| Draw-Outs Win for Novice
Raj Patel doesn’t have much poker experience, but with the cards he caught tonight he didn’t need much. Three big draw-outs in the final seven hands gave him a tremendous chip lead and victory when a four-way deal ended the second event of the Bicycle Casino’s 2004 Legends of Poker tournament, $100 limit hold’em. In those last hands he hit two straights and a flush, all on the river. Patel, an electrical engineer, has been playing poker for only four months, and this was but his second tournament.
This event carried a $30,000 guarantee, and with an enormous turnout of 690 players, the Bike had no trouble meeting it.
The final table combined haves and have-nots, with three players holding more than $100,000 and four with $14,000 or less. Patel was the biggest “have,” with $137,500. Action got underway with limits of $3,000-$6,000 and 2:11 left on the clock. With those limits and half-hour rounds, there wasn’t much room for finesse or overly tight play. Action was bang-bang, and the lead changed hands several times.
Omar Campolongo, lowest-chipped with $7,000, left on the first hand. He was all in with K-Q and dead on the flop when Walter Smiley made a set of jacks. Phillip Penn Sr. started second-highest in chips behind Patel and took over the lead on hand four. With limits now at $5,000-$10,000, Penn kept chasing with A-7 and caught a bullet on the river to outrun Patel’s pocket queens and run his count to $162,000.
On hand 11, Patel went further downhill, while Agop “Jack” Boghossian went completely out. In three-way action, Patel had Kh-4h. A flop of Kd-8h-4h gave him top pair and a flush draw, though Khanh Hua had him out-kicked with A-K. An offsuit deuce and ace gave Hua the pot and Boghossian mucked his unseen hand and cashed out ninth.
On the next hand, Hua made it two kills in a row. He raised with 10h-6h and Fodil Moussa went all in from the small blind with Q-J. A board of 8-4-4-5-7 gave Hua a straight. Hua now had the chip lead with more than $190,000. Patel took another hit a few hands later when he couldn’t beat the pocket jacks held by retiree Roy McGinnis. Patel now had only $38,000 of his starting $137,500 left. He started his comeback by winning two pots in a row, the second time going all in on the river when he paired his king to outrun Phillips’ pocket 7s.
Veteran pro Walter Smiley had started the final table with only $14,000. He had hung on, but UPS employee Allen Kling left him in seventh place on hand 23. Smiley had A-Q and Kling, with only K-6, hit a full house when the board came 10-6-5-10-6.
Patel’s first and biggest big draw-out came on hand 27 when he went up against chip-leader Hua. With A-A, Hua was nearly a 12-1 favorite against Patel, who had A-3. When a flop of A-7-6 gave Hua a set, he became better than a 98 percent favorite. But then a 4 and 5 came to give Patel a straight. A frustrated Hua flung his cap on the table, but quickly regained his composure and congratulated Patel. The two were now nearly even in chips. The next hand saw the departure of Shahin Kargar. She had also started with just $14,000, but aggressive play had kept her in action. In the small blind with A-8, she flopped an ace but was blown away by Kling’s set of 4s.
Patel’s second miracle hand came when he was an 82 percent underdog with pocket 9s against Kling’s pocket kings and somehow managed to make another straight when the board came 8-5-2-7-6. On the last hand he had Js-5s and made a flush on the river to beat Phillips’ paired 5 and leave him in fifth place. Patel now had $282,000, twice as much as Khahn, while McGinnis had $94,000 and Kling $36,000. A deal was proposed and accepted, and Patel had his first victory in only two tries. –Max Shapiro
BIOGRAPHY
Raj Patel, an electrical engineer since 1990, only began playing poker four months ago because wanted to join friends of his who were into the game. Until this tournament, only his second, he had been playing limit hold’em cash games with limits between $3-$6 and $6-$12. He’s finding tournaments more to his liking because he’s been frustrated by players in his small-limit side games who raise no matter what they have.
Patel says he’s never read any poker books and has gotten most his off-table education from watching WPT games on the Travel Channel. Tonight, he said, he kept catching cards and was never in trouble until that one time he went all in at the final table. He came to the last table with the lead after taking down a big pot in three-way action at the third table. Two of his opponents had pocket pairs, and he made four 10s.
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