General Poy Wins War!
By Max Shapiro
Florencio "General Poy" Umel started with the most chips and ended with all of them in the Winnin’ o’ the Green’s All-Around Championship Points Play-Off. Umel, who scored a win and a fourth in the earlier tournaments, started with $5,000 in chips as points leader. The 14 other finalists who showed up got chips on a sliding scale down to $1,400 for the 15th player on the list.
The event was structured to have one round each of Lowball, Omaha, Hold’em and 7-Card Stud. It was very slow going at first, taking nearly four hours for the first handful of players to get eliminated. But then they dropped quickly, two at a time in one hand. The ninth player, Albert Umel, bowed out when his aces-up in Stud ran into Can Hua’s rolled-up kings.
Limits started at $300-$600 at the final table. Toto Leonidas was first out during an Omaha round. With a flop of 4-3-J, Marc Fein put him all in for $175. Fein had A-2 in his hand. He missed his low, but he had a jack which was enough to beat the two tens Leonidas held.
Phillip Luong got hurt when his eights-full lost to Umel’s aces-full. He then went all in and barely survived when he was quartered by David Levi. Finally, in a Hold’em round, he lost his remaining chips when his K-5 made zilch while Daniel Quach paired an ace.
With limits increased to $500-$1,000, Mike Ohashi was done in during Lowball. He stood pat with a nine while Umel drew one. Umel bet, Ohashi raised and General Poy re-raised to put him all in and turned up a joker-6-5-4-3. Continuing to amass chips, Umel then drew one and beat Fein by making a seven. Fein ended up in fifth place in a Hold’em round. Hua raised with K-10 and Fein called all in with a decidedly underdog 10-9. Bricks fell and Hua won with king-high.
Later, a Hold’em pot is capped on a flop of 7-4-4. Hua eventually goes all in against Daniel Quach but stays very much alive when he shows pocket kings. Next it’s David Levy who’s left short-chipped with only $1,600 when Umel wins another Hold’em hand with aces-up. Levi gets a few more chips when his pocket tens hold up against Hua, loses a lot of them in Lowball when he draws two and makes nines against Daniel Quach (playing lowball for the first time in his life), who stays pat with a jack, and finally goes broke against Umel when he draws one and catches a queen while Umel is pat with 8-6.
Hua starts to go downhill. First he stands pat with a 10-9 and reluctantly calls the all-in bet of Quach, who made an 8-5. Then, in an Omaha hand, with a scary board of 9-10-J-8 and three spades, Hua bets. When Umel calls, he immediately tosses his failed bluff hand away. But he still has enough chips to outlast Quach who finally goes in with an Omaha board showing 5-J-J-7-K. Quach, with A-4-5-10, has missed his low, and his fives lose to the two sixes in Hua’s hand.
Heads-up, Umel has a 3.5-1 chip lead, but Hua stubbornly fights on through rounds of Hold’em, Stud and Lowball. In a firefight, General Poy badly wounds Hua in Stud when a pot is capped on sixth street. Hua turns up a king-high straight, only to find that Umel’s straight is ace-high. Umel does more damage with a wheel in Stud. Finally, Hua raises the white flag in a Lowball hand when both combatants draw two and Umel make a jack to Hua’s queen.
Biography – Florencio Umel
Florencio Umel said he knew he was going to win the Championship Points Play-Off because his wife told him, “Go get ‘em”, and that gave him confidence. “A winning attitude is very important,” he emphasized. “You have to think postitive, and I believe I’m now going to keep on winning.”
This is the first All-Around Points win for Umel, 55, an export company executive who earned the most chips for scoring a win in the $100 Lowball event and a fourth in the Limit Hold’em Championship. In the Play-Off, he said he played steady and was in good shape throughout.
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