Kastle Wins in Record Time!
By Max Shapiro
Casey Kastle
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If there were a category in the Guiness Book of Records for the world's fastest final table in a poker tournament, tonight's event would win hands down.
It took nine hands for the finalists to play out event number four in this year's Legends of Poker tournament, no limit hold 'em. The betting may have been no limit, but there definitely was a limit on the time it took: FOURTEEN MINUTES!
As soon as two players were eliminated, the players talked a deal and chopped it. Another record was set when the discussion over splitting the money took twice as long as it did to play all the hands. The winner? Oh, yes, Casey Kastle, who had a substantial chip lead. Kastle is a Chicago-based pro who's only been playing seriously since the beginning of 1998 and who is perhaps better known as the leading anti-smoking activist in the poker world.
The abrupt end to the tournament, of course, also presented a dilemma for this writer. How would it be humanly possible to fill all the allotted space in this page to describe a tournament that ended in an eye-blink? There were several choices. I could use a lot of big words, such as antidisestablishmentarianism (yes, there is such a word, though I don't know what it means), throw in a lot of jokes, make things up or take the easy way out and set the report in 36-point type. Maybe I'll try all of them and also throw in a plug for my hilarious book, Read 'em and Laugh, of which I have several copies with me available for signing. Well, that's 267 words so far. Only about 800 to go.
How about a funny line to fill space? Tournament assistant Robyn Shepard reports that midway through the event, a confusing hand came up in which two players ended up chopping a pot when each player had ace-high. The dealer was having difficulty pushing up the proper cards from the board to demonstrated what the hands were. The players kept trying to correct her, and she kept insisting that she was right. Finally, Clarence Fennell, who finished sixth the night before, dryly commented, "If a man speaks in the woods and no woman is there to hear him, is he still wrong?" ("Yes, he is," Robyn answers.)
The tournament? Okay, okay. The nine finalists got there on the stroke of midnight after Kastle knocked out David Tran. Tran committed all his chips with K-J of clubs, but they were no match for Kastle's pocket rockets.
Casey sat down with $38,300 in chips, nearly double the amount of the second chip-leader, Brent Carter, who had $19,700. On the third hand, Pat Enos moved all in and wasn't called. Dan Lumello did the same on the next hand and was uncontested, but when he moved in on the following hand, he was called by Mike Petracca, a writer and teacher at UCLA who has a book on pop culture coming out soon. Lumello had Q-J of clubs and Petracca had pocket sixes. On the flop Mike made a set. On the turn Dan made a straight. On the river Mike filled up, and since ha had more chips and there weren't any more cards to come, the table got down to eight.
There were more all-in moves by Salzer and Pat Enos, a builder with a final table finish at the 1995 World Series, but neither was called. Then Frank DiElsi, on the button, tried it. DiElsi is an actor with a turn on the TV show "Now and Again" coming up soon. Unfortunately, with just A-5, he was only acting like he had a hand. Kastle, again with pocket aces, had a real hand and gladly called. The board came 5-9-K/6-K, and actor Frank was ordered off the set.
That's all, folks. The boys brought in their lawyers and accountants and worked out a deal and went home. I'm still a bit short, so I'll give Kastle some extra space in his biography, and maybe we won't need 36-point type after all.
Biography - Casey Kastle
Casey Kastle is 40. Before turning to poker, he owned a fine wine shop in the Chicago area. He developed a love of wines when, as a foreign exchange student, he lived in a converted monastery in the wine country of Sienna, Italy. He first became interested in poker in 1988, when he volunteered to help out at his church's charity casino nights. Ten years later he started playing full time and made the final table 27 times of the first 99 tournaments he played. He became a leader in the anti-smoking crusade after an incident at the World Series in 1998. He was in good chip position on the second day of the championship event, hours away from being in the money, when he was so deliberately harassed by a smoker that he blew off his chips. This year he and Paul Ladanyi started an anti-smoking petition during the Harrah's tournament which has collected more than 1,000 signatures and helped achieve banning of spectator and employee smoking at the World Series. He has continued his crusade, even to the detriment of his poker playing. He says his greatest poker accomplishment, after inhaling so much cardroom smoke, is not being diagnosed with any smoking-related illness.
In tonight's event he gathered a lot of chips when his fives beat kings at the fifth table and his queens outran kings at the second table. "I gambled a lot with bad hands and also got lucky when I needed to," he sums up.
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