| IT'S GREAT TO BE YOUNG AND RICH
Jerry Young took home over $300,000 and a chance to win a couple of million more in the $3,000 No Limit Hold'em. All he needed was quite a bit of patience and a tremendous stroke of luck on the end. So what else is new?
FINAL TABLE
Seat/Player/Hometown/Chip Count
Seat 1 Erik Sagstrom Linkoping, Sweden 270,000
Seat 2 Peter Moore Atlanta GA 90,000
Seat 3 Blair Rodman Las Vegas NV 250,000
Seat 4 Men Nguyen Bell Gardens CA 350,000
Seat 5 Steve Crockett Costa Mesa CA 300,000
Seat 6 Humberto Brenes Miami FL 95,000
Seat 7 Jerry Young Diamond Bar CA 140,000
Seat 8 Fred Bonyadi Los Angeles CA 100,000
Seat 9 Robert Mizrachi Miami FL 100,000
The ante is 2,000. The blinds are 5,000 and 10,000. There is 70 minutes left in this level.
The deadline was reached the first night with eleven players still remaining, so that's how it started Wednesday afternoon. When Chris Bigler and Barry Greenstein were knocked out, the nine handed Final Table was formed. The chip count is an eyeball from the best this business has ever produced.Jack McClelland.
At the start of business, the average stack was just under 200,000 or 20 big blinds. That's plenty of play for these top players. Yet we lost two pretty quickly, in the first 15 hands.
Robert Mizrachi is on a rush. He just returned from Amsterdam, Holland as the first U. S. winner of their championship. Prize? $500,000. The Mizrachi family is torrid. Younger brother Michael won here two days ago. Robert raised to the odd number of 29k with A Q offsuit in the cutoff seat. Maybe Peter Moore thought it was a steal attempt. For whatever reason, Peter reraised all-in for 80k with K Q off in the small blind. Thank you very much, Robert could have said if he weren't too polite. Mizrachi called the 51k extra. Drawing dead to a King, Moore had to do with less, 9th place.
On the next hand came 'Superman vs. The Master.' Thor Hansen calls Erik Sagstrom Superman because he's dominated the Internet like no human could. It's reputed that Erik as Erik123 on PokerStars has won an estimated $10 million. "No one can beat him" Thor said. "He's Superman. He just turned 21 and this is his first live tournament." Someone can beat him. Maybe he was confused by getting all that visual data. Welcome to the real (non-virtual) world, Superman. We specialize in Kryptonite here.
Erik had the button and raised to 40k. Men 'The Master' Nguyen was in the big blind and called with the 5 3 of Hearts. The flop comes K 7 4. Erik has pocket Queens and checks behind Nguyen. The turn comes a six giving The Master a straight. He checks again as does Sagstrom. The river is a third Spade. Now Nguyen goes all-in. Sagstrom calls off all his 150k with his pocket Queens for a distinctly human 8th place finish. Superman just had his cape pulled on by The Master.
Blair Rodman is making a lot of Final Tables. He's even money pre-tournament to cash. But when he gets here things seem to happen. Obviously frustrated by his pocket Jacks getting beat by A 8 offsuit when the obligatory Ace flopped, Blair went all-in with the 8 7 of Diamonds and found another Ace for 7th place on hand 28.
It looked like a short night, even with 1.75 million chips on the table, when Freddy Bonyadi ran into the white hot Steve Crockett on hand 34. Bonyadi got all his last 70k in with the best hand from the big blind, A K offsuit. Crockett could do no wrong at the time and called with A 3 off. No waiting, the trey peeled right off on the flop.
Big slick no good, as the saying goes. On the very next hand, Robert Mizrachi knew his goose was cooked when he saw Men Nguyen turn over pocket Queens in the big blind. Mizrachi had A K in the small and went all-in for 200k. More chips for the Master.
The Master completed his wipe out of the short stacks on the table with a Q 8 of Spades. Huberto Brenes had tried to sneak an A 2 past Nguyen under the gun with his last 61k. That's not enough chips to intimidate 'Men At Work' (thank you, Blair Rodman, for that line).
So here we are after hand 43 with only three players. Suddenly the action comes screeching to a halt at the Final Table. But, fortunately, there suddenly is plenty elsewhere.
The Heads Up competition has started. Howard Lederer is losing to Andy Beal's business associate Craig Singer. That's exciting. At another table John D'Agostino is stomping Erick Lindgren. Play has begun between Daniel Negreanu and Eli Elezra with Eli taking an early lead. And Barry Greenstein has begun his heads up match with Jennifer Harman. Who cares about the No Limit event? This is great stuff. Sure, it's Limit Hold'em so no single hand is significant. But every time I go over to check the stacks, there is dramatic change.
16 players ponied up the $25,000 to play for bragging rights and a first place prize of $194,000. The good news is that a player only has to win two straight games to double up. Two wins guarantees a 4th place payoff of $48,500. The bad news is that you are playing against the best in the world and two wins in a row might as well be 200.
While the No Limit final dragged on forever, Howard Lederer came back from being down to as little as single digits in chips to take Craig Singer. "He's the best player in the world," Craig told me. "It was bad luck to draw him first, but I'd have to go through Howard eventually."
Lederer gets the winner of the John Juanda/Allen Cunningham fight that hasn't been waged yet.
It turns out that John D'Agostino had little trouble with Erick Lindgren and he'll face Eli Elezra tomorrow. "I had zero chance," Daniel Negreanu lamented. "He made every hand." Lindgren handicapped the bout tomorrow. He favored Elezra because Eli plays Limit Hold'em all day every day often short handed. For his part, Eli told John, "You killed me on the Internet, Daniel just told me your name." Eli is so unpredictable, I have to think he's the favorite against anyone except Jennifer Harman.
Jen drove through Barry Greenstein in her typical aggressive fashion. "I've lost three tournaments today, is that a record?" Barry asked.
When I left there was only one match still going. Aviation Club owner Bruno Fitoussi had a 2-1 chip lead on Italian Jeffrey Lisandro. Paris was beating Rome in an All-Europe Cup match. The winner takes on the survivor of the Carlos Mortensen/Erik Sagstrom match that hadn't started. The other heads up confrontation still not started is between Mimi Tran and David Oppenheim.
Meanwhile back at the Final Table it wasn't until hand 126 that third place was decided. Two players finally picked up a hand at the same time. Steve Crockett's awesome early run found his Alamo with the Q 10 of Clubs drawing nearly dead against Men Nguyen's A 10 of Clubs. Nguyen took an 8-5 heads up chip lead on Jerry Young when he took out the third place finisher Crockett with an A 10 on the flop.
This game went back to sleep however until hand 164. After eight hours of hammering on each other, it came down to one hand. Jerry Young had less than a 50,000 chip lead when he called an all-in from Men Nguyen. Young had pocket 6's. Men had pocket Queens. This looked easy. The Master would finally win an event. It's been a long time.
The crowd yelled in amazement when the flop came 6 2 2.
How can someone make $150,00 for second and seem to be running bad? Only Men 'The Master' Nguyen would fit that description.
It's great to be Jerry Young and $300,000 richer. | 
