David 'The Dragon' Pham
Works Over the Final Table
The $500 buy-in No Limit Hold'em event drew 147 entries, of which 63 of them opted for the $500 rebuy. The 6-digit prize pool of $105,000 was distributed to the top 19 players. First prize was $42,000 and the nine final table players each wanted to end up with every single one of the 420,000 chips in play.
The final table was set with nine players due to a double bust out on the final table bubble. At 1:15am, final table play began and in the very first hand, where the short stack, Hovik Bazikyan was all-in against Edwin Pairavi. Edwin's pocket Kings dominated Hovik's pocket Jacks and the board was no help to either player (5-2-2-9-8). Edwin's Kings hold up and Hovik Bazikyan finished in 9th place and earned $1,840.
On hand #4, Allan Le raised 3 limpers to 4,700. Thu Nguyen was the only caller and was all-in with pocket 3's. Allan shows A-A and Thu has a big hill to climb. The board came with 4 spades but neither player had a spade (2s-Js-5s-9s-5). Allan's Aces held up and Thu Nguyen finished in 8th place and collected $2,100.
Play was very conservative for the next hour until hand #22 when Allan 'Calypso' Enciso raised all-in with A-Ko. David 'The Dragon' Pham quickly called and showed his pocket Jacks. The Dragon won the race when the board came 8-6-2-5-9. David Pham's Jacks hold up and Calypso Enciso finished in 7th place for $2,625.
The next elimination occurred on hand #41 when Edwin Pairavi pushed all-in preflop with Jh-3h and was caught on the steal by the button, David Pham, holding As-Qs. The eight-high board (4-2-2-8-6) improved no one and David's Ace was good enough to take this one down. Edwin Pairavi was eliminated in 6th place for $3,675.
Just two hands later, Eric Le raised all-in for his last 20,000 and was called by Jorge Pineda. Jorge's A-Q had Eric's A-J dominated. The board came K-10-6-8-K and Jorge's Queen is good enough to take the pot and eliminate Eric Le in 5th place earning $4,725.
Another hour elapsed before the next big confrontation when Kelly Kim raised all-in with pocket 8's and ran right into David Pham's Aces (A-A). The board missed both players but David didn't mind the miss since his Aces held up. Kelly Kim finished in 4th place and earned $6,300.
On hand #103 of the final table, Allan Le raised preflop to 18,000 and was re-raised by David Pham to 58,000. Allan made the call all-in and showed A-Q. Allan was a 2:1 dog once David showed his pocket Queens. The King-high board (K-8-7-6-2) was no help to Allan and he finished in 3rd place and collected his $9,975 share of the prize pool.
It was heads-up play and David Pham had a dominant 4:1 chip lead with 340,000 over Jorge Pineda's stack of 80,000. Jorge started out the heads-up play very aggressively by frequently moving all-in and making David lay down many hands. Jorge built his chip stack up to over 160,000 at one time.
On the 22th hand of heads up play (#126 at the final table), Jorge completed the small blind and David raised to 20,000. Jorge called and the flop was 9-6-3. David check-raised Jorge's 40,000 post flop bet. Jorge was all-in and showed 7-8 for a gut shot and David had A-8 for the lead with Ace high.
The turn was another 6 and the Ace on the river gave David the win. Jorge Pineda finished in the runner up position collecting $19,955. Jorge started the final table 8th in chips and seemed to pick all the right spots as he climbed up to 2nd place. David 'The Dragon' Pham earned the title and $42,000.
-Jay 'Bugsy' Siegel
BIOGRAPHY
David 'The Dragon' Pham is a top professional player with 2 WSOP bracelets to his name and countless other final table appearances. His had two 1st place finishes within 3 weeks of each other at the 2006 WSOP and the Bellagio Cup. David also rounded out 2006 with back-to-back 2nd place finishes at The Bellagio Five Diamond World Poker Classic events earning him over $300,000 in two days. He has won over $100,000 already in 2007. David, the cousin and former student of Men 'The Master' Nguyen, is
as aggressive as they come. David knows when to make the big laydown but he is frequently raising his opponents and forcing them to decide what action to take. David's strategy was to chip away at the final table—he did that according to plan. He found himself short stacked at one point but worked his way back to chip leader within an hour.
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