#897 – WSOP Final Table Update #5 – Caprice, 2009

James Akenhead busted in ninth place at 4:40 PM. He moved all-in with pocket threes and was called by Kevin Schaffel with pocket nines.

I don’t know James but I’m increasingly impressed that he is becoming one of the world’s elite tournament poker players. Just 26, he has already cashed in more than two dozen tournaments. Unfortunately, he is emerging as a tragic figure, known for where he has fallen just short.

In the first Big Field event of the 2008 World Series, $1,500 NLHE, he outlasted a field of about a zillion players and Grant Hinkle tried to make a move. Hinkle reraised all-in and James called him, holding A-K. Hinkle had T-4s. Imagine Akenhead’s horror at seeing a flop of T-T-4. It didn’t even matter that Grant made quads on the turn, except to whatever malevolent being was trying to get a laugh at James Akenhead’s expense.

James played great throughout the Main Event but was the shortest stack at the table, so no one gave him much of a chance. In the interim, he made the final table of WSOP-Europe, but finished in ninth place.

A friend of Akenhead told me, right after he busted, “He said to me during the break, ‘I can’t finish in ninth again. I just can’t.’”

Today was like a day out of the Old Testament for James Akenhead. He started short, didn’t get cards, got pushed around, and finally was forced to move in with K-Q. As I mentioned in the last post, through a stroke of good fortune, he tripled up. When I saw that, especially when Antoine Saout doubled up immediately after, I thought, “This game has changed. These two talented Europeans are no longer short-stacked. We’re going to see these guys play their game.”

Then James found pocket kings and ran into pocket aces. Akenhead and Kevin Schaffel did all these could to wring value from each other, when it didn’t matter at all. Kevin’s aces held up and James was again on a short stack.

In the interim between KK v. AA and 33 v. 99, James Akenhead was involved in a very curious hand with Phil Ivey. With less than 12 big blinds, he raised Phil Ivey’s big blind from the small blind to 1.2 million. He started the hand with just under 6 million so, though he didn’t have to move all-in, he was close to getting the odds to call with just about anything.

Phil thought for less than a minute and moved all-in. It seemed almost inconceivable to me but James folded. I think these were the numbers. There were 450k in antes and 600k in blinds. James added 1 million more. That put just over 2 million in the pot. Phil called the 800k additional and reraised 4.7 million more. That means Akenhead was deciding to call 4.7 million to win a pot worth 7.5 million.

I’m sure James didn’t have much, but could he assume he was that big an underdog to Phil in that circumstance?

Even if I’m right and James held out too long and considered his survival too dear, he is clearly a gifted player whose outcome was determined by fate in those other big hands. Shauna has spent part of the afternoon with about a dozen or so of James’s friends who flew out – many of them yesterday – to root him on and support him, including Roberto and Antoni Romanello. The only silver lining in this is that James can retreat into the company of his friends after such a dispiriting day, so far from home.

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