Congratulations Peter Eastgate! You may be the most boring person to ever walk the earth, but you won fair and square!
More commentary tomorrow, I need to sleep.
* Youngest WSOP winner ever: I’m curious to see how Phil Hellmuth reacts to losing his title, but I doubt he cares that much. He’s moved on.
* Boringist player ever: C’mon, show some expression. Even after he won he still wouldn’t celebrate. I think I saw him shake hands with a couple buddies. What does it take with this guy? Maybe he was keeping focus with heavy medication.
* Boring table: The players just weren’t very interesting. Rheem was fun. The “November Nine” indeed. Ridiculous.
* Editing: ESPN skips most hands. Last year they showed about nine hands out of eighty or so. I think they showed four hands of heads-up play. I wonder how many hands there actually were? This is unfortunate because it means I can’t decide the most important question:
* Luck: On TV, it seems that Eastgate was ridiculously lucky. He knocked people out with trips after the flop twice, a full house, and won the entire tournament with the wheel straight. On the other hand, he got the straight because there was no pre-raise flop. Generally, people were letting him play cheap, giving him the chance to hit big hands. In coverage from previous rounds he seemed neither particularly lucky or unlucky. Where to place him? Commenters, do your stuff.
Liked Raymer and he turned out to be a great player…following year he finished top 100 which is amazing. Actually, I would vote for Moneymaker for 2 reasons. First, his name. When I watched those episodes, I thought they made up a nickname or something. Classic. And he played great bluffing Sammy Farja a couple times, stone cold. Can’t stand Hasham – wished that mortgage broker won it over him. Comparison is hard though because it’s all about editing and they only show the hands they want to show so like Muttrox said, it’s hard to dissect the play.
Out of the amateurs that have won recently, I agree that I liked Raymer. He just took everyone else’s crap (recall Matasow laid into him), and just let his poker do the talking.
It was very weird to have that many fans and partisans there. But it wasn’t because of normalcy, it was because of the big time delay — players who already knew they were going to win millions of dollars had time to arrange flights for their friends.
I was rooting for the truck driver, and then Rheem. I’d like to see a pro win it. I think Raymer was my favorite, not sure exactly why.
Men – I’ve played low stakes limit hold ’em at the casino. I’m with you. It’s boring and no one has a real incentive to play well, they’er always calling. I’ve been in two tourneys. Maybe I’ll write that up as a separate post.
I knew I’d be in the minority here, but I thought it was actually a welcome change to have a normal person win the WSOP. I mean, it’s really getting out of control. Everyone is obnoxious, with entourages, thumping their chests, yelling “ONE TIME!!” all over the place (whatever that means), running back to the crowd to be engulfed in their adoration. Come on. Can you imagine Johnny Chan or Doyle Brunson in his younger days stalking around the table, hat on backwards, yelling “One time!”, and then getting mobbed by some crowd of drunken pals singing and chanting? You can be interesting, intimidating, telegenic, or whatever you want to be without all of the made-for-TV antics.
That being said, the final table was boring, but I think you need a big name or two to make things interesting, or someone with a giant stack of chips that can be the “bad guy”. It’s nice to have the David vs. Goliath story at the final table, rather than a bunch of evenly matched 20-something no-names that you know you’ll never hear from again. The “no-name” winner was a good story a few years ago, but with the parade of no-name winners lately (Varkonyi, Moneymaker, Raymer, etc.), we’ve had enough darkhorse stories.
agreed with all your comments….was so disappointed with ESPN coverage of final table….catering too much to the mass population…perhaps they should have extended coverage on ESPN2 at 11pm like back in the old days before poker got popular.
Muttrox, makes you want to try your hand in tournament play, doesn’t it…? Do you every play in casinos? The 1st 7 times I sat down playing low limit, I won everytime playing “by the book”…the problem is that you can win that way….but with low limit, I got bored folding most hands, and it’s nearly impossible to bluff and you have 4-5 callers pre-flop everytime so it’s mostly luck and playing by the book which is boring. I’m curious if you’ve experienced it before Muttrox…I presume you are a “by the book” conservative aggressive player…I think I could read you easily and take you out – after all, I am Men the Master!!! 🙂