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#006 – Matusow and 862 “Others” Left at Second Break
Once you get to the top thousand, nobody really cares about the tournament, right?
You are correct in gathering that I didn’t make it to three digits, busting 1,117th. I’m pretty sure that’s out of the money, but now that I have a pipeline to Stu, the tournament director, I’ll ask him if in the future they can flatten the payouts and maybe pay down to 1,200 in a 1,900-player event like this.
Matusow has over 14,000 chips, in 42nd place at the break. This makes him a very dangerous player. With a smaller stack, and/or earlier in the tournament, the pros are willing to take chances, bet on coin flips. It’s also not impossible that it’s not worth the same effort or focus as a live event with a five-figure buy-in.
But, now that more than half the field is gone and Mike has a lot of chips, it really FEELS like the competitive fires have been stoked.
I’m drowning my sorrows in another tournament (or several) and keeping my eye on Matusow and FTOPS #1. I may or may not post another update tonight. (Probably depends on how well I’M doing in whatever consolation event I’m in.
It’s 15 minutes since they restarted play and he’s up to 19,000, having beaten all-in 8-8 with his Q-Q. This puts him on the first page of the leaderboard, just ahead of Steve Zolotow. Z, who drew Steve Brecher to his left at the beginning of the tournament, was all-in with 9-9 about 15 minutes into the tournament. He was CALLING all-in, though the board was all low cards. The other player was pushing A-K too hard and too far. Z, who had already lost a bunch of chips, doubled up, saying, “questionable hand, desperate call.” Now he has 18,000.
A railbird at another table, during a discussion of the pros in the field, said, “Zolotow’s a donkey,” to which I replied, “Yeah, he sucks. Only TWO bracelets.”
