| F&B Manager Wins Chop,/b>
Well, here we go again. For two out of the last three Last Chance tournaments rounding out Legends of Poker 2004 there’s been a 10-way chip-count deal with not a single hand dealt at the final table. Of course, yesterday, by comparison, was a marathon. Only six players made a deal..
Doesn’t anybody want to play poker any more? Is everybody trying to put me out of work as a tournament writer? Well, somehow I’ll fill the required space even if I have to take quotes from the telephone book.
Let’s start with the winner, and he is a legitimate winner, chip-count deal or not. Edward Padilla, who is the food and beverage manager at the Bicycle Casino, now has three final table cash-outs in the four Final Table events thus far, with a third and a 10th to go with his win tonight to virtually lock up first place in the points race. He arrived at the final table with $77,000 in chips, $21,000 more than his nearest rival. He also has two cash-outs at earlier Legends events, both in hold’em. Padilla is a no-limit specialist, and the key to his play is stealing pots. First place tonight paid $12,260.
Finishing second was Jeff Brown, who does direct network marketing for Fuelzone, a no-water car wash product that uses polymers and wetting agents. Brown has only been playing tournaments since last December, only no-limit tournaments, no cash games. His style is to play “softly” at the outset, getting more aggressive as he goes along. He got as far as he did tonight, he said, largely because of a mistake. With two tables left, he had J-9 suited in the small blind, and thought he was just calling the small blind. He hadn’t noticed that another player had gone all in for $15,000, and was forced to match the bet. The all-in player had pocket queens, and Brown made three jacks on the river. Second place paid $6,210.
Finishing third was Ameer Khan. Not much in the way of poker accomplishments, but he did have a delightful tattoo on his left biceps which he acquired on his last trip to Hawaii. It read “Texas Hold’em, and had an illustration of the A-K of spades. No, Texas Hold’em is not the name of his girlfriend, but the game he likes to play. Ameer picked up an official $3,100 for third place, which should pay for a lot more tattoos.
Tuong Luu of El Monte, making his second consecutive final table, finished fourth, which paid $3,100. Luu is a popular local player whose cash-ins this year include a fourth in the Mini Series of Poker and a second in the American Poker Classic tournaments at the Bicycle Casino.
Chad Viall has made four final tables this week playing all over. This is his first Last Chance event. “I only found out about it last night,” he said. It was a feat getting this far because he was down to seven chips with six tables left. Viall has played tournaments for only a year and is determined to work his way into the WSOP 2005. He lives in Laguna Hills and got an official $1,470 for fifth.
Isabelle Mercier finished sixth, which paid $1,145. Remember her? She’s the petite young woman, 90 or so pounds of dynamite, who won the WPT Ladies Night Out II invitational event two nights ago by running over the field with super-aggressive play. . Mercier, from Quebec, Canada, is a former lawyer, blackjack and poker dealer and administrator at the Aviation Club in Paris, a post she quit in January to play poker full time. She is also writing a tournament poker book with Gus Hansen and Paul Magriel. She was the last to be asked if she agreed to the chip-count deal. She really wanted to continue playing, but didn’t care to be a spoil sport, so she reluctantly agreed. She also said she had some difficulty adjusting tonight to the shorter-round structure typical of small buy-in events.
Rounding out the field was Chan Vu of Norwalk, $820 for seventh; John Liu of El Monte, $820; Stephen Knox of Encino, $490; and, last with the least, Hamid “Captain” Mohammadi of Marina del Rey, $410. ,i> –Max Shapiro,/i>
BIOGRAPHY
Ed Padilla has been the food and beverage manager at the Bicycle Casino for three years. Before that he was the food and beverage chef at Bristol Farms. Besides his three Last Chance final tables, he had a 14th and a 17th in prior Legends. Counting his Nooners tournaments, he’s now had 10 cash-outs in 20 events at the Bike this year. He prefers no-limit because “It plays to my game.” His game is stealing pots with any reasonable hand, such as 3-3. He doesn’t play online because he can’t get a feel for the players that way.
The key hand for him tonight came when he went all in about $20,000 against Jeff Brown, who was chip leader at that point. He made a set while Brown, with A-J suited, missed a straight draw. He wanted to give credit to Angie Marquez and Javier Sanchez, both supervisors under him, and to Poker College boss Sharon Silvas for telling him their strategies.
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