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#895 – WSOP Final Table Update #3 – What I Saw the First Hour (& Twenty Mins)
It’s 2 PM and they’ve played about 25-30 hands. Because they continue to play as I write, this entry is going to be a little choppy. You can follow the hand-by-hand on Pokernews.com – and their coverage is great – but here are some things I noticed that will hopefully put you a little closer to the action.
They started with 7:16 left in the 120k-240/30k level. On the first hand, Jeff Shulman on the button open-raised for 1.25 million, 5x the BB. A lot of people seemed surprised but it made total sense. He has Darvin Moon, the chip leader, in his left in the small blind. He has to announce early that he doesn’t want Darvin making a move when Jeff’s making a move. And because James Akenhead, the shortest stack, was in the big blind, that raise put him in pretty much an all-in-or-fold situation. Both Moon and Akenhead folded.
We haven’t seen a turn card in the first hour and not that many flops. I don’t think we’ve gone beyond flop-bet-fold yet.
Darvin Moon has to be feeling GREAT right now. His first action was reraising from the big, getting James Akenhead to fold after his raise to 775K. (They had just moved to 300k-600k/40k.) With Akenhead being on short chips and raising UTG, Darvin probably had a big hand. Still, it’s tough being the chip leader and having your first bit or two of aggression go bad. Especially because he is not an experienced tournament player, I’d assume it’s important for him to get his equilibrium. This helped. About four hands later, he again reraised and again got the original raiser to fold. Toward the end of the hour, he made a button-raise of Phil Ivey’s big blind and Ivey folded.
If I’m Darvin, I’m thinking, “I’m not cursed. I didn’t use all my good fortune. I don’t have to worry about making mistakes or running into bad luck early. This could actually happen.” I thought Dennis Phillips, last year, had the opposite experience early and I was incredibly impressed with how much heart he showed, how he rebounded, and how he almost made it back to the final table in 2009. But all that started AFTER he lost a lot of chips early and all the non-partisans in the audience smirked, “amateur.” That’s a weight Darvin Moon either doesn’t have or is bearing effortlessly.
All nine players are still in. (As I’m typing and watching and they’re playing, it’s gotten to be 2:30. We’re on a 20 minute break that started 22 minutes ago.) Positions are approximately the same. James Akenhead remains the short stack and, according to Roberto Romanello, who flew in with his brother Antoni yesterday in support of James, Akenhead looked very stressed.
I can understand why. They are picking on his blinds and raises and he can’t get the cards or the situations to get anything going.
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