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World Series Of Poker
2001 Jesse May Reports |
LAS VEGAS
May 14th - 18th, 2001 |
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| Day Zero -
Day One -
Day Two -
Day Three -
Day Four -
Day Five -
Final plays -
Explain it all |
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Jesse May in
Las Vegas |
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Day
Two WSOP - The Day of Steal
Day Two at the World Series of Poker
is the Day of Steal. With half the field gone, your table on the second day is
bound to be tougher than the first. Gone is the easy money, where people give
you maximum value on your good hands. It's the hands where nobody has nothing
that become deadly important as the blinds go up and antes are introduced and
the pot's worth winning before the cards are dealt, and the players who succeed
know about the steal. That raise before the flop that looks like it says, "Hey,
I got a good hand," But often as not what it's really saying is, "Get out the
pot and give me the money." And it's the cool jacks, the face freezers who can
keep their features hard while their insides are quaking, it's the ones who can
build their stack regardless of their cards, it's these guys who are making the
moves on Day Two.
Like Danny Negreanu. They should call him Hockey Dan,
the guy's got more hockey uniforms than an NHL journeyman. Yesterday he was
head to toe a Detroit Redwing, one big puddle of a candy cane with an
ever-present smile. They had the kid on his face, down to about four thousand
early in the day, scribes ready to chalk up his imminent departure. But nobody
had told Danny. Nobody told him that he wasn't supposed to be the World
Champion of Poker this year and so bing bang he gets the fire in his stomach
and puts away the fear and runs his stack up to seventy thousand in no time at
all. And I believe if you ask him the secret to his success, he might have to
tell you, "Hey, man, I'm on the steal."
Phil Hellmuth. What can you
say. As long as he's still in the tournament, everybody knows who the favorite
is. They had him in trouble since the second hour of Day One, and he'd been
scratching to stay alive up until yesterday's dinner break. And then he turned
on the overdrive. Glazer and I watching him play one pot which he wins with a
big raise on the flop, and I turn around to Andy and say, "Ut-oh." He's
thinking the exact same thing, the monster is loose. Phil Hellmuth not only now
has $50,000 in chips in front of him, he's seven levels in front of the field
and wearing his thinking cap at all times. Watch out.
The Europeans
don't have a lot of horses left, but they're sticking with some of their
biggest guns. I seen Chris Bjorin short-stacked all day, sitting on the left of
the one they call Spatz, good guy Mickey Appleman. Spatz had a ton of chips,
but I leave them for a half hour and when I give another look-see to the table
it's Appleman on the short stack and Chris Bjorin holding onto $70,000. I sure
would have liked to see that go down.
The Hendon Mob is living and dying
with Barney Boatman, but he can handle the pressure. Barney's looking to
improve on his sixteenth place performance from last year, and who's to say he
can't do it. Barney knows a little bit about the steal, but if last year was
any indication, it's Day Three that'll be move day for the Hendon Mob. Barney
spent most of the day sitting on the right of Dave Colclough, another solid
British hope with chips and a chair. Colclough has said he's been having a
miserable trip so far, but he's calm and cool, with a laugh and a baseball cap.
And I love his game.
The one I like to call the best British tournament
player in the game is still in, but he better get a move on before his stack
gets eaten. Surinder Sunar spent most of the day with less than $5,000 in front
of him until a small late move pumped him to about sixteen grand.
Unfortunately, that'll still leave him as one of the shortest stacks in the
tournament, making the first two hours crucial for him.
The Irish are
always fighting, and though their contingent has been reduced to three runners,
they have every chance of taking the big prize. Between Mike Magee, Padraig
Parkinson, and John Walsh, it'll be business as usual on Day Three.
Me.
Chopped off my own feet I did, once on the flop and once on the turn. Not only
did I run my last money for a bluff against a man who couldn't possibly fold, I
done it two times in the same hand. Going from the tournament to the rail is
like going from being a respected surgeon to someone in desperate need of a
doctor.
But that's poker, and that's the way it goes. I tell my buddy
Kaplan that I played my last hand bad, and he says, "Well, you know, that's
usually the case. Most people play their last hand bad. If you hadn't played
your last hand bad, you'd still be in the tournament." Funny, but true. That's
what you gotta know about poker, and that's why a poker champion deserves
respect. You can play your A-game for fifteen straight hours, but you make one
three second brain freeze and you're dead as a doornail. It ain't like in
baseball, where they give you an E4 and send you back to the plate the next
inning. There's only two places for people who make mistakes in poker, any
mistakes at all. There's the rail, and there's the luck box. And unfortunately,
all luck boxes eventually lead to the rail. |
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| World Series Reports -
World Championship
Reports |
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| The World Championship -
explained |
Jesse is reporting
on The World Championship which runs 14th - 18th May. Its the last of a month
long series of poker tournaments that are known collectively as the World
Series of Poker. The buy-in, or amount of money each player has to pay to play,
is $10,000. Last year there were 512 players which produced a prizepool of
$5,120,000 and 1st prize of $1,500,000. This year there are 613 players, 12
short of the number required to get a $2,000,000 1st prize. Second prize here
is in fact the fourth biggest prize in history.
The game these top
players are playing is Texas
Holdem and the betting rules are defined as No-Limit. This means that when
its a players turn to bet, they may bet anything that they have infront of
them. It is also a freezeout tournament, which means to say that when all of a
players chips are gone, they are out of the event. Until next year.
On
each of the five days, players are slowly knocked out of the tournament and the
numbers gradually reduce. The fourth day will see the final three tables, 27
players, play on until there are only nine left. These players will be those
that make up the final table to play to a finish on the fifth and final day.
The last person standing will be the new World Champion. In thirty years three
people have successfully defended their world title. Doyle Brunson '76&'77,
Stu Ungar '80&'81 and Johnny Chan in '87&'88. |
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