There had been much speculation that it may not work. Indeed I believe the initial announcement was made dangerously late and I was unsure until perhaps 6 weeks ago when I started to get questions from my viewers on pokerpages.com.
These questions were almost exclusively from my American viewers. This told me that the general American market was untapped for this event and I seized the opportunity to become the live media to the USA market. I made contact with Phil Ham of Ladbrokes and the information started to flow. Just 2 days prior to the final table, due to popular demand I decided to open my chat room and give a hand-by-hand commentary over the Internet.
On Sunday 19th November PokerPages had a record traffic day with 15,000 visitors to the site and over 1,000 visitors in the chat room. Gary Solomons gave an excellent typed commentary directly from the media room at the event. Of course most Europeans were lucky enough to be able to watch the event live on Sky Sports 2. The event received more publicity than any poker event in history. The American Market, which represents some 80% of my viewers unfortunately, will have to wait for 7 days to see an edited version on Fox Sports Channel. I believe this version will still be 2 ½ hours long. Another record. There has never been T.V coverage of any poker event for this length of time.
The organizers used under table camera technology that has previously only been used by the regular televised poker tournament in the UK (Late Night Poker). This technology allows the audience to see the player's hole cards during the action. This completely changes the potential for mass T.V audiences. The Late Night Poker show in the UK is attracting some 1 million viewers for each episode, this from a nation with barely 60 million Citizens and a T.V show time of after midnight. Not to mention the fact that Poker is nowhere near as popular in UK as it has been for many years in the United States.
PokerPages.com is interested in speaking with parties that share the vision of the potential before us.
156 poker players from around the world started the 4-day tournament, each paying $9,000 to enter. Some with their own money, others with investors money. The organizers Ladbrokes, who had already guaranteed $1,500,000 (for ease of writing this article, I am using an exchange rate of 1 pound sterling = $1.50) to the winner, stepped up on the morning of the events start day and added a further $400,000 to the prize pool. This now created a poker tournament that was to be record breaking in many ways. Most importantly it meant that when the play got down to just 2 players there would be a difference in prize money between 1st and 2nd of $1,350,000. This, all in front of a live T.V audience.
When we reached the 4th day of the event there were just 6 players remaining out of the original 156. All but these 6 elite players were just left with dreams, and the hope of "maybe next year".
The 6 players that started the final table were as follows:
In seat 1. Tony Bloom (England) Starting Chips 270,000
In seat 2. Gary Lent (USA) Starting Chips 302,000
In seat 3. Barny Boatman (England) Starting Chips 89,000
In seat 4. John Duthie (England) Starting Chips 204,000
In Seat 5. Ian Dobson (England) Starting Chips 231,000
In seat 6. Teddy Tuil (Israel) Starting Chips 464,000
The scene was set for a very exciting poker tournament and the viewers around the world would not have to wait long to see the first decisive action. With the blinds at 5,000 and 10,000 and each player having to put up a 2,000 ante it was going to cost 27,000 to sit and watch without playing a hand. Barny Boatman could not afford the luxury of waiting for a solid hand while settling in. He was going to have to make a move quite early. Just 10 minutes into the action Barny decided to make his move with A4 but unfortunately for him Ian Dobson was holding AQ and he had no problem in calling Barny's all in bet. When the board came A-J-7-K-5 Barny was out and his quest to become a millionaire was over.
There was then a quite lengthy period of bluff and re-bluff and a relatively unknown player by the name of John Duthie started to impress the watching crowd with his seemingly relentless pursuit of victory. However it was Lent, the only American to make the final and Dobson who clashed next. With Lent holding A-6 he raised up to 25,000. Dobson after seeing Lent lay down so many re-raises decided his A-9 was worth a re-raise and suddenly it was 60,000 more to see the flop. Lent decided to make a stand here and just called the 60,000. The flop came J-8-8 and Lent checked. Dobson pushed his entire stack to the middle and Lent decided not to call for his remaining 100,000 or so.
Soon after being weakened by the Dobson clash Lent again got involved in another pot. He moved all in trying to steal with J-6. Duthie had no problem calling with 10,10 and Dobson after a short deliberation threw his 7,7 away. The flop came K-J-9 and for a brief moment the American looked like surviving. It was very brief though, as an 8 came on the turn leaving Duthie with plenty of outs. Then a 10 on the river to ejected the only American finalist.
More bluff and take the pot followed, until the following hand came up. Tony Bloom who had by now become short stacked moved all in before the flop with K-6. Duthie did not know but he called the all in bet with a hand that was behind, Q-9 suited. The board came J-Q-J-8-10 and we were down to 3 hopefuls and Duthie full of confidence with the chip lead.
The chip count now was approximately, Duthie 750,000, Tuil 450,000 and Dobson 350,000. The tension level at this stage was immense. The next player out would receive $75,000 after that the 2nd place finisher would receive $150,000 and the winner $1,500,000. There has never been this kind of payout structure in a Poker Tournament and in this instance there were no deals to be done as is often the case in other poker tournaments, where the final 2,3 or 4 players generally make some kind of financial "save". This was poker in the true sense of the word. Only one of these guys would become a millionaire. The other 2 would simply have a decent pay day.
Ian Dobson is a friend of mine and I must admit I was praying for him at this stage. He had put up a great show considering the fact that he got into this tournament by winning a 1-hand satellite. That's right, 10 players each put up $900 and just one hand is dealt. The winner gets the $9,000 seat. This is how Ian got in. "Reindeer" as he likes to be known, is a 33 year old from Lapworth, England. A very capable pro poker player.
Soon after the 3-handed play started Duthie raised on the button with A2. Due to the under table camera the spectators, who incidentally were in another building from the actual building where the play was happening for security reasons, could see that Ian had 3,3. I wanted Ian to raise him, and he did not disappoint me. I was surprised when John Duthie instead of mucking his hand moved all in. Now I was shouting at my computer (as I was in the chat room getting the hand by hand analysis from our reporter on the Isle of Man Gary Solomons) "CALL IAN" "CALL" I realize that from 5,000 miles away Ian could not hear me, nonetheless he answered my prayers. Maybe there was some telepathy going on, I will never know! He called and now all he needed was to NOT get a bad beat at this critical time. 5-A-5-10-2. Exit Buddy.
I have not had an opportunity to speak to Ian yet but I felt sick for him. He is the kind of guy that will shrug it off and move on. Fully aware of his gift of being able to make a living playing this wonderful game.
So there were 2. John Duthie the 42-year-old T.V director from London and Teddy Tuil the 41-year-old Israeli poker pro from Tel Aviv. The blinds moved up to 10,000 and 20,000 with a 3,000 ante and the chip count was, John 1,139,000 and Teddy 430,000. There seemed to be plenty of play to come in this history making heads up match. As mentioned before, $1,350,000 was the difference in prize money between 1st and 2nd.
It was not too long before the following pot came up. Tuil had the small blind on the button and found AQ. HE decided to play the pot with a call instead of a raise and hope to trap John into a position where he could double his chips. John, although he may have thought his hand was leading decided not to raise with A8. This was not in line with the outright aggression he had been displaying all day. So the flop came down 8-8-2. The viewers, in fact everyone except Tuil at this time realized that this could be the end. John made the correct play and checked and Teddy Tuil checked along probably thinking that John may try to bluff on the end and perhaps feeling that his hand was still good. An irrelevant 5 hit on the turn and they both checked again. The worse possible card hit for Teddy on the river, an Ace. Now everyone knew it was over (except Teddy of course). John Duthie made a steal like bet and Teddy probably thought he was about to even this thing up when he moved all in. John called immediately of course with his trip eights and the first PokerMillion Champion was born. Congratulations John Duthie Poker Millionaire.
This Poker event was as spectacular as it gets and Ladbrokes and Barry Hearn deserve a big hand from everyone in the poker industry. They certainly have my hand and support for PokerMillion 2001.
Be Lucky
Mark Napolitano
Poker Million Main Page
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