| THE DECK RUNNETH OVER
If you've ever wondered why Limit Hold'em tournaments are a dying breed, today's result might give you an idea. The event might be over when the seats are drawn.
FINAL TABLE
Seat/Player/Hometown/Chip Count
Seat 1 John Myung Vienna VA 98,000
Seat 2 Thor Hansen El Segundo CA 121,000
Seat 3 Michael Ta Portland OR 35,000
Seat 4 Jason Strochak Ft. Lauderdale FL 115,000
Seat 5 Jeffrey Littlefield Greenville TX 150,000
Seat 6 Patty Gallagher San Diego CA 70,000
Seat 7 Maurice Atlani Paris, France 82,000
Seat 8 Paul Darden New Haven CT 101,000
Seat 9 Van Nguyen Toronto, Canada 124,000
The blinds were 2,000/4,000 for 13 minutes more.
In the old days, pre-TV, Limit Hold'em was THE big game in tournament poker. For years, the first event at the World Series of Poker drew the biggest crowd and had the second biggest prize pool in all of poker. Those days are gone forever. We now have entire tournaments without any Limit Hold'em. Or any other game, outside of No Limit, for that matter. Why is Limit declining? There is one reason summed up in a phrase you hear continuously in poker: "You can't protect your hand."
John Myung is a terrific poker player. You might remember seeing him win $1,000,000 on television at the 'Shootout At The Sands' last year. But when a player has a 13-1 chip lead when heads up play starts, you get the idea that the deck ran over him. John played very well, but in my humble opinion whoever drew the one seat was going to win this tournament. It got 16 tons of cards.
But let's get you to the ending by starting at the beginning.
Yesterday four players left in the first six hands. That was Pot Limit Hold'em a very different game. In Limit, getting someone to leave is the hard part.
But on the third hand the table successful shucked its shortest stack in 9th. The terminator, John Myung did the execution. John had pocket 9's and flopped a set. Michael Ta had K Q with his last three chips and flopped a King. Ta Ta Michael.
Play any six! On the fourth hand the first of two quad 6's appeared. This time for Jason Strochak against Paul Darden. But bad boy Paul would get his revenge.
There's a reason these players are here and others aren't. Van Nguyen won the first event of the Bellagio's Festa al Lago in October. He showed a great laydown on hand 24. The board came A 8 5 6 when Van's bet was raised by Jason Strochak. Van showed an A K and mucked it!
I asked Patty Gallagher why she didn't give the table the double finger salute like she did when she left the WSOP table. I thought her answer would be 'because there were no TV cameras.' She said, "Because there were no TV cameras." Machine-gun Patty got her pocket Aces cracked in 8th..The K Q of Hearts was held by Van Nguyen and a third heart came on the turn. Patty only had six chips so she couldn't protect her rockets. Good thing there were no TV cameras.
This is how you win poker tournaments. And how you lose them. Paul Darden had John Myung all but eliminated from this event on hand 52 with a Q 10 and a 10 on the flop versus Q J for Myung. John needed a King or a Jack on the river that wasn't a club. Bingo! King ball. The rush begins for Myung. The tournament is now over. Just no one knows it yet.
On the next hand we continue to climb the beginning short stack ladder with a completely disgusted Maurice Atlani going out 7th. For some reason Maurice knew that John Myung didn't have an Ace to match the one on the flop. What he didn't know was that John had pocket Queens in the small blind. Atlani drew as long as he could then flipped his last five chips in the pot hoping to beat a bluff with his K J. Au revoir, Maurice.
We played with 5k/10k blinds for the longest time. That was an astronomical 10,000 20,000.
On hand 67 Paul Darden returned the favor on Jason Strochak. Quad 6's baby! The same hand, reversed players. Eerie. But that 200k pot was the last hurrah for Mr. Darden.
Meanwhile, John Myung has taken the table hostage. He won a couple hands with better kickers. He won a couple hands with baby pairs. He won most hands. The starting chip leader, Jeff Littlefield, could have been in left field. He was barely involved. Turns out that was a smart place to be with Myung on fire at home plate.
On a hand that cost Paul Darden quite a bit of money, Jason Strochak showed Paul a bluff hand on a 160k pot. The board came Q 6 4 K Q with a third diamond on the river. Jason confidently bet out when the Diamond Queen splashed down. Paul pondered for several minutes before mucking. Jason couldn't resist showing the table his 10 9 of Hearts. That's a payback for the quad sixes.
Finally the blinds started to take effect. On hand 82 we had a monster pot. Pocket Aces, Jacks and Sevens. Guess who won? Right, John Myung with the 7's. The board came 7 4 3 4 3 and Thor Hansen could stick his rockets where the sun don't shine in 6th. Paul Darden was crippled with the pocket Jacks and finished 5th six hands later.
Another gutshot straight on the turn caught by John Myung did Paul Darden in. Paul flopped Aces with his A 8 of Hearts, but didn't have enough chips all-in to get John off his K Q. The board came A 10 9 J 10. John Myung is good, too. A deadly combination.
A one-two punch took out Van Nguyen. He flopped Aces on hand 92 but couldn't convince Jason Strochak of that. Van was parked in 4th when Jason caught runner runner K 6 for K's and 6's. Then with only 35k left Van raised under the gun with the Q 6 of Diamonds. John Myung called with A 2 and flopped the killer, a deuce. Is there any wonder that No Limit is the game of the future?
Three handed John Myung had over two-thirds of the chips. The question was who would make the extra $43,000 for second place over third place.
This is where Jeffrey Littlefield was helped by staying in left field. He let John Myung crush Jason Strochak like he'd crushed everyone else. On the key hand, number 135, Jeffrey could have called a reraise and tripled up. But instead he mucked it. John Myung devoured Jason Strochak's stack with a board of K 10 9 J 8. Jason just couldn't call John's last raise.
Two hands later we were heads up. Jason went all-in with pocket 7's on a flop of J J 10. The human card rack, John Myung had raises preflop with 10 5 offsuit.
How's this for a battle? Chip count: Myung 830,000, Littlefield 65,000.
Actually, Jeff made it competitive with a couple of pot wins, but the weight of all those chips against him was inevitably too much.
John Myung had been flopping two pair all day. Hand 159 was no exception. Jeff went all-in for his last three chips with Q 8. John had 7 5. The flop came A 7 5.
And the winner of the Limit Hold'em event is whoever drew Seat One.
Mike Paulle
MikePaulle@PokerPages.com
| 
