| BEWARE A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING
What better training ground for poker than a career in the make-believe world of television.
There were 193 entrants in the $1,500 Limit Hold'em Shootout for a total prize pool of $272,130. Two tables were paid, a total of 20 players.
To get into the money in this Shootout, you had to beat everyone at your original table. There were 20 original tables.
If you did win your table, you were then on a freeroll for the $96,400 first prize. The 20 original table winners drew for seats at one of two 'second' tables and they started over again with $1,500 in chips.
Five survivors out of those ten at each of the second tables then became the 10-handed Final Table carrying their second table chip counts with them. Clear? Ya had to be there.
Below are listed the twenty names of winners of their original tables and some of the 'names' they had to beat to get into the money.
The first five names at each table were the survivors that made the Final Table. The second five names at each table failed to move on.
Table 70
Melissa Hayden: Casey Kastle, Harry Thomas, Tommy Grimes, Lonnie Heimowitz John Juanda: J J Bortner, Terry Fleischer, Barry Greenstein, Paul Kroh Daniel Negreanu: Sam Arzoin, Ivo Donev, Alan Goehring, David Plastik, Skip Wilson Joel Chaseman: John Bonetti, Steve Kaufman, Kathy Liebert, Ram Vaswani, Rocco DiPomazio: Mickey Appleman, Layne Flack, Chris Grigorian, David Pham
Chris Johansson: Mike Laing, Eric Holum, Noli Franciso, Paul McKinney David Enoch: Perry Friedman, Phil Hellmuth, Phyllis Meyers, Eric Shapiro Dino Fazlibegu: Peter Costa, Jeff Shulman, Richard Tatalovich, Simon Trumper Mickey Seagal: TJ Cloutier, Gus Escheverri, Bob Feduniak, Bill Gazes, Pete Kaufman Tito Leonidas: Thor Hansen, Mike Matasow, Minh Nguyen
Table 75
Matt Lefkowitz: Sirous B. Mike Majerus, Mike Marzouq
Marcel Luske: Jim Meehan, Arturo Diaz, Michael Ross
Chris Pikula: James Hoeppner, David Levi, Rafael Perry, Stan Schrier, Erik Seidel Gene Timberlake: Andre Boyer, Antonio Turrisi, Amir Vahedi, Bruce Yamron Scotty Nguyen: John Biebel, Randy Holland, Steve Meyerson, Pascal Perrault
Jesse Jones: Phil Ivey, Bert Boutin, Men Nguyen, Diego Cordovez, Paul Darden Jac Arama: Carlos Mortonsen, Mohamed Ibraham, Russ Salzer, Ben Tang, An Tran Harry Demetriou: Dan Alspach, Alex Brenes, Jim Bucci, Howord Lederer, John Pires Joseph Grew: Jim Allen, John Cernuto, Mel Judah, Iain Patterson, Syracuse Chris Don Moseley: Chris Ferguson, Hassen Kamoei, Paul Ladanyi, Tom McEvoy
To setup the Final Table Sunday night, Gene Timberlake took all but a few of Jesse Jones' chips with a flush on the river. On the other table, Mickey Seagle flopped a pair of Aces. Daniel Negreanu took the chip lead when he flopped a set with a pocket pair of 8's.
THE FINAL TABLE 60 mins left of 60. The blinds were $75/$150
Seat# - Player ----------- Hometown ----- Chip Count
Seat 1) Chris Pikula - New York, NY. - $525
Seat 2) Daniel Negreanu - Las Vegas, NV. - $5,625
Seat 3) Melissa Hayden - Las Vegas, NV. - $1,650
Seat 4) Joel Chaseman - Potomac, MD. - $2,225
Seat 5) Gene Timberlake - Houston, TX. - $5,000
Seat 6) John Juanda - Alhambra, CA. - $2,800
Seat 7) Scotty Nguyen - Las Vegas, NV. - $5,100
Seat 8) Marcel Luske - Almere, Holland. - $3,100
Seat 9) Matt Lefkowitz - Inverness, CA. - $3,925
Seat 10) Rocco DiPomazio - Gallup, NM. - $2,775
If it's true, this is a great story. Chris Pikula claims that this is his first poker tournament ever. Imagine making a WSOP Final Table in your first tournament? Chris mucked his hand for 10th when Rocco DiPomazio showed him a runner runner flush. Now if Chris never makes another WSOP Final Table, he'll always wonder how he made the first one.
Marcel Luske is a dominating player on the European tour. At this table, they didn't know his reputation and treated him like he was a local yokel. Unable to win a hand with all his foreign moves, Luske had to go all-in short stacked with K 10. Gene Timberlake flopped trip 9's to send the European hotshot out on his European reputation in 9th.
Unable to win a hand of any kind, the starting chip leader tanked into 8th. Daniel Negreanu had the worst Final Table of his brief but spectacular career. Stunned and in shock, Daniel couldn't believe what was happening to him. He must have missed on a couple hundred outs in the hands he played. All-in with yet another A K, Daniel was called by John Juanda with K 10. No worries. The 10 ripped right off the deck and held up. Daniel is now learning how the rest of us live in poker.
It was surprising how many quality players bummed out today. Another top player who had a horrible time was Matt Lefkowitz. With 13 big bets at the start, Matt had time to do something but he didn't get any cards. Besides, Scotty Nguyen was on fire at the time and Scotty was putting the table on tilt with his arrogant attitude toward his opponents. Matt went all-in drawing dead to John Juanda's flopped two pair.
If Melissa Hayden didn’t have pocket Aces, she didn’t win the hand. She didn’t draw bullets often enough to get higher than 6th. All-in from the big blind, her friend and spanking buddy Scotty Nguyen spanked Melissa with trip Kings.
The John Juanda Fan Club is still waiting for John to get his first bracelet. It didn't come today as Juanda was especially perplexed by Scotty Nguyen. With the board Q 2 3 4, John check raised and was reraised by Nguyen. Juanda then folded. Not long after, John went all-in on the button with the K 2 of Diamonds. It was Scotty who disappointed the Fan Club with Q 10 and a 10 on the flop.
How do you explain the complete and total collapse by a former World Champion? Overconfidence probably describes it most politely. Arrogance is probably a more accurate word. With four players left Scotty Nguyen had half the chips on the table and finished 4th. How? He never changed gears when the three rocks he was playing with changed theirs. In the opinion of a hack poker writer who couldn't carry Scotty's seat card as a player, I think he continued to try to run over the three rocks even after they started standing up to him. It was obvious to everyone that Nguyen was bluffing most of the time, but nobody would call him down. When Joel Chaseman showed Scotty a bluff with the worthless 3 2 of Diamonds on a huge pot, the invincibility Nguyen had so successfully portrayed for so long was shattered. There were $30,000 in chips on the table. Prior to that hand, Scotty had $15,000 of them. In an hour he was gone. Scotty walked on $79,100 he should have had.
The three remaining players made a save that guaranteed them their respective spots and played on. And on, and on, and on. At 7 am the next morning, Joel Chaseman finally hit the card on the river that allowed several insanely groggy people to go home. The only thing that made this marathon worth watching was the finesse with which Joel Chaseman bamboozled all of us. At 3 am when the money deal was made, Joel Chaseman, a career television producer, said all he wanted to do was go home. This was going to be a laydown for Gene Timberlake. Gene had made good money, now all he had to do was pick up the bracelet. Right! Funny how Joel, who acted so tired and bored, would never actually give up. Didn't he want to go home? Didn't Chaseman profess to have no interest in the title?
Beware a wolf in sheep's clothing. Gene Timberlake didn't and it cost him a bracelet.
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