FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#216- WSOP #65 – The New Champion

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A NEW FACE FOR POKER

WHAT’S THIS PINK PONY DOING ON MY DESK?

Obviously, I’m not telling you anything new in informing you that Jerry Yang is the new poker World Champion. Congratulations to him. He won the championship at about 3:50 AM on Wednesday morning. The heads-up session with Tuan Lam went longer than I thought it would; I think someone announced it went longer than any of the previous four years’ heads-up confrontations for the Championship.

Within seven hours – just slightly longer than it took to get our room service order delivered to the Amazon Room – I was on the road home. I discovered my computer broken and my desk buried underneath Valerie’s stuffed animals and print outs of the hottest teen heartthrobs of the previous five minutes. It’s going to take me a little time to dig out from the mess, at which time I’ll make up on that list of blogs from the Series that I listed in #212, as well as a concluding blog from the Series. (I had started writing it during the endless hours of four-handed play.)

But here are a couple quick observations on our new champ.

1. I did not hear Jerry Yang, either before the final table or during, talking about his relationship with god or how that relationship is responsible for any of his success. But a lot of people said to me it would be bad if some bible thumper was suddenly the World Champion. All I saw was a smart man, a professional, a humble man, a family man, a man who had overcome great hardship even to make it to the United States, much less accomplish all he did even BEFORE finding himself at the final table of the Main Event. He seemed like a nice guy. I think he’ll be a good champion.

2. Obviously, the folks I talked to at Full Tilt about him were thrilled because he’s a Full Tilt guy. PokerStars had the first three Internet-era Champions and Gold was with Bodog when he won the title. Obviously, Full Tilt – along with every other web site – was hungry to get the 2007 Champion. The guy from Full Tilt responsible for coordinating such things told me, on Saturday night when they were getting down to the last 36, “It’s like the Wild West in the Amazon Room. All the online sites, all the agents, jostling to line up players.”

3. Just because he’s affiliated with Full Tilt doesn’t mean I’m going to cut him any extra slack. You can see that I wrote good stuff about his play on the first two hands (#213, ironically titled “Man Without a Country,” which is how I heard someone describe Jerry, though I wasn’t referring to him in the title) but I didn’t describe him in a very impressive way in #214. For that matter, I didn’t say anything good about Lee Watkinson’s play on the hand in which he was eliminated and Watkinson is also a Full Tilt pro.

4. So now I have to tell you something good about his play. I thought he played the heads-up very well. He had a big chip lead, but his opponent wasn’t forced to move in or fold. Yang chose a good strategy: make him move all-in or fold. When Tuan Lam didn’t adjust well, Yang turned up the heat, betting Lam out of pot after pot until he was more or less forced to move all-in or fold. I didn’t like how big he was raising all day long but I thought it was a very good strategy heads-up, especially against Tuan.

5. Everyone had bright ideas how Full Tillt or poker in general could “use” Jerry Yang: he should debate the opponents of online poker, many of whom have quasi-religious reasons for their opposition, or he should to Full Tilt ads with Chris “Jesus” Ferguson.

No, no, no, no.

Shouldn’t it be obvious? Jerry Yang and Mike Matusow. Not the people, the avatars. They are the last two players at the end of a Full Tilt tournament. Yang, with pocket aces, calls Matusow’s all-in bet. Matusow has nothing but a gutshot draw; he needs a four. He types: “Please, god. One time. Just one time give me a four.”

A four comes on the river. Yang types a bunch of things that can’t be understood because they look like @#$@ @#$@#%.

Now THAT’S marketing!

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