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Posted by Editor | Filed under 2010 NBC Heads-Up Championship, Annie Duke

You will note two interesting things about this picture. First, it was taken before Annie Duke’s first round match with Andy Bloch. That makes it a “before” picture in every sense of the word. Second, the gent with the long sideburns next to Andy’s right shoulder is Paul Wasicka. Please notice, though it is not a strong image of Paul, the absence of (a) worry lines or (b) a dark cloud. In that so much of my coverage of the NBC Heads-Up Championship – most of which, granted, I haven’t posted and some of which I haven’t even written – is about curses, karma, and cosmic equations, there really should be a dark cloud.

It is now past 1 AM Sunday and the final day of the NBC Heads-Up Championship begins in about nine hours. If you’ve been reading the previous two parts of my coverage, you’ll know all I’ve posted so far is the first quarter Friday’s Round of Sixty-Four. I had a very specific, deliberate plan, but Annie Duke fouled it up like nobody’s business.

I initially decided to take a different approach to my coverage this year. In 2007, 2008, and 2009, I parked myself in a corner of the tournament room and pounded into my computer everything that happened: everything I saw, everything I heard, everything I thought. Although it resulted in what I consider some excellent coverage, I wanted to see if something different might strike a better chord with readers. My plan was to watch everything, take extensive notes, and write it with less real-time immediacy but (hopefully) more depth and perspective.

My first problem was that there was no time to write. I sat in my prison cell all day Friday, took notes on many fascinating things, made plans to write some marvelous observations and analysis … and was too exhausted at the end to write a word. Then it took all my time and energy just to make it back to the tournament room Saturday morning for the start of Day 2, the first half of the Round of Thirty-Two.

To make a long story short – or longer, based on this new approach – I repeated the exercise with the second half of the Round of Thirty-Two but then sat out the first half of the Round of Sixteen. I used that time to outline everything that happened so far, write about half of it, and post about a third of that.

I like what I’ve posted so far and what I’ve written but not posted, so I’m not changing the plan. There are many places to go in addition to this Blog to get up-to-the-minute coverage, and you may be going there anyway. It’s still my belief that, as good as my coverage has been the last three years, it will be even better when I’m freed up from the burden of real-time posting.

But I have to interrupt my careful, thoughtful, insightful, chronological narrative of the 2010 NBC Heads-Up Championship to tell you that during the second half of the Round of Sixteen, which I did watch, they practically had to carry people unconscious out of the room. Even the last two competitors. Especially the last two competitors. In fact, between Annie Duke and Paul Wasicka, I don’t know who was more wrecked by the experience, but if you ask me, I’ll say, “Yes.”

Annie Duke hijacked the tournament. In the first round, even though she and Andy Bloch were not the featured table – big mistake by NBC, in planning and based on events – both played extremely well and the ending was TV-grade exciting. They got it in with T-T for Duke, K-Qs for Bloch, and a king hit on the flop. Annie had the chip lead, but with the level of the blinds, Andy would definitely be in control of the match. But Annie got another ten on the river and stunningly, unexpectedly, the match was over. (In fact, as I’ll explain when I get to this point in the tournament, the whole room was stunned speechless – except for Mike Matusow.)

Annie played a strong match against Darvin Moon to make the money for the first time in six years. I knew she would have her hands full with Paul Wasicka in the Round of Sixteen and she quickly realized it too. It looked to me like Paul was playing a little tight, which Annie confirmed but quickly added, “though he never gives up a chip. Never. Paul never splashes or overplays or makes a mistaken value bet or bluff.”

Doyle Brunson defeated Annette Obrestad surprisingly quickly, and then Jerry Yang pulled off an upset against Barry Greenstein (the only player to win a match in all six HUCs [corrected per reader comment]). Dennis Phillips had Eli Elezra short-stacked but Eli hung on for a long, long time.

Finally, those matches were all done. It was just Duke and Wasicka. According to my notes, they played 121 minutes, but it felt like that many months. Both players were so strong, so smart, and so savvy that I just knew it was going to come down to a heartbreaking sequence of cards.

I really like Paul Wasicka, but Annie Duke is a close friend, so I was hoping not so much that she would get lucky and win, but that she wouldn’t get unlucky and lose. Whoever lost this match would end up getting bitch-slapped by Fate. There was no other way.

It initially looked like Fortune would smile on Annie. She built a chip lead then got Paul all-in: her pocket jacks against Wasicka’s A-T. Ace on the flop and Paul takes the lead. I wrote in my notebook, “Shame – could have been Annie’s best chance with blinds getting so big.”

But she slowly rebuilt. Right after the Phillips-Elezra match ended, Duke got caught pushing with 6-4s by Wasicka with Q-T but a 3-4-5 flop doubled Annie back into the lead.

Neither player showed any reaction during the climactic moments of either hand. In fact, I wrote “[Annie] looks no happier than before the hand.” Almost a half-hour later – remember, the blinds are already astronomical – Annie gets it in good again with the chip lead, 7-7 vs. Ad-5d.

The flop brought two diamonds and the three of diamonds on the river completed Paul’s flush to keep him alive and give him back the lead. The broadcast will show this better than I can describe it, but Annie’s reaction – a quick jump followed by a slow sag – seemed more in surprise to Paul’s family’s sudden scream with joy than in disappointment over the cruelties of the deck.

Annie and Paul have both been there many, many times. Deck happens.

After the match was over, Annie told me several wonderful things about Paul Wasicka – his strategy, his intensity, his demeanor – but the one that seemed to impress her the most was his “gentlemanliness.” (My term, not Duke’s.) He was such a fine competitor that, in the best sense of the activity, he was trying to beat her brains out and be a good person. “It was so nice that he said to me, ‘you’re playing so well. You can end up winning this.’” Clearly, Paul wouldn’t say this to someone who would benefit from hearing it, and it didn’t change Annie’s attitude toward the match. It was simply a nice gesture.

I’m sure Wasicka wasn’t feeding her a line but what if he was? It was just a nice, decent way to treat a competitor: as nice as possible, except during the actual moments of competition. The tone of Annie Duke’s admiration was such that it’s got me rethinking my own approach. I consider myself a gentleman-competitor, but I’ve always drawn the line at wishing opponents “good luck” (because I don’t want them to have good luck) or saying “sorry” after delivering a bad beat (because I’m not sorry, nor do I care whether they’re sorry if they do it to me). But now I wonder.

So far, as dramatic as it all was, everything that occurred was part of the way professionals behave when they win or lose 70-30 propositions: like professionals. Three consecutive times, the underdog when the chips went in won the hand to prolong the match. I’m pretty sure the announcers and the audience will find it more dramatic than the competitors did.

After nearly two hours of this, though, everybody threw out the script. Annie moved all-in preflop and Paul called. Annie had Ac-Td. Paul had pocket aces.

The flop came Ah-2c-Jd. I heard someone near me mutter, “Only a running queen and king can save her now.”

I couldn’t imagine it, even after the queen on the turn. I started throwing my remaining gear in my bag when every firecracker in Nevada went off at once.

King on the river.

Among the bedlam, I saw the strangest thing. Annie Duke had a horrified expression on her face. She staggered around, covering her face. At the very least, you would have thought she had the aces and lost. More likely, that she had just been informed that something very awful had happened to somebody close to her. She was crying, stricken, but no tears were coming. She fell to her knees in front of Paul, who had somehow made it back to his seat, and sobbed an apology, her hands still partially covering her face.

I got chills.

The moment was so raw, so real. It was just a poker game for TV, played by a pair of professionals who have made millions in the game. But at that moment, it’s like we were sharing some serious, inexplicable twist in their lives that we should almost apologize for watching.

Paul had almost no chips left, and busted two hands later (with pocket jacks against Annie’s 8d-5d).

Annie refused to accept congratulations from people. “That was horrible for Paul. I didn’t deserve to win that way.” In the two hours after the match, I joined Annie and Joe Reitman for dinner and then the three of us sat in the lounge while Joe and I each had a cigar. Annie was not mentally present most of the time. She still couldn’t believe it, or couldn’t figure out what it meant.

What she kept coming back to was Paul’s behavior. Wasicka comported himself like a good person, and he bahaved the same when the deck tilted in his direction as it did in Annie’s.

This is going to make great television, but most people will never understand the reason why. It won’t be because of the excitement or even the quality of play. It will be because it was so real and so good. Two very good people got into a competition that, in just two hours, completely consumed them. But they held on to their humanity throughout. They somehow shared the rawness of their emotions while holding on to things like dignity, compassion, and grace.

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One Response to “#977 – 2010 NBC Heads-Up Championship #3 – Annie Duke Rewrites the Story”

1. Kevin Mathers Says:
   March 7th, 2010 at 12:23 pm

   While Barry is the only player to win six first round matches at the NBCHU, he didn’t make it past the 2nd round in 2008 or 2009.

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