Chip Count Day 2 Main Event
By Rolf 'Ace' Slotboom
The Lido no-limit hold&'em Main Event is a very special tournament for European tournament poker in general, and for the Master Classics in particular. The event is probably the most prestigious of all European poker tournaments, and in addition to that it is also great value. With no less than 45,000 Euros added by the house, in an event that has no registration fee or money taken out of the prize pool, the good players will be playing with an even bigger edge than in similar tournaments of the same size / same buy-in. Actually, I know almost no European top tournament player who doesn&'t consider the Master Classics a must-visit, and who doesn&'t think very highly of the big no-limit hold&'em freeze-out.
Because of the higher buy-in (5000 Euros instead of 3000 Euros) and the competition of a new poker event in Monte Carlo at exactly the same time as the Master Classics, it was far from certain that this year&'s Big One would in fact be successful - but it has been exactly that. Actually, it can be considered much more than just 'successful', as we&'ve been only three players short of a whopping 1,000,000 Euros prize pool for this event alone! And if top players 'Devilfish' Dave Ulliott, Freddy Deeb and Victor Poker Cup winner Harry Demetriou would not have encountered the airplane troubles that they were faced with, this would in fact have been the case. (True story: They were on their way back from the Monte Carlo tournament to participate in the Master Classics Big One, when their plane was caught by lightning and had to fly back to Nice for an emergency stop. Fortunately for them, they are all OK, with no injuries whatsoever. And fortunately for our 188 participants -especially for the ones who are still in contention now-, they decided to stay in Nice after this incident rather than take the flight a second time. After all, whether three heavyweights like this -all potential tournament winners- participate in an event or not does make a significant difference to the other people&'s chances of winning. But since these three big gunners are not here, we are now a mere 15,000 Euros short of a record prize pool of one cool million - of course, the prize pool of 985,000 Euros a record as it is.)
Anyway, today we played down to the last ten players of this year&'s Lido event, for the final table that will be played tomorrow at 5 p.m. When I arrived in the casino, the blinds were 2,000 - 4,000 with an ante of 1,000, and there were two tables left. To be more specific, the estimated chip counts were as follows:
Table 22
Seat # 1: Keith 'The Camel' Hawkins, England, 250,000
Seat # 2: Sigi Stockinger, Austria, 63,000
Seat # 3: Rob 'The Chief' Hollink, Netherlands, 155,000
Seat # 4: Martin Cedercrantz, Sweden, 77,000
Seat # 5: Lorenz Megnet, Switzerland, 70,000
Seat # 6: Jan Maarten Cobben, Netherlands, 75,000
Seat # 7: Haim Kakoun, France, 137,000
Seat # 8:
Seat # 9: Robert Mizrachi, U.S., 60,500
Seat # 10:
Table 23
Seat # 1: Pascalle Perrault, France, 109,000
Seat # 2: Birindar 'Sunny' Nijran, England, 125,000
Seat # 3: Isabelle Mercier, Canada, 129,000
Seat # 4: Tristan McDonald, England, 205,000
Seat # 5: Lu Zhang, China / Austria, 98,000
Seat # 6:
Seat # 7: Thomas Bihl, Germany, 189,000
Seat # 8: Pouya Pouya Majd, Germany / Iran, 84,000
Seat # 9:
Seat # 10: Mark Banin, England, 32,000
Total chips in play: 1,880,000 (approx.)
Down to the final 10
One of the first to run into trouble was recently-turned-pro Isabelle Mercier who found her nemesis in Master Classics regular Pouya Pouya Majd. First, she tried to bust him out, calling a very large raise with a king-queen, but his pocket fours held up. And then a couple of hands later, he busted her out, when his queens held up against her tens. Another one of my personal favorites, Rob 'The Chief' Hollink, wouldn&'t reach the final either. Having stolen his way to the last two tables by coming over the top over his opponents with nothing a large number of times (all times with the desired result: his opponents folding), he had managed to come this far despite not getting many premium cards. He seemed in solid position with an above-average stack, but then he lost quite a few precious chips when he raised and then had to fold against a large reraise, and then had to leave when he made a move that turned out wrong. In a blinds only pot, the Chief had merely called from the small blind with KQ, and then big blind Martin had also declined his option to raise despite the decent looking A9. (Before, Rob had once limped with an AJ in the exact same situation, so that may have been of influence in Martin&'s decision to simply tap the table.) Now, the flop came AQ5. Rob checked, and when Martin made a decent-sized bet, Rob decided to check-raise him all-in to about 80,000 total with his second pair / top kicker. He probably thought that Martin would not be able to call him, and probably just as importantly, it seemed unlikely that Martin would have a much better hand than Rob&'s in this situation - after all, most people would raise before the flop with an ace here, especially with an ace + decent kicker. But when Martin called him quickly, the Dutchman knew he was toast, and we had lost one of the biggest favorites to win. The only Dutchman we have left is 'Dr. Doom' Jan Maarten Cobben, who had been shortstacked during the final stages of this day, but who managed to survive. He will start tomorrow as the by far shortest stack though, and on top of that he is also the big blind, so it won&'t be easy for him. On the other hand, Jan Maarten is at his best when things are not easy, so I wouldn&'t be surprised if he could turn things around tomorrow.
In addition to Rob and Isabelle, we also lost Sunny (who had kings up / decent kicker on the turn but lost against Tristan&'s aces up) and Pascalle (who first made an amazing laydown, folding a fives full on the river against Thomas Bihl, and then was called by that same guy a few moments later with Kd Jd against the Frenchman&'s 55,000 JT all-in raise). By that time, the blinds were 3,000-6,000 with a 1,500 ante, and most players were waiting for Dr. Doom on table 22 to bust out, because he was the only truly short stack in the event. But it was Mark Banin who would get the questionable honor of becoming the bubble boy of the 2004 Main Event. On the button, he flatcalled an 18,000 raise by Pouya with an ace-ten. Flop: 8s 7s 2d, check / check. Turn: jack of clubs. Now, Pouya came out betting 25,000 and after long deliberation, Mark called. When the river came 7c, the Iranian German bet 70,000, and with only 58,000 left, Banin decided that the way the betting had gone, and taking into account his own long thinking on the turn, it was very likely his opponent was bluffing - and to tell you the truth, I actually felt the same. Mark called the large bet with AT for ace-high, no pair, but Pouya had an A8 for eights up that proved to be good. Mark now probably wished he would simply have ended things before the flop by coming over the top of his opponent&'s raise, but obviously, the remaining players were very happy about the outcome of this hand - and most of all, short stack Jan Maarten. All in all, tomorrow&'s final table will look like this:
Tomorrow&'s final table EUR 5,000 no-limit hold&'em freeze-out
Seat # 1: Lorenz Megnet, Switzerland, 86,500
Seat # 2: Jan Maarten Cobben, Netherlands, 53,000
Seat # 3: Robert Mizrachi, U.S., 147,500
Seat # 4: Martin Cedercrantz, Sweden, 143,500
Seat # 5: Tristan McDonald, England, 267,500
Seat # 6: Thomas Bihl, Germany, 210,500
Seat # 7: Keith Hawkins, England, 330,000
Seat # 8: Haim Kakoun, France, 130,000
Seat # 9: Lu Zhang, Austria / China, 137,500
Seat # 10: Pouya Pouya Majd, Germany / Iran, 376,000 (button)
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