TournamenT of Champions 2001 Day 2, July 28, 2001 "Bubble Bursts, Champions Hearts Don't" By Andrew N.S. Glazer Baseball immortal Yogi Berra was famous for not merely his play, but his many unusual malaprops, and one of his best and most accurate in its own peculiar way was that "90% of this game is 80% mental." Many talented amateur and semi-professional players sometimes wonder what separates them from consistent champions, and while there is unquestionably a skill edge between the greatest champions and the very good players, mental toughness plays a bigger role than anyone who has not played poker at a high level can possibly understand. Exactly half of the 402 starting players in the 2001 Tournament of Champions survived into Day Two, making an average starting stack exactly $10,000 and leaving your author feeling pretty good about his chances with a starting stack of $20,650, 16th place overall. As the day progressed, it was all continuing to go along according to plan, and the plan was ambitious. I'd been playing only Omaha Eight-or-Better in the side action, to practice for that game. I'd entered the $500 Stud tournament just to practice for tournament stud (and got a surprise bonus by finishing third). As a California guy, I knew I could handle limit hold'em. I was totally focused. I'd made the money (35th) in TOC 2000, and this year I was going to get into the final 27, where I could play my best game, no-limit hold'em. We had about 75 players left and I had a slightly above average stack at $35,000. THE BEST LAID PLANS Suddenly, in one of those stretches that any poker veteran can understand and of which no poker veteran wants to hear the gory details, four huge hands went down in less than ten minutes. I'd never seen a better example of everything is relative in poker. Four huge hands went down to four huger hands, and suddenly my stack was $9,000 as I sat in the small blind with $1,000 of my remaining chips sitting in the pot. Here was where the good player got separated from the great player. The first four hands were ugly. The fifth was an error. An aggressive player raised from early position and the button re-raised. I looked down and found two eights. A sane player would think, "a raise and a re-raise, two eights can't possibly be the best hand," and a sane player doesn't want to get his money in with anything less than the best hand, not unless he's getting favorable pot odds. Suffering from four horrendous beats in less than ten minutes, I was not a sane player, proving the difference between a champion and a wannabe. I "reasoned" that the aggressive player could have been stealing, the button could have a hand like 5-5 with which he wanted to isolate, and a re-raise might get rid of the stealer and instead isolate me with the button. WHEN IS A "REASON" AN "EXCUSE?" When the initial raiser and the button called, I knew my "reasoning" had been spurious at best, and that I didn't have the best hand. At this point, the pot was so big, and my spirits so low, that I decided to play on in the hopes of flopping a set or facing a couple of AKs: a possible $29,000 sounded a lot better than sitting there emotionally bankrupt and nearly bankrupt on chips as well. A champion would have looked at his two eights and not looked for an excuse to get involved, and have fought on with his $8,000. It turned out I was up against pocket nines and pocket tens, so even the faint hopes I had staring at the 5-5-7-7-Q board were gone, and so was I. Poker Digests Lee Munzer had gamely volunteered to cover for me in the event I was still in after the first day, and he delivered your Day One coverage. He stuck with it after I exited, too, because I went to my room and became physically ill, twice. That wasn't exactly the jump-start I was looking for in the $2,000 weight loss bet seven of us taped for TV here. One of my edges in poker tournaments is my intense desire to win, but sometimes it doesnt serve me well, and this was one of them. A NEW MEANING TO "A SHOT IN THE ARM" Perhaps this desire serves my writing perspective well, though. I never understood the crushing feeling that busting out of the Big One at the WSOP felt like until I experienced that firsthand, and I'd never felt anything like this until today. This felt worse. I kid you not: I'd have rather taken a bullet wound in the fleshy part of an arm. I know its just a poker tournament. There are many more important things in life, but once you get past the things that count, like friends and family and love and honor and serving a useful purpose, I'd never wanted anything more in my life. As a result, the next time I see someone react in anger, pain, or illness when he or she busts out of a big poker tournament, I'll understand better and be less hasty to judge. TOC founder Chuck Humphrey is fond of saying (a line he stole, I believe, from Groucho Marx) "Never criticize a man until you walk a mile in his shoes. If you do that, you'll be a mile away from him, and you'll have his shoes." I felt like being more than a mile away from here after I busted out, but there was a job to be done and more important stories than mine to be written, so I took some Pepto-Bismol and got myself back downstairs to watch a rather dramatic battle to reach the money, and it took some unusual twists. After half an hour of hand for hand action during the Omaha Eight-or-Better round, Tournament Director made a proposition to the players that I didn't think had a ghost of a chance of acceptance. GET READY, GET SET, STALL! " Players," Lamb announced, "it has been proposed that we abandon the hand for hand method so we can move the tournament along faster. If there are no objections, well drop the hand for hand approach and just play poker."I couldnt imagine getting 46 poker players to agree to whistle "Dixie" simultaneously, never mind abandon a tried and true technique to avoid bubble stalling like hand for hand. Not a single player objected, even though there were numerous short stacks and the potential impact of stalling was obvious. My jaw dropped so far that had Mary Poppins been present, she'd have told me "Close our mouth, Michael, we are not a codfish." On we went. Numerous players survived all-in situations. For a while, it looked like Canadas Randy Schnackenberg would be the one to go; he'd approached me on the sidelines and confided that he was just going let his chips get blinded off unless he picked up an absolute monster, because he wanted to make the money. Nonetheless, he later decided to call a raise from the small blind, and survived. Steve Kaufman was the next to face elimination, forced to post his remaining $1,600 as an incomplete big blind. I wasn't high on his chances, because hes been moved into the very seat where I'd suffered my own disasters, but he survived, and then later survived another all-in in seven-card stud when holding only a pair of eights and facing a player holding aces and jacks, he caught an eight on the final card. The irony of an eight hitting that very seat in a miracle moment wasn't lost on me. Several other players survived until Schnackenberg finally went down. It appeared the "hour of living dangerously had finally ended with Schnackenbergs demise, but it turned out that over on another table, 2000 World Champion Chris "Jesus" Ferguson had also been involved a hand and been eliminated simultaneously by Gloria Tschetschot (who not only repeated her role of the woman who lasted the longest in the TOC this year, but unlike last year when she exited 80th, this time finds herself among the magic 27 who will be playing tomorrow), and so with two players exiting simultaneously, Schnackenberg and Ferguson split 45th place money of $4,000 and got their buy-ins back. A GUARANTEED FOUR GRAND AND SOME BRAGGING RIGHTS The 44 surviving players all applauded and rose as they waited for a re-draw for new seats. The rather intense battle to finish "in the money," even though the payout for a low money finish, seemed to back up Humphreys position in the debate that took place earlier in the tournament, i.e., players want to be "in the money" even if the money isn't spectacular. Some top players had argued in favor of a more top-heavy prize structure. After a long, open debate, Humphrey eventually compromised, keeping the payoffs at five tables, but flattening the payoffs for tables four, three, and two, so that there would be more money at the final table. I suspect the battle to make the money would have been equally intense had the fifth table paid $2,000 rather than $4,000, though, simply because a "money finish" guarantees qualification for next years TOC and a certain amount of bragging rights. Of course, I'm one of those weird people who sees the very reasonable arguments on the other side of the issue, too: players do want to see a big number up there to dream about for first place, and paying extra tables lessens the amount of money available for the top finishers. I suspect this debate is far from over. Meanwhile, with the bragging rights assured, it took less than half an hour to eliminate table five, and perhaps just an hour after that to eliminate table four, leaving us with final 27 players for tomorrows play, when we abandon the rotation format of limit hold'em, limit stud, and limit Omaha Eight-or-Better, and switch over to no-limit hold'em. Among the survivors are some of pokers biggest names and grandest champions, proving again how the TOC format requires skill, experience, and mental toughness. In order to assure that the finale would not be a luck-heavy shoot-out, tournament officials moved the blind structure back several levels, so when we begin at noon, the blinds will be $400-800, with $100 antes. HELLMUTH ACKNOWLEDGES HUMPHREYS CHANGES Phil Hellmuth, who had been among the more vocal advocates in the debate against Humphreys position on flatter payouts, was quick to offer praise where it was due. "Chuck made a reasonable comprise on the prize money," he said, "and I'm impressed with the way they've handled the structure for tomorrow, because it will give players a chance to work their chips and wait for the right moment, instead of just shoving their money in because big blinds and antes force them to." A spirited battle for the International Trophy came down to the final contestants from Japan, England, and France, with Frances Martine Oules (who is also famous for being the wife of backgammon legend Paul Magriel) taking the trophy by finishing 29th and outlasting Japans Hirokazu Nagasawa (33rd) and Englands Anthony Hamilton (34th). This gives France the International Trophy for the third consecutive year. The 27 survivors and their chip positions for tomorrow will be: Wehner, David: $200,800 Cloutier, TJ: $168,100 Corpoz, Dick: $149,700 OBryan, Scott: $132,000 Warchaizer, Bill: $125,800 Saltus, Brian: $124,500 Johnson, Bill $108,600 Cernuto, John: $103,000 Zolotow, Steve: $102,000 Pechac, Jim: $86,700 Nguyen, Scotty: $79,900 Gamboa, Andy: $74,600 Hellmuth, Phil: $65,800 Wade, Bill: $60,100 Eleogram, Russ $57,700 Tsiprailidis, Chris: $53,800 Smith, Grant: $50,300 Urpsis, John: $50,100 Tschetschot, Gloria $44,700 Ko, Bernard: $41,600 Durand, Marc: $40,000 Gregorich, Mark: $30,100 Tran, An: $29,100 McKinney, Paul: $12,700 Eichel, Bill: $11,300 Fain, Bill: $8,700 OMalley, Mike: $6,700 Payouts will be: - $203,722
- $123,885
- $77,084
- $49,554
- $35,789
- $24,777
- $16,518
- $11,012
- $8,259
Second table, $7,000 each. Third table, $6,000 each. Finishing at the fourth table, and earning $5,000 each were: Marlon Santos, Martine Oules, Amir Vahedi, Patrick Castelluccio, Jack Matney, Hirokazu Nagasawa, Anthony Hamilton, Diego Cordovez, and Tom McCormick. Finishing at the fifth table, and earning $4,000 each, were: Roberts Braden, Warren Karp, Matt Matros, Steve Kaufman, Jim Geary, Gene Fisher, Paul Gardner, Dave Kundert (tie, Chris Ferguson and Randy Schnackenberg, $2,000 each).
|
