World
Series of Poker T+34 10K Day 4,5 The End
It's
my last night in Las Vegas, I drive back
tomorrow.
Today was the final table of the 10K event,
the poker seemed almost secondary to the
TV production going on in the room. ESPN
was filming the event, they had an amazing
no expense spared seven cameras including
four handhelds and overheads so were able
to capture absolutely everything, they
had a whole production studio set up,
just walking into the room you'd believe
you were on a movie set, Gabe Kaplan did
a hilarious introduction and is a commentator
on the tape (but I didn't get to hear
that), this should be a really good video.
As for the final table, wow, as expected
there were no top name players, probably
the most famous was the 23 year old Englishman
Julian Gardner, he's the young phenomenon
in Europe. Robert Varkonyi is an old university
friend of JP Massar, I was lucky enough
to meet Robert and his wife tonight when
we all went to the steak house for Robert's
celebration. What's it like hanging around
with a multi millionaire? Well, for one
thing they keep the restaurant open just
for you, we arrived after they had closed
after spending an eternity getting Robert's
paperwork sorted out. Robert is such an
unlikely World Champion, he's quiet and
unassuming, doesn't like the limelight,
has almost no tournament experience and
knows he hit very lucky, but he also played
fearlessly, often coming over the top
of already raised pots, taking risks with
lesser hands when it meant busting someone
out, and most importantly reading players
and situations so incredibly well. When
they were down to three and he had 2/3
of the chips they went to talk deal, but
they couldn't agree so this final table
had absolutely no deals, Robert really
did win 2 million. As for the shaving
Phil's head fiasco, Robert never wanted
to do it, he got down to the motions just
to teach Phil a lesson, but then he was
graciously letting him off the hook, saying
"just be a good boy from now on", and
for him (and me) that would have been
enough, but with the lynch mob crowd screaming
for a scalping Phil felt like he had to
go through with it, which he bravely did.
The
following paragraph is gushing with praise
for Binion's, some viewers may find it
offensive, parental discretion is advised...
As
for Binion's, you've probably heard Matt
Savage and Mark Napolitano saying how
wonderful they treated them and how fantastic
the whole series was, and some of you
think they are saying it for political
reasons to stay in Binion's good graces,
well you're going to get the same speech
from me. This WSOP ran flawlessly, Matt
was incredible, taking everything in stride
from beginning to end, Binion's gave us
everything we asked for to make it a success
(in my case thanks to many people including
Steve, Brian, George, Tex, Kevin in MIS,
and the security guys, especially Craig,
Ed, Eric and Henry). Dave ran the super
sats flawlessly, the single SATs also
ran flawlessly. Yes, the dealer walkout
was a horrible situation where I can honestly
see both sides, but other than that (other
than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy
the show?) IMO the WSOP was a huge success.
So,
it's all over, this was an incredible
five weeks for me, I made some very good
friends, met many nice people, got to
be right in the middle of the action,
and learnt a lot of poker after being
around the cream of the crop this whole
time, now I actually feel that I can compete
in some of these bigger tournaments. I
ended up down about $1,000 for the trip,
but there again I did get to play in over
$15,000 worth of tournaments so I can't
complain. The clock was a hit (I think
it will even appear on the ESPN video)
and I got some good leads from being here
so it was worth the trip.
Writing
these trip reports was a lot of fun, and
it is like a diary for me to look back
on (with my memory I need all the documentation
I can get), I hope you enjoyed them.
IGHN.
Paul
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