Not the musical. The WSOP version. I viewed the final table. Wow! Was kismet the controlling factor. There were poker intellects involved; they were just in hiding.

A while back I had a wizzing contest with a wise ass kid poker journalist over a hand. He kept going on with what amounted to a blind steal against a player that was all in. He was actually behind when he bet -- stealing the side pot. Joe Cada is the penultimate example of why you don't want to do that. There was another player that chip and a chaired his way to the final table.

Ivey played a tight (old man's?) game. I've been watching him on The Million Dollar Cash Game and it is a different player. He'd have probably been 'himself' if he hadn't come and gone as one of the short stacks.

Darvin Moon's version of being table captain is only going to win one amateur night at the Bijou. He failed to read the risk:reward portion of that chapter. He evidently felt slighted with remarks always being the ABC guy. But, he managed playing heads up in decent fashion and had Cada – the acknowledged heads up maven – on the ropes. Cada even remarked he played well in a way that appears almost genuine.

I suppose I could find something nice or not so to say about every player; but, why bother. We seldom remember who finished second and never remember third which was the Frenchman who might have played best overall. He'd probably have done the WSOPE some good in getting those insecure Frogs to the tables without a waiter's apron over their bellies.

Overall the table proved the race doesn't always go to the swift. There wasn't as much apparent acumen involved as some may wish. Short play is playing the player and using the stack you have properly. That doesn't come across as genius or perfection at the best of times. Discernment becomes less about the card and that skill doesn't lend itself to great report cards.

Did I take anything away from all this? Not really. We're all smarter than the players when we see the hole cards. If your idea is to actually learn something, watch EPT or WSOPE or A or whatever the next pack of letters is that they throw in the soup that lets you watch the final table in real time.

What you'll learn about is that boring tournament viewing where you almost never see a showdown is to learn something that doesn't come across well in books. That is risk:reward. We get the pieces from books but they are like an IKEA cabinet – unassembled. The final tables bring together those who managed to fit the pieces without the instruction manual being provided.

ADDENDUM:

This may be the best informational blog I've done. Not that there is a high standard in that. If you watch some of those www.PokerStars.TV final tables you will improve your understanding in a way that transcends whatever knowledge you started with. Viewing the final table with hole cards really masks all that as we've just seen.

You'll get a grasp that I haven't been able to find any other way. Daniel Negreanu tries to explain it as well as any and still doesn't get it all the way across. Tournament play is -EV for almost all. It is a harder way to show a profit than any of the other options. But, if you understand how to manipulate risk:reward you'll do better than the pack. You'll finally be forced to all that A-game or level thinking crap that a big part of it; but you'll have put yourself – with a nice stack or not – at a point where that is the part where it now and finally takes presidence.

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Now Grump goes off in genius mode and take the Moon man to task. You can wax poetic about any hand history. 95% of them produces pure posturing. I'll mention those two words we throw about – imperfect information. HH's don't work like that and there is no context.

The Shamus man tells us:

You’ll recall that when the flop came both he and Kopp had flopped diamond flushes, with Moon holding , and Kopp . The turn brought the , Moon checked, Kopp bet 2 million, Moon check-raised to 6 million, Kopp shoved, and Moon called. Kopp was drawing dead.

The Grump see it as:

The contrast is stunning. Kopp is thinking, oh, about 17 levels ahead of Moon. Moon isn't even correctly aware of what the cards on the board are, let alone getting inside Kopp's head. He's playing somewhere between that infamous Level Zero and Level 1.

Yes, Davin did misremember the hand. Been there and done that. Others in the blogs often come back with a similar confession. It happens.

The Grump goes on about levels of thinking and contrast it to his ring play. He does keep most of his writing within that sigma of perfection that he pursues. He places Moon one step below a blogger's tournament early action. I guess it could be a hand between Jordan and Waffles and you can pick which is which – I can't.

The hand Billy had is awfully close to Grump's love of 24. Maybe that clouds his thought. People have pet hands. I've heard the same for Presto in a sadly inactive blog. The double-nickels man made equally strident claims for his favorite. But, he's sent me complete hand histories of session and if you believe him or Grump about what they play or when, they will pawn you.

Look at the hand and make Darvin into Negreanu and Kopp into TonyG. Now evaluate the hand. Sexton would wax poetic about the Cadillac of Poker. And he'd make a hell of a case. Read would get thrown in repeatedly – Moon had a read and the guts to follow it. He also had the second nut on the flop and the 4th on the river with action indicating that improvement was possible but the betting made it more unlikely than the board's pairing the turn.

My view is that was a hand that might have played that way between the pros I mention. It would have been a somewhat reluctant Negreanu but I think he'd have made the same action. It is somewhat more possible he'd have folded but he's also a gamer.

The story is his as much as it is for a Tony or other action player. He talks about small pot poker but his also capable of laying down prospecting hands that hit to a degree. Kopp ignored all warning signs in swinging his big stick. He put his massive stack on the line with the 13th or so nut and Grump thinks he's the thinker. If that is thinking, those in the home I'm someday headed for are bloody geniuses. Kopp is everything Negreanu screams against with his small pot outlook. And sooner or later people look those players up. If they don't, then they do qualify as Arnold's girly boys.

Let's leave luck out of this conversation. Every one of the nine was lucky to get to the final table. One even demonstrated the chip and a chair success as others have in the past. If you look at the hand history above you looking at a molecule in the cosmos. Maybe Grump can recreate the big bang from that but I can't.

There is one unavoidable factoid: Kopp went all in drawing dead. You can assign one of Grump's many levels to that but that's more bar talk than than expanding mankind's knowledge.

Related posts:

1. Full Tilt Tournament Play
2. Full Tilt Problems

You need 100K just to sit.  At the eighth episode the money on the table is approaching three-million.  

I've been downloading the Million Dollar Cash Game that ran in London recently.  I got it
from a torrent site specializing in poker.  It currently has eight of the episodes available.
The first couple are a bit of a dog but the play does pick up.

The starting players are:

• Patrick Antonius

• Eli Elezra

• Gus Hanson

• David Benyamine

• Tom Dwan

• Howard Letterer

• Phil Ivey

• Chris Ferguson

The replacements include:

• Mike Matusow 

• Andy Block 

• Phil Hellmuth

The first couple of shows are a bit plebian but it does heat up and get interesting.

I won't include much in spoilers other than to mention that Dwan's propensity for implied odds hands isn't well rewarded to date.

Gary Jones and David Tuchman are the excellent commentators.

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