Shoot-Out Event Sets New Record
for Speed in Eight-Deal Showdown
A world's record of sorts was set here at the Hustler Casino when the final table of the limit hold'em shoot-out event took 10 minutes to play out.
Give or take 15 seconds, that is.
What happened was that after five hours of play, with the start of the big championship event coming up the next day, and super satellites underway, Tony Ma proposed a nine-way chop of $3,000 each, with eight showdown hands to determine the order of finish. Since all participants started with the same chips, this seemed reasonable and everyone agreed to this civilized finish to event number 15.
With as much hooting and hollering as you would expect at a World Series championship event, the participants sat down, ringed by a pumped-up crowd of cheering spectators, and the cards were dealt out in a blur.
This writer is not entirely sure who had what, or what the board cards were, but since nobody else was either, I can pretty much write what I want and nobody will ever be able to tell the difference.
Adding insult to injury, somebody ripped the bio sheets in half, and in putting them together I very likely co-joined different players.
For this I had to get out of bed?
The $100,000 guarantee event the previous night didn't get to the final table until 4:15 a.m. and lasted well past daylight, and by the time I had written the story, driven home, had a bite to eat, said my prayers and fell into bed, it was almost time for the shoot-out conclusion, and after an emergency call from tournament coordinator Warren Karp, I sped down the freeways at calamitous speed, barely arriving in the nick of time, ready to do my usual award-winning coverage report, only to be told it was all over but the shouting. Warren could just as easily have phoned in the report to me.
Oh, yeah, the winner was somebody named Walt Schafer.
I think.
And, no, I don't know who he is or what he does for a living or what his poker accomplishments are, if any, because by the time the cards were all dealt out he was gone.
OK, to be honest, this really wasn't the world's fastest event. The record is probably held by the Four Queens, when Jim Miller set up a 21-way chop in an employees event. And a lowball tournament at the Bicycle Casino once ended in a final-table eight-way chop with no hands dealt because the old people needed to get back to their rest homes by 10 p.m. bed-check. But why ruin a good story?
Anyway, justice was served in a manner of speaking, because Tony Ma, the perpetrator of this outrage, finished dead last, even though he was in the lead on the flop three times.
OK, the problem now is how to write a report of 800 or so words when nothing happened. I could use 36-point type to fill the space, or increase the spacing between lines, or maybe write in all capital letters to use up more space. But, no, being a journalist of integrity, I will attempt to write a balanced, accurate, thorough tournament report.
Are you kidding?
Let's see. Hand one. This was the big one, for first place. The flop was A-Q-2-K-6 with three spades and Schafer made a jack-high flush. He was the winner and got the trophy and will no doubt be guest of honor on the Tonight show and write a book in which he reveals his winning strategy.
Eat your heart out, Phil Hellmuth.
Placing second was George Picerne who was dealt K-2 and made a third king on the turn.
Placing third was Ramsey Daniel,whose brilliant play turned Q-4 into trip fours.
Placing fourth was Al Baham who won with -- are you ready for this -- two sevens!
Oh, well, so much for journalistic integrity. Let's get this over with. Frankie O'Dell finished fifth when he paired a king, Chris Karagulleyan was sixth with A-high, Anthony Lee was seventh with a paired king, Edwin Pairavi was eighth with nine-high and Tony Ma, as I said, finished last. Exciting, huh?
Hold it! I just came up with a truly remarkable statistic. Everyone finished in the same order as his seat number. Do you know what the odds against this are? It's 362,879-1! So we have a story after all.
--Max Shapiro
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