ME ft discuss ++Spoiler++

[Jauron]

That K high flush hand was pretty sick too. Dunno if I could lay it down.

[xDiamond_CutteRx]

That K high flush hand was pretty sick too. Dunno if I could lay it down.

Eh I don't know. The way it played out, The K-flush was pretty much just a bluff catcher.

[mortaleclipse]

That K high flush hand was pretty sick too. Dunno if I could lay it down.

Eh I don't know. The way it played out, The K-flush was pretty much just a bluff catcher.

What i think made it pretty good is how aggresive Ivan is and it was probably tough in the heat of battle to think he had the nutz everytime. Yea seeing the hole cards says "easy" fold but when its going down its a whole diffrent story against a aggresive player.

[jimmer]

That K high flush hand was pretty sick too. Dunno if I could lay it down.

I haven't watched the game nor do I plan to. However do you think your decision could be affected by the fact that there's a differance of $3m on the outcome?

I mean most of us would say we would still play the same, but this must have an influance on the your play?

I dunno how I would react-it would be nice to be put in that situation though!

[HalfSugar]

My take on the coverage was that it was an absolute piece of sh*t! If they wanted to air just a couple more regular episodes, why wait til November? There was little fanfare in the 4 months between July and November that I saw (maybe in the US it was fever pitch, I don't know?) to justify the change.

Certainly when I started reading the live updates at the start of the FT (before deciding that actually I didn't want to spoil it for myself) the game opened with a lot of standard "X player raises pf, everyone else folds, X player wins the pot" so I guess there was not a great deal of 'interesting' poker going on as you would expect.

I am stunned to read that HU went for 6hrs because like someone said, it appeared to be about 10 hands! That's very unfair on both HU players if nothing else. Sick final hand btw!

Overall, I thought the table played out as expected. Craig Marques was hugely outclassed and deserved to finish low. Kelly Kim never got it going and after twice letting himself go from 2.5m to 700K before pushing, deserved a low finish.

Darus Suharto is a fairly terrible player and the way he exited was pretty unforgiveable. Granted Scott Montgomery's call was really not good but nevertheless, pushing 11m chips over a 1.5m raise with A8o is just bad poker. When Montgomery was crushed with A9 vs KK that was also awful play that deserved what it got.

Chino Rheem was disappointing but the Jacks were a cooler and that derailed him badly. I think he handles himself quite well personally and is way more entertaining than most players. I'd like to have seen him win I think.

Ylon Schwartz was exactly as I expected - solid, intelligent and claimed a high finish. His K high flush laydown was a beautiful thing.

Dennis Phillips played exactly as I expected. He was outmatched and did really well to come 3rd but he got way lucky to do it according to the coverage we saw anyway.

Finally Eastgate and Demidov were both excellent. I'm glad to see Hellmuth's record fall and it will take some serious beating now if the legal age stays at 21! I think Eastgate will be a good ambassador for poker and I hope Jerry Yang is lost at sea. Even his 'shuffle up and deal' made me want to break things.

That K high flush hand was pretty sick too. Dunno if I could lay it down.

I haven't watched the game nor do I plan to. However do you think your decision could be affected by the fact that there's a differance of $3m on the outcome?

I mean most of us would say we would still play the same, but this must have an influance on the your play?

I dunno how I would react-it would be nice to be put in that situation though!

Demidov held K7s and made kings up on the turn. Eastgate held 32o and rivered trips. It was a very, very impressive fold and I don't think for one second it was motivated by the payouts given their stacks and the way they had played to that point. I guess Demidov stopped to consider that Eastgate had checked pf from the BB but it was still amazing.

As a side note - did anyone else notice that the guy in Eastgate's cheering section who was leading the chanting was the same guy who got a lot of TV time in the 2007 WSOP ME on the Day 1 where they televised Jamie Gold's title defense attempt? Two or three times he savaged Gold and it was beautiful to watch!

[xDiamond_CutteRx]

That K high flush hand was pretty sick too. Dunno if I could lay it down.

Eh I don't know. The way it played out, The K-flush was pretty much just a bluff catcher.

What i think made it pretty good is how aggresive Ivan is and it was probably tough in the heat of battle to think he had the nutz everytime. Yea seeing the hole cards says "easy" fold but when its going down its a whole diffrent story against a aggresive player.

I didn't say it was an easy fold, simply that his opponent's range was incredibly polarized. He literally could not have had anything but the Ace high flush, a boat, or total air.

[supafrey]

That K high flush hand was pretty sick too. Dunno if I could lay it down.

Eh I don't know. The way it played out, The K-flush was pretty much just a bluff catcher.

What i think made it pretty good is how aggresive Ivan is and it was probably tough in the heat of battle to think he had the nutz everytime. Yea seeing the hole cards says "easy" fold but when its going down its a whole diffrent story against a aggresive player.

I didn't say it was an easy fold, simply that his opponent's range was incredibly polarized. He literally could not have had anything but the Ace high flush, a boat, or total air.

lol you work a lot better in theory than you do in real life, DC. Both the K7 and the flush hands were very well played. Pretty sickly good. And knowing whether he's trying to bluff off your king or your top two are verrrrry different situations.

[Ciso_B]

The guy leading the cheering section was Jesper Hougaard i think, he won a bracelet at wsope and i think he won one at wsop 2008.

Just watched the 2 episodes, was pretty crappy tbh,obviously I can't judge on exit hand alone, but there was some retarded play going on. Suharto's re shove was pretty crappy imo, (even with his tight image), he knows montgomery is a fish and calls light.

Montgomery was a fish, kelly kim looked like he just wanted to holdon for another payout obv, phillips was awful and I really dont like him.

That aside, the top 2 both seemingly played really well, and that schwartz fella seemed like a good player despite losing his patience and blowing up on his penultimate hand.

[lwestatbus]

One of the things that ticked me off is how much of the two hour format was given over to interviews and little celebrity snippets. All of the things that everyone said about the format are true, especially condensing the six hour HU duel (which I didn't know). But to carve out even more from the table-time with all of the little personal story blurbs just detracted even more.

ESPN is probably in a tough spot in terms of viewership for the WSOP. Their potential viewership consists of hardcore poker junkies (i.e., us) who will likely watch it under any circumstances that don't include Norman Chadd in a thong and some potential viewers who will watch if the broadcast pushes whatever buttons bring these new viewers into the fold. Unfortunately, it seems that ESPN has concluded that this game show format mixed with an Entertainment Tonight celebrity expose approach is what will bring in the incremental viewers.

Can poker become unwatchable? I think yes. There are some of these new shows on that I just don't care to watch.

There was some tournament televised a few years ago from Monte Carlo where it seemed as if they were showing each and every hand. They were showing LOTS of hands where it was fold-fold-fold-Raise-fold... I thought it was fascinating to see how many hands worked played this way. But I can also see how the format wouldn't be a big draw to those not truly addicted.

To my mind the most exciting final table, and the best coverage, was 2005. It's been downhill from there. (2003 & 2004 weren't bad.)

[HalfSugar]

The last one I enjoyed was Jamie Gold. He actually might be my favourite main event champion ever the way he did it.