Poker Tournament Results

The 6th Jack Binion World Poker Open / WPT Event Season 3

Jess Yawitz

Tournament Report

FINAL TABLE Seat/Player/Hometown/Chip Count 1 Nick Frangos Mars Landing NJ 293,500 2 Victor Eskew Atlanta GA 41,000 3 John Phan Long Beach CA 271,000 4 Jess Yawitz St Louis MO 53,000 5 Mark Rose Edna TX 25,500 6 Farzad Rouhani Germantown MD 27,500 7 Billy Duarte Berthoud CO 61,000 8 Andy Philachack Garland TX 226,000 9 Eddy Scharf Cologne, Germany 163,000 26:06 remained in the 2,000/4,000 level. 500 ante. You might have thought we were playing for marbles in the backyard. How much money is there now in poker that players can treat it so carelessly? In another record for this year's World Poker Open, seven of the nine players were gone in the first 31 hands. My favorite story in the battle of the Quick Draw McGraw's was of veteran pro Billy Duarte. He was waiting to get paid. (You actually had to wait in line). I asked Billy if he'd ever seen anything like this. Duarte said that when he held back a bet, on hand 4, that would have put him all-in, he made $30,000. Before Billy had a chance to bet again, three guys went out before him in the next few hands, Thank you very much, all gifts gratefully received. $30k! That's approximately the average ANNUAL salary in America for a family. We started quick and then got quicker. This was a table where making any move was a mistake, with a few spectacular exceptions. Short stacked Farzad Rouhani, and not short stacked Victor Eskew, both went all-in on hand 5. Rouhani had pocket 10's. Eskew had A K offsuit. Eddy Scharf woke up with pocket Q's to clean out the lot. Eskew got 8th place by starting with more chips in the deciding hand. It was too bad for the gag writer. What a great poker name, Victor Eskew! The other short stack made it to hand eleven. Mark Rose, who's had a couple of WSOP's where he's lasted for days, barely lasted 10 minutes. I'm using the term "short- stack" to mean "less than ten big blind bets." Mark made it 13k to go with pocket 6's in middle position. John Phan, in the big blind, tried to talk Mark into calling all-in. It worked. Mark had another 10k and shipped it preflop. John had pocket Aces, of course. Mark Rose to 7th. Now Billy Duarte could make his move...to the pay window line. Billy had the Q 10 of Spades with 18k left and he was drawing fatally thin against A Q for 6th. But this is why getting to the Final Table in one of these big buy-in, high turnout events, is so coveted. The bucks start here. The sprinters took a breather until hand 23, when the starting gun went off again. You know, bad breaks come in all shapes sizes. Nick Frangos had a great January 2005 until today. He is the point's leader in the WSOP Circuit. He won a couple of events already in Atlantic City. He was on fire yesterday and he came to this table as chip leader. This is just speculation on my part, but Nick might have had an especially bad break on his seat assignment. He's a Philadelphia Eagles' fan. They were playing their playoff game on a big screen directly within Nick's vision. Any other seat but the one, and he can't see the screen without turning his head. Could that have really cost Frangos about $100,000? Probably not, but playing against Jess Yawitz did. An incredulous Scott Fischman was watching his friend Nick Frangos, and Scott couldn't believe the call Jess Yawitz made. "The worst I've ever seen," Scott said. Yawitz is on the button and Jess reraises Frangos' under the gun raise all-in for Jess' last 43k with K 4 offsuit. What hand did Yawitz think he could beat? Well, Yawitz could beat A 10 offsuit, when a King flops. That's a little tilt for Nick. On the very next hand, same two players. Now Frangos is playing against his own money. Yawitz raises under the gun this time. (We are five handed) Frangos reraises for a couple of hundred grand. Jess calls and turns over A Q offsuit to Nick's pathetically dominated A J offsuit. Now Yawitz is chip leader and Nick is obviously upset. Who's to say anyone is on tilt, but two hands later Nick Frangos was out of here. Nick lives "45 minutes" from the Eagles home stadium in Philadelphia. The Eagles won easily. The watching Nick Frangos lost gigantically. When the flop came K K 9 with two hearts, a thoroughly disgusted Frangos went all-in with his pocket 7's. John Phan had a 10 9. Nick is only 30-years-old and very talented. He'll be back and he'll make a fortune. But he'll always have a special reason to remember when the Eagles won the NFC Championship game. This entire Final Table took two hours and twenty-one minutes. But the actually play took about half that time. The other half was spent trying to make a deal. Four handed, after the former chip leader's departure, the wolves circled around the meat. Jess Yawitz, who has a famous hand now -K 4 off -lead in chips and took down $185k. Not bad for someone who started sixth in chips. Eddy Scharf and Andy Philachack followed in pay, with John Phan cashing a measly $150k. Without money to play for, the bracelet and WPT entry take center stage. These gunslingers don't know how to holster their fire arms. So we didn't have to wait long for more prostrate bodies. On the first post-deal hand, chiropractor Andy Philachack broke Eddy Scharf back by spiking a 7 on the flop. Andy had pocket 7's, Eddy Scharf had A 10 all-in for about 300k and made enough in 4th to fly back to Germany in his own plane. Today's terminator retired economics teacher, Jess Yawitz, took care of John Phan with an Ace on the river. Jess had the A K of Hearts and flopped the nut flush draw. John only had pocket Queens. What could he have been thinking? Maybe that he could beat a K 4. Heads up, Yawitz had Philachack about 3-2 in chips. On the first hand of heads up play, Jess, in all seriousness it seemed, made the funniest comment of the day. "Can you just call," he asked. Jess Yawitz has only been playing poker for eight months. He, like millions of others, saw how much fun we were having on TV. I asked him if he was intimidated by the top players at this table. He said he wasn't because his first one yesterday had Phil Hellmuth, John Juanda, David Ulliott, Paul Wolf, X22 and a couple of other pros. Of this star-studded lineup, the winner is Jess Yawitz! On the final hand 58 Jess had the K 2 of Hearts versus the 8 3 of Hearts held by Andy Philachack. Kings were very good to Jess today, the King n the flop was plenty. It's only a lot of money. Mike Paulle