TOC Day 3: HOLY SHIT — MAN WALKS ON FUCKING MOON

Again we had breakfast plans for 10:30 AM. I repeated my mantra before we left the room. Bill asked me with a grin, "So, what are you going to do if you find yourself in the final day of the TOC?" "I dunno, try to double up 4 times, I guess."

At breakfast with the crew, we discussed what my game plan should be. I figured that the other tables were relatively "cash-poor" (as Bill put it) and there should be some bust outs early, so it made sense to play conservatively until we re-drew for 2 tables. Also it seemed like the rest of the players at my table were experienced NL tournament players (I went around to various people the night before to try and get a line on some of the players and it seemed there were no soft spots whatsoever at my table) so they should be aware of the situation too. I expected the play to be mostly raise-and-take-it, and some raise-re-raise-and-take-it, but with no one really getting out of line or gambling it up.

This was mostly true, except for one key confrontation I got into with Mike Matusow. He raised pre-flop and I decided that I liked the prospects of my hand, but I wanted to see what hit the flop and decide what to do there, rather than try to get into a guessing match pre-flop. The flop came down something like J74 with two spades. He bet 50K, somewhat of a large bet. I thought and moved in, he looked upset and folded. I think this hand rattled him, because he mentioned more than once afterwards how he'd made a mistake on that hand. Twisting the knife a bit, I once asked him "Was the mistake betting or folding?" He felt he could have gotten the same information by making a smaller bet and thus losing less when I moved in.

We finally did break and re-draw down to two tables, much to everyone's relief (pretty much no one at our table was happy with the draw). Also notice in the seat assignments for Day 3 one Alan Colon in seat 9 of our table with a short stack at $39,000. He got high-carded away from our table fairly soon after play started, after the first couple bustouts. Also note that 5 of the 9 final table players started the day at Table 1.

I don't remember too much about the play at 2 tables except I realized that every bust-out drew me closer and closer to the final table. And I drank more tonic water. I do remember going dry for what seemed like a really long time, watching Song, Phan, and Arieh throwing chips around the table and wishing I could find a hand again. I believe I was down to $130,000 at one point. Finally I won a few pots, and when Roy Thung finally busted in 10th place, the final table was set.

This is where the Day 3 title from the Onion becomes relevant. After the bust-out, and throughout the dinner break, I was continually reminded of the Onion page and kept thinking to myself "HOLY SHIT, I'M AT THE FINAL FUCKING TABLE! JESUS CHRIST!" I called a friend back home in California who was sort of the communications link to my other non-RGP friends and relayed that thought.

I was pretty confident of the table situation. I had Young and Hasan both on my right, and was second chip leader. Things looked good for me to go deep.

I forget how the subject of the hat came up, but at the dinner break JP mentioned to me "It's in my car, I can get it if you want it." What the heck, let's start a tradition. JP went to retrieve the hat and then we all sat around in our hotel room to relax a bit. As 8 PM approached, I put the hat on and we walked through the casino, up the escalator, to the TOC area. What a strange procession we must have seemed :-) However Las Vegas being Las Vegas, I was getting one look from people but not two. One woman said "Nice hat!"

While standing around outside the TOC area, I talked to a succession of well-wishers and some of the press. In descending order of frequency, the first question people asked me was:

1. "Are you really going to wear that tonight?"
2. "You realize the guy who wore that last year busted out on the first hand of the final table?"
3. "What's the story with the hat?"

I kept pointing out that since Kevin Song was the only one who covered me at the start of the final table, it would be extremely difficult for me to bust out on the first hand, but after that we would see.

I've decided not to really go through a play by play of the hands, mostly because most of them are a blur now and there are other people who had the benefit of pen and paper or recording devices who will be reporting on these events. If people have specific questions about hands that they can describe sufficiently for me to remember them, I'll be happy to go over what I was thinking.

I do recall that Hasan Habib was starting to get irritated with me because I kept coming over the top of his raises when we were in steal position and he could never find a hand he was willing to take a stand with. "You never let a raise go by, do you?" he asked. I know his frustration because I've been on the other end of it, but I really did have legitimate hands. On 3 successive occasions I had KJ, KQ, and AQ, all of which I thought warranted a re-raise when both of us were in steal position (Hasan was on my immediate right). This series of confrontations whittled his stack down to a point where he was unable to recover.

I do remember most of the bust-out hands:

I don't think I'll forget the Kevin Song bust-out hand for a while. Phil Hellmuth asked me if I wanted to write a Hand of the Week and I think this was one of the key hands of the tournament as it propelled me into the final table chip lead, so you'll have to wait a while to read my thoughts on this one. (You can now read my write-up here.)

Young Phan claimed to have raised blind on the hand where he had K2 and I came over the top with KQ. At any rate, again KQ looked like a reasonable hand to try and eliminate him with if I could shut everyone else out, which is what happened.

Jean-Bernard Bot went all-in over the top of my raise with KT, and I felt the pot size and set of hands he could have justified a call. He had 88 and a T hit the board. I got up to shake his hand and congratulated him in French — he did well to survive to 4th on a relatively short stack.

So when we got down to heads up, after a few sort of exploratory hands to get a feel for his play (recall that he got moved to Table 3 early on the final day with a short stack, then come back to the final table with a decent stack and hadn't been playing very many hands since then) I felt that I could outplay him after the flop, so that I had better chances at playing a 4-street game than trying to get into a guessing match pre-flop. This is the point where I started limping more, calling his raises more, and re-raising less.

I do not mean in any way to detract from Alan's play. I was interested to read on RGP a post from someone who mentioned that Alan was not experienced in no-limit hold'em and had borrowed a book the night before to brush up. Knowing that, his final day is all the more impressive to me, because he did a pretty good job to recover from his short stack and picked his moments wisely to make it down to heads-up. Clearly he is a very smart guy with good fundamental poker sense to have picked up what he did that quickly, and I'm sure the next person who gets heads-up with him in a NL tournament will have a very difficult time indeed.

The 96 hand. Ugh. This was a bad call. I got a read on him that he was not happy with his hand but I misjudged where his hand fell on the scale of "I don't want you to call." I'm sure I was visibly upset with myself after this. I had 3rd pair after all, and the pot was small enough to get away from even if he is bluffing. There was no reason for me to hand him those chips. Note here the advantage of being the first to go all-in. Even though I had him out-chipped, he is all-in so I can't blow him off the hand.

On the next hand, I made a raise to start trying to get my chips back. He moved me in. At this point I came this > < close to just throwing it all in on a marginal hand. I did have a legitimate stealing hand, but not a legitimate defending-all-in hand, and I was still upset. As Andy Glazer said in his story, you could tell from my body language that I very nearly called. Fortunately I recovered, thinking to myself "You've gotten this far, giving up and pitching it in on this hand would be the height of stupidity." Bill always says "Die well" meaning pick your best spot to go all-in and then at least you know you've given it your best shot. Calling all-in here would NOT have been taking the best of it.

(In Andy's report, he says this hand happened after the Ac6c vs. KdQc confrontation. I would be more inclined to rely on his account since he was taking notes, but I would have sworn this near-meltdown took place after the hand I thought I made a bad mistake on. Can someone confirm?)

On the 86 hand, it might have looked like I was still upset when I flipped my hand over and called. I guess I still was a little, but I felt I needed to double up to have some ammo to go to work with, and on the 977 flop this was probably the best draw I'd see in a while, and there was a good chance he had no pair yet giving me 6 more immediate outs (of course he has redraws to a pair or may have me dominated). Any emotion I showed reflects my knowledge that I needed to draw out. Fortunately a T came right off on the turn to end the suspense.

The final key hand, of course, was the AT vs. J7. This was agonizing in light of the previous 96 gaffe, but I had top pair this time, and I felt he was capable of continuing to semi-bluff overcards. I'd checked and called on the flop because I'd been betting out a lot. I did not expect him to move in all his chips on the turn, however. Still, I made the call and the rest is history. He went in a couple hands later with J8 vs. my Q8 and it was all over.