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| World
Poker Tour |
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The World Poker Tour, now
in its second season, is a weekly televised ( USA only ) series of thirteen
poker tournaments that are united under one banner for television. What makes
the WPT different is that it will film the most prestigious tournaments in an
arena specifically designed for television and air them during a regularly
scheduled season. |
| Day
Three |
| WPT Championship, APRIL
19-23 2004 Bellagio Las Vegas, NV |
 Jesse May, our venerable raconteur and columnist, writes from Vegas
on this years championship event, the $25,000 buy-in No-Limit Holdem event.
Day 3 Notes: |
Fifty-two players left,
paying fifty, and it’s been a bloodbath all day long. Some players
dropping like flies while trying to move, others hanging on while dragging
their fingernails on the chalkboard. Corner table of eight and Jeff Schulman is
the weary short stack at his table with a single column of blue, about 65,000
worth. Antes are 1,000 now, with blinds of five and ten thousand more, and Lyle
Berman snakes it up for thirty thousand in mid position. They all fold up shop
A few hands later Lyle makes up the small blind and Irishman Paul Leckey raises
thirty thousand more. Berman looks at Leckey’s stack. He has him well
covered. All in, says Berman, and Leckey folds. Berman has opened the guns wide
– he’s raising or reraising three out of four pots.
A whoop
goes up among the players, they’re all in the money, and a three minute
break is taken while there are handshakes among the players and the rail. John
Ubia’s team is ecstatic. He was in for $100, has never played higher than
2-4 Hold’em and has been shortstacked forever, down to 19,000 early in the
day. A tall Nigerian fellow with a black skullcap is yelling tears of joy into
his cellphone. He hangs up and says to no one in particular, “I’m
going to bed. I haven’t eaten all day, I need some soup, my stomach is
terrible, call me if anything happens.” Sometimes being a sweater is the
most stressful job of all, but don’t worry, your man was back at the rail
fifteen minutes later. Ubia is the most unruffled of them all, he just says,
“When’s dinner? I’m hungry.”
A redraw at 45
players, and the most interesting table is in the center of the room, with
Hasan Habib poisitoned midway between Ted Forrest and Mike Matusow. Mohammed
Ibrahim is at the table as well, and four of the biggest stacks of the
tournament look to square off. Habib has seen tough draws every day, and it
doesn’t seem to bother him. Ted Forrest looks like he looked in the old
days, lost in his own world, unruffled, wearing a bemused smile and eyes that
always pay attention but get wide rather than slitted when he’s put to a
decision. It’s deceiving. Forrest tries to take Ace-king through two kings
and ends up losing 250,000. He shakes his head slowly. He’s down to half a
million, which is only slightly above average chips.
 Next table over and a man
makes it 50,000 from third position. Dan Harrington reraises all-in. The player
calls nearly 150,000 more to be all-in himself and flips over an incredible
queen-jack offsuit. Harrington turns over two sevens and doesn’t betray a
flicker of emotion when the dealer burns and flops a lady. Dan just stacks his
remaining fifty thousand. No sigh, no nothing. Two hands later and Harrington
raises all-in. He’s not wasting time. And he’s not going to let the
blinds go by. Everyone folds and Harrington has increased his stack by 50%. Two
hands later and he raises all-in again. Wins uncontested. And now he’s up
to 100,000. The best can play stacks of all sizes. Jeff Schulman on his right
hasn’t played a hand in over thirty minutes and is desperately short. Two
hands later and Harrington is all-in again with a reraise from the big blind,
his pocket tens double through ace-seven, and he’s back where he started.
From hero to zero to hero in one round of the table. Dan Harrington is wearing
the same plaid collared shirt and orange hat that he wore on Day 1. It’s
definitely the ugliest shirt left in the tournament, quite possibly the most
garish in the whole casino. Up close it’s worse, bright yellow pineapples
with large green frond leaves that rest on a black and yellow large plaid
print. I’d give anything to own it.
It’s the last level of
the night. Bewitching hour and Harrington has gotten another double through
with the queen-king, betting all-in when a queen hits the river. That puts him
up to over half a million. Thirty-three players left, I don’t know how he
does it. Only four tables now and Harrington is sitting next to Jason Lester.
Third and fourth in the second biggest poker tournament in history and here
they are again. They’re chatting amicably between hands but now it’s
Lester who’s gone short, down to 230,000 or so and he’s got no small
chips at all. Definitely hasn’t picked up any antes in a while and it gets
serious when the cards come out, Lester sitting back in his chair with arms
folded and a tight lipped expression. A huge hand develops at the corner table
and loads of players stand up and go over to watch. Harrington and Lester never
move a muscle. They’re the only ones left seated at their table, Lester
raising the pot as soon as the hubbub starts and winning uncontested.
Next table over and David Pham is bounding up and down from his chair
every hand to catch words of encouragement from his lady on the rail.
Pham’s on the right of red jacketed Russell Rosenblum, the most mild
mannered tiger you’d ever meet. Sixth place in the WSOP in 2002, he sits
low in his chair with a permanent sad sack expression. But poker’s
illusion and there’s a fiery energy inside the quiet round man. It was Day
2 when I saw Russell play what must have been his most crucial hand of the
tournament. Rosenblum and a big guy are the only ones in the tournament still
playing. It’s break time, but they’re locked up in the last hand, and
Russell calls fifteen thousand on the turn and then goes into the tank when
your man goes all in on the river. I tell you what, Rosenblum’s a good
watcher, eyes sunk into his little round face. There’s three diamonds and
a pair on the board, but Russell calls about seventy thousand, all his chips
with a straight, and his emotion comes out when his hand is called good. He
walks away from the table and brandishes a Tiger Woods fist pump on his way to
the break.
Hasan Habib is sitting high up on two chairs stacked together
with the expensive tinted shades, and when the cards are dealt Hasan’s
head looks out from the two seat a full foot above the level of the others. If
he’s not the chip leader he’s not far away, and he slowly
contemplates a Rosenblum button reraise all-in to his sixty thousand under the
gun bet. Habib gives it up and briefly steps away from the table. Russell
doesn’t show. He’s now got 600,000.
Day 4 will be a day for
the cream to rise to the top. All the players who haven’t been there
before will have been lying in their beds all night and staring at the ceiling.
Turn the light back on, look at the draw sheet, look at the payout sheet, and
stare at the ceiling. Day 4 will have slow rising levels and a whole lot of
play. It could conceivably take seven levels (or even eight) to get to the
final, and many hearts will just give out.
Who will sleep the sleep of
the sound? TJ Cloutier. You can say what you want about TJ, but he proves again
and again that his consistency in the big field multi-day tournaments is rather
unmatched in the history of poker. I would be surprised not to see him go deep
in this one. Mohammed Ibrahim, who I’ve never seen before, was cool and
impressive. I’ve watched very little of Tom Jacobs in this tournament but
he’s an old timer, second in the WSOP more than ten years ago and a steady
handed mountain of a man. Chau Giang looks like he could play for eleven days
straight. He conserves his energy at the table, patient so patient, and then
flips over pocket aces with an excited burst of Mandarin pitter patter after
he’s craftily let an ace-king walk into all his chips before the flop.
He’s meant to be one of the top cash players in the world and Day 4 may be
the day when he struts his stuff.
But the man I like best to win the
tournament right now is Hasan Habib. It was Sunday before the big one started
and Hasan was sitting by himself at the bar drinking a grapefruit juice from a
cocktail glass. He was focused on that alone. He sipped his juice and studied a
bowl of nuts, giving the task his undivided attention. He’s been calm and
deliberate every time I’ve looked during this tournament. Hasan could very
easily have been WSOP champion in 2000, when a few sour breaks might have cost
him his title. The report was that he disappeared from the poker altogether for
nearly two years, but he’s been back now for a while and racking up
placings.
Day 3 was all about survival and making the money. Day 4 is
about putting yourself in a position to win the 2.7 million dollars. I think
we’ll have a clear idea who the champion will be when the curtain falls at
around two am. I think I’ll be watching.
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