Quest of a Closet Poker Player

I’ll fire up a post an hour until this thing is done. T-minus twenty minutes until kickoff.

It’s mainly a friends and family crowd combined with a few hundred spectators here at the Rio. I’m sure it will have all the pageantry by the time it gets to our homes, but it is a bit of an anticlimax to not see a sea of a few thousand to watch the endgame here. Still not too late to get PPV from ESPN. You must have to use IE instead of Firefox because if said my system is no good.

Phil Gordon and Ali Nejad on the PPV set, just constructed yesterday at the back of the Amazon Room.

Pauly, BJ, and Lacey Jones. No media really have access for the most part.

I snuck in a little play at the MATH last night and had John Armbrust rail me for a bit. He had about 200 emails to respond to, and it’s been a bit dizzying for him I’m sure. I’ll post again in an hour or so.

UPDATE 1:30PM

Philip Hilm, Final Table Chipleader, is out to Jerry Yang!! Yang, who Armbrust pegged as taking this down, has been a little warrior. He has moved all-in twice, once on a baby board where Lee Childs folded queens face-up. He then called Hilm on a Kd-Jd-5c-2h board. Hilm had 8d-5d, and Yang showed Ad-Ks, and 6c sent the chipleader at the start of this thing out, talking to the radio crew as he leaves in 9th. Yang is up to 44.5m or so. I watched Yang play as I was covering John Armbrust. He is a very sharp player, he had the goods every time I saw him get into a hand. John lost one hand to him, I’m pretty sure.

I think people saw this as being a foldathon, but it has been something to watch so far.

UPDATE 2:00PM

Could we really finish this in an hour? Jerry Yang makes a big call on Lee Watkinson’s all-in re-raise for 9.745m total. Yang showed A-9 and Watkinson had A-7. ” I haven’t changed my approach much coming into the final table,” said Yang. “I just study my opponent and act.” He’s now at 55.5m with Tuan Lam second with 20.625m

UPDATE 2:30PM

Wow, some sort of excitement in the Amazon Room. In a battle of the blinds, Lee Childs raises 720k, and after several minutes, Yang moves all-in. Childs took several minutes, and called with Kh-Jc. Was it a good call? He’d laid down queens on a baby flop against Yang, but he made the call for 4.98m more with Kh-Jc. Yang had Js-8s, then the flop came 6c-4c-4d. Lots of buzz, etc. 8c came on the river, and everyone not connected to these guys started looking at one another in amazement. 9d on the river finished off Lee Childs.

This hand has to be looked at closely for both players, I think. Yang knew that Childs had laid down queens, which was not good to show the table. This led to the shove. Yang is hardly a luckbox, a very deliberate player. He took about five minutes to call Lee Edler’s all-in Sunday when he had A-Ks and Edler was short stacked. He never seems to get his money into the pot unless he has the goods. He’ll be tough take chips away from.

UPDATE 5:35PM

Down to four as Yang busts RaiNKhaN then Raymond Rahme took down the first non-Yang scalp, England’s Jon Kalmar. Blinds are 150k/300k with a 40k ante, Yang has 71.3m with Rahme solidly in 2nd with 30.0m. Tuan Lam has dripped to 17.46m, and Alex Kravchenko is the shortie with 8.71m.

Kravchenko has raised in smaller increments than Yang. Yang hasn’t been a maniac for the most part, although he re-raised all-in earlier with Js-8s. Rahme is a strange bird as he’s made some sick calls when I’ve watched him. I don’t think he likes giving his chips away, so he’ll be holding hard to them.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.