#387 - Erik Seidel Has Won the WPT Foxwoods Poker Classic

The final table, according to Card Player’s web site, took 12 hours but heads-up play lasted only one hand. Erik Seidel, who began 3-handed play close in chips to Robert Richardson and Andrew Barta, became the most active player at the table, putting in small raises almost every hand. He took a substantial lead, yielded when challenged, and then crippled Barta when Andrew finally made a stand with A-Q. Erik had J-J and Barta was eliminated soon thereafter.

On the very first hand heads-up, Seidel made his standard small raise and Richardson (at a chip disadvantage of about 5-to-1) called. On the ace-high flop, Erik made top pair and Richardson made third pair. By the turn, they got it all-in and Seidel’s pair of aces held up. Richardson, who started the day as one of the two very short stacks at the final table, fought gamely to the end.

Unfortunately, the showdown between Erik Seidel and Ted Forrest did not take place. Forrest played against type, getting all his chips in preflop on two occasions with pairs, only to run into bigger pairs - first, 9-9 v. K-K, and finally J-J v. A-A. It was some very bad luck on Ted’s part and it’s hard to imagine folding to a reraise when you’re short-stacked with J-J.

Even though if Ted got it all in with 9-9 I probably would have done the same and bet my wife and kids as a side bet, I’ll probably always be puzzled about how Forrest got sucked into “the shove game.” It looked from the Card Player updates like a very tight final table, Forrest had a lot of chips, and he was, after all, Ted Forrest. I can’t imagine a better navigator of murky, marginal post-flop situations than Ted Forrest.

Roxanna told me after that Ted was dispelling the negative karma before the really big events come up, the WPT Championship and the World Series of Poker. Too bad, though, that he didn’t get a little further.

Other Tilt-related accomplishments:

* Scott Clements won a No-Limit Hold ‘Em event at the Bellagio Five Star Classic (actually, all the events there are NLHE) a couple days back. He is disgustingly successful live and does just as well in online tournaments. I hate him in the way I hope some people on Full Tilt hate me.

* Former Tilter Shannon Elizabeth has been doing great on Dancing with the Stars. I haven’t seen 30 minutes of 2007 WSOP coverage on ESPN so it goes without saying that I haven’t been a regular viewer of DWTS. I object that they have two nights of programming, 2-3 hours worth, wrung out of about 20 minutes of actual dancing. They replay it, the reposition it, the highlight it, the string it out. But Shannon has been enchanting, and I say that not because she is so naturally beautiful that she seems unnatural (though I suppose that’s part of it). I say it because she’s a friend and she’s becoming a really, really good dancer. An enjoyable bit of fuller last week was a phony segment on the little-known hobbies of the stars. She was shown earnestly answering e-mails as the going-on-10-years president of the MacGuyver Fan Club.

Congrats to Erik Seidel. He’s probably looking through his music wish list to figure out 10 or 20 CDs to buy with his $992,000 first-prize.