Archive for August 11th, 2006

“I only caught up to people twice in the whole tournament.” OK, not exactly, but Jamie Gold played his big stack to perfection and took the biggest event in the history of poker. $12M richer, he’s now the champion. You’ll hear from many places the incredible luck he had, and it would be easy to just latch onto that and proclaim that he lucked his way into a victory. That’s a disservice to this event and to him. I saw him early as he started building his stack on Day 2, and while he didn’t have a clear view that he would get to the endgame he was an interesting bird even then. “I’m a television producer sponsored by Bodog,” he told me, so I slotted him into the other celebrity types that filled the room.

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UPDATE:  1:20AM

Rhett Butler finally made an aggressive move at a pot with pocket 4’s, but the callers were Jamie Gold and Allen Cunningham.  They checked a jack-high flop, then Gold bet at the turn and Cunningham folded.  Gold had K-Jo, and took Butler out in 5th ($3,216,182).  Cunningham’s stack has continued to erode, including a bluff from Wasicka with K-Q on an ace-high board and three hearts.

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