Main Event Goes to American Robert Mizrachi
By Rolf “Ace” Slotboom
After two of long and grueling days of play, the initial field of 188 players had been reduced to our final ten players. At the start of today’s final table, things looked like this:
Final table EUR 5,000 no-limit hold’em freeze-out
Players / Nationality / Chip Counts:
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 “The Camel” Hawkins, England, 330,000
Seat # 8: Haim Kakoun, France, 130,000
Seat # 9: Luzhe Zhang, Austria / China, 137,500
Seat # 10: Pouya Pouya Majd, Germany / Iran, 376,000 (button)
Total chips in play: 1,880,000 (approx.)
Short stack moving up, big stack going down
As I mentioned in yesterday’s report, I expected short stack Jan Maarten to stay alive, despite the (for him) relatively large blinds of 3,000 – 6,000 with a 1,500 ante. And he did come a long way, staying alive by strategically moving all-in when the situation seemed right. But on hand # 41 his come-back ended, when his 97 of diamonds lost against Martin’s AQ. (He was the second person to leave. Before him, Haim had busted out, when his Kd Qd lost against the pocket nines of Martin Cedercrantz.) Martin was calling raises quite frequently (something rather unusual for big no-limit hold’em freeze-outs, where most players usually fold or reraise when faced with a raise), but he won almost all of his confrontations. He also busted out Thomas Bihl when his A5 held up against the German’s KQ.
In the meantime, one of the favorites to win this event, Keith “The Camel” Hawkins, was rather unfortunate, and he saw his large stack of stacks dwindling slowly but surely. First, he raised Robert Mizrachi’s 10,000 blind to 30,000, with the American calling. After the flop 9h 6h 2d, the American bet into the preflop raiser, all-in for 55,000 with the queen-jack of hearts, and he beat Keith’s ace-ten by making a flush. The Camel suffered a second blow when he raised preflop to 35,000 but then had to release when he got repopped by the same Robert. And then he suffered a third one when he called Lorenz Megnet’s 71,000 all-in raise holding jacks, only to see that his opponent had raised with queens. When Robert Mizrachi then won a decent-sized pot against the calm Tristan McDonald with quad fives (a hand where Tristan had flatcalled Robert’s preflop raise – had he come over the top, the American would undoubtedly have released his two fives), I estimated the chip counts as follows:
Robert 590,000
Pouya Pouya 530,000
Martin 300,000
Luzhe 130,000
Lorenz 100,000
Keith 95,000
Tristan 87,000
American starts bullying
Keith lost a fourth big pot in a situation where we all would have: in the big blind with ace-king against small blind Tristan’s pocket aces, and on the immediate next hand the Camel then went out against Robert. The American had been winning a lot of pots because of his good preflop and postflop betting strategies. He made lots of relatively small bets and raises but still got a lot of respect, and was able to win a whole bunch of pots uncontested. In the meantime, Martin busted out yet another player in a showdown, having his pocket nines hold up against Megnet’s ace-ten. Because no one put a stop to Robert’s frequent preflop raises, he was able to increase his chip lead steadily, and even more when he busted the exact player who did try to stop him. The sympathetic Chinese Austrian Luzhe Zhang came over the top of Mizrachi’s 41,000 raise for 147,000 all-in, but the American called him with a mere QJ offsuit – that proved to be good against Zhang’s J9 of clubs. With blinds of 10,000 – 20,000 and an ante of 4,000, Robert now carried almost half the chips in play:
Robert 870,000
Pouya Pouya 420,000
Tristan 340,000
Martin 260,000
A strange move
It was a bit of a strange final table, with lots of players who were thinking for very long when the decision seemed obvious, and who were looking each other in the eyes with almost every decision they were faced with. Especially Pouya Pouya liked to look at his opponents to find any tells, and to gauge his their strength. But exactly on the hand that he should have done that, he didn’t. In the small blind, he called the extra 10,000, only to see big blind Robert raise him 20,000 more: a somewhat unusual raise, because so far Robert had always raised slightly less than three times the big blind, and never doubled. With 86 of diamond, Pouya (in my view) correctly called the additional 20,000. But then, when the flop came Qs 6s 3c, he decided to bet everything he had, about 300,000 total, for no apparent reason, with nothing more than middle pair / bad kicker. Robert quickly called with the big pair that I expected him to have (KK) and that held up, meaning the Iranian went out in a hand where he probably didn’t need to.
Now Robert was really trying to run over the table, but he finally ran into some resistance when he had raised to 48,000 and got reraised by young Swede Martin, who made him lay down his hand. When on the immediate next hand the same scenario occurred (Robert raising to 41,000, Martin moving in for all his chips), the American may have been a bit hot, because he quickly called the 267,000 total bet with a mere king-jack of diamonds, only to stare into the Two Eyes of Texas (AA). But he quickly recovered from losing these two hands by once again stealing a few pots here and there, especially against Tristan. Tristan wanted to avoid playing out of position against the aggressive chip leader Robert, but did all he could to get involved with young Martin. He won a big pot against the Swede when, having made the nut flush, he simply checked it back on the turn, only to see that on the river Martin had bet his entire stack with a straight – and Tristan only needed to call with the nuts for 187,000 all-in.
Robert goes for the kill
And then it was the chip leader who took matters into his own hands to finish things. Raising all-in from the small blind with Q7 of diamonds, Martin called 110,000 all-in with AJ, but Robert managed to make the nut flush. And right after that, the heads up battle lasted exactly one hand! Robert on the small blind / button called Tristan’s big blind. Flop: Ks Jh 5h. The Englishman checked, Robert bet 45,000, Tristan then check-raised him to 150,000 total and within seconds Robert had reraised him for all his money. Tristan called the additional 300,000 with K5 for top / bottom two pair against Robert’s K9 for one pair of kings, nine kicker. But when a jack came on the turn, Tristan’s two pair had been counterfeited, and when on top of that also a small card came on the river, Robert’s nine kicker played. The Man from Miami had managed to play an impressive game today by bullying his opponents in a successful manner, and in the end by getting lucky when he needed to. As a result, he is our 2004 Main Event winner, and in addition to the plate, the golden money clip and the limited edition Corum watch, he got a cheque for over 370,000 Euros – the biggest prize ever in Master Classics history.
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