Poker Tournament Results

Legends Of Poker WPT Season 2

Scotty Nguyen

Tournament Report

7/Hi-Lo a Breeze for Scotty Relaxed, confident, a big chip lead at the final table. Just another day at the office for 1998 World Champion Scotty Nguyen as he breezed to an easy win in the sixth event of Bicycle Casino’s Legends of Poker, $300 7-card stud hi-lo. He arrived with $54,700, by far the largest stack, and just kept moving on up from there. When he got heads-up with Hieu “Tony” Ma, he had about $113,000 of the $160,000 in play. He offered a deal and Tony accepted. Final table stakes were $1,500 and $3,000 with $200 antes and a $500 low card bring-in, 9:41 remaining. Second chip leader was David Ho with $36,700. On the second hand, Minh Ngoc Tran was all in with just two fives. Nguyen made a low but announced two aces. “He almost threw up,” Scotty laughed sadistically. Hank Castillo, a former police officer who is now an auto sales fleet manager, lasted four hands. He started with split kings and made two pair. On the river he was looking at David Ho’s board of 4s-8s-10s-4h and, figuring he’d have to call anyway, bet his last chips. Ho showed him a flush. Two hands later, Chae Shin had all his chips in but had a ton of outs on sixth street. He started with (4c-5c)Ac and picked up a fourth club and a deuce. But the best he could do was to pair his deuce. He got picked off and ended up in seventh place when Nobuo Hamamoto made a spade flush on the river. Limits on the next hand rose to 2-4k, with $500 antes and a $1,000 bring-in. Hamamoto went all in and survived for the first of five times when he made a flush and escaped the clutches of Nguyen, who made trip sixes. On hand 15, Minh Tran tangled with Nguyen and John Tran. He started with split aces and made aces and kings, but busted out of action when John Tran made 10s-full, while Nguyen grabbed the low end with an eight. By the time limits went to 3-6k with $500 antes and a $1,000 bring-in, Ho had managed to take over the chip lead, but that state of affairs did not last long. On the first hand at that level, Nguyen showed a board of 7-J-6-A. With a pair of kings, Hamamoto admittedly made a “big mistake” by misreading Nguyen for low and going up against him. When Scotty turned up aces and sixes, Hamamoto was down to one chip. He hung on for a while, first with a chop and then by scooping in three-way action with a 7-5 low and small pair. Then, on hand 28, he was committed after starting with three babies, but caught a bunch of bricks as Ma knocked him out with a set of sixes. Now Scotty moved into high gear. First he finished off John Tran by making jacks-up. Tran had two queens and loudly called for another one, but nobody heard him. Three hands after that, Nguyen scooped with trip fives and an eight-low to Ho’s jacks up, and as his chip count neared the 100k mark, he seemed close to locking up the tournament. Ho tried to close the gap a bit later with draws to a wheel and flush, but just split when he made the flush and Scotty took low. By hand 38 the end was very near. Ho’s open cards were 9-8-10-3, while Nguyen showed 2-6-2-A. Scotty bet, Ho folded and Scotty moved close to 115k. On the next and final hand, Ho started with some low cards but ended up with just two fives, while Ma scooped him away with a six-low and a pair of sixes. A deal was made and it was over. –Max Shapiro BIOGRAPHY: Scotty Nguyen, whose poker triumphs include a couple of World Series bracelets and a pair of World Poker Open titles at Foxwoods (including one championship event worth $300,000), is continuing to have another good year. In the current Card Player standings, he is ranked 14th overall, third in Omaha high and third in final table appearances. The affable champ plays all games, and always seems to enjoy himself as he laughs and jokes all the way through, no matter what. Tonight, he said, he had the chip lead pretty much all the way. “That’s how Scotty plays,” he laughed. “And when I get to the final table, it’s all over, baby.” Nguyen estimates he has something like an 80 percent win rate once he arrives. “I’ve been there so many times,” he said. “I’m relaxed, I know the players and I know what to do.” And, he adds, he works hard.