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WSOPE Day 5

As the river card was dealt to kill Gus' tournament, he got little sympathy from the other players or their fans on the rail.

This has been a long time coming. Sorry about the delay, turns out I'm a pretty lazy guy when it comes to writing blogs instead of playing poker. However, I've made a late new year's resolution to write blogs for betting.betfair often enough to make it worthwhile. First port of call, I have to finish what I started in my WSOPE Main Event report. As I write, it's roughly 4 and a half months since my quick departure from the WSOPE final table, fortunately I remember it well. Despite me only lasting 3 hands, there was a lot more to final table day than the poker, and I feel like it's worth sharing the whole experience. I know that if I ever make another big final table, there's a lot of things where I'm going to be acting like Mr Experienced, "been there, done that, yeah I'll be cool in interviews, I'll show my cards to the hole card camera, blah blah blah". Of course it was all more than a little daunting the first time around.

So, starting from the beginning, I'll bring you all up to speed. Early in August I qualified for the WSOPE Main Event, winning a $23,000 package starting from a $78 satellite on Betfair Poker. On days one to three of the event itself I'd accumulated chips, and by the end of day 4 I did just enough to survive until the final 10 as the shortest stack in the tournament. At this point I was looking for a spot to get all in when Gus Hansen ran QQ into KK and exited the tournament before me, ending the day's play and putting me through to day 5, an official WSOP final table and among the final 9 players vying for a £1,000,000 first prize. Not to mention the extra twenty grand I got for ninth instead of tenth place. As the river card was dealt to kill Gus' tournament, he got little sympathy from the other players or their fans on the rail. There was a lot of cheering and clapping, I felt strangely subdued and could only wander over to the rail, laugh a little and exchange a few high fives with my very dedicated friends that had been following me all week. I remember saying to my friend Bowburn, "I knew I'd make a World Series final table before you!", though it was kind of a joke because it was such a surreal feeling and something I'd only dreamt of before.

Then, because I was still wearing a mic, I went back to the table to ask what I needed to do next. We got handed slips of paper with a short questionnaire on, to fill out while we were unmic-ed. Then we got handed another slip of paper with a time on it, between 11am and 1.15pm. This would be the time of our interview with the main TV coverage guys. I don't know if this was done randomly or by stack size, but I drew the short straw and had to be at the Empire for 11am, when the final table wasn't starting until 2pm, if it was on time. That night I slept really well. Going in as shortstack, I had no expectations for the final table and everything I could make above the £60k for 9th place would be a bonus to me, so I was totally relaxed and felt great. Perhaps being at least £60k better off had something to do with it as well :).

When I arrived at the Empire the next day, having woken up 3 hours earlier than I'd become accustomed to, the Empire was locked and all the lights were switched off. Any feelings of self-importance I might have developed were dashed. I wasn't early, they'd just forgotten about me. I pressed the buzzer a few times and had to wait 5 mins in the street to get let in. The interview went ok, they didn't ask particularly awkward questions. What did feel incredibly awkward though were the shots they take of your profile, when they ask you to turn to face the camera and they zoom in on your eyes. Hopefully it'll look ok on TV but it was very embarrassing at the time. After this I did a telephone interview live on air on Heart FM, where I forgot to mention betfair at all.

After this I went for a nap on a sofa in the players' lounge. It raised a few eyebrows but everyone just left me to it. Once all the other players had arrived and done their interviews I got up and grabbed some lunch. I spoke to Annette briefly and she asked how I was feeling. I replied that I was happy and relaxed, she laughed and said "Yeah, you're the short-stack, there's no pressure on you!" Annette didn't seem to be feeling the pressure though and obviously she didn't let it get to her!

Then came the press conference, which was more for the sponsors than anything else. I don't think many people knew there was going to be a press conference so there were some awkward silences after the words "any questions?", but it turned out to be a good laugh as Theo Jorgensen cracked a few jokes about being the oldest person at the table (at the grand old age of 35).

After the press conference, we headed to our seats at the final table. I was in seat nine, next to an oddly empty seat 10, as players can't move around to fill gaps because of the positioning of the hole card cameras in the rail. The announcer went through each player and their chip stack one at a time, with raucous cheering on the announcement of my name and measly short stack. Then he went round again and read off some of the information on the questionnaires we'd filled out the night before. On John Tabatabai, he announced he was "certainly the best supported player at the final table", the response to which was a discontented murmur and maybe very slight boo from the crowd. I was definitely the fan favourite. Each player had been given 3 wristbands that got entry for spectators into the final table room, however there were extra seats on a first-come first-served basis and all 12 of my railbirds had gotten in to watch, making my mates roughly a quarter of the spectators in the room! Combined with their early afternoon drinking so far, they were definitely making the most noise :D

Finally, it was time for the poker to begin. I had 172,000 in chips and although the blinds were only 6,000/12,000 the second shortest stack was Dominic Kay with over 600k. The antes of 2000 a hand added an extra 18,000 chips to the cost of a round of poker leaving me feeling desperate. (For Harrington fans my 'M' was 4.8 and my 'Q' was 0.3) I'd thought about my situation and decided I had just one round to get all in before my stack was totally unthreatening to the other players. First hand I was dealt J9s under the gun and really thought about just shoving there and then and leaving my fate to the poker gods. However, the fear of looking really silly stopped me for some reason, even though at the time I thought it might be a good play. On reflection I think it was a solid fold.

In my second hand John Tabatabai raised it up to 30k or so in early-mid position. I know that John knows I'm committed to either shove or fold after I put my blind in, so he may be raising with something pretty weak. Before I look at my cards I say to John that I'll shove with any picture card. I don't know why I said this. John's just a fun guy that kind of puts you at ease and lulls you into saying things in jest that give away your true intentions. I looked down at Q6s. I genuinely considered a shove here, thinking that John may be stealing my blind, expecting me to tighten up for the final table. But then I considered that John had raised with Annette, Dominic, Theo and Magnus still to act and probably had better than nothing, so thought better of it and folded.

Then came my final hand. The action was folded round to Magnus Persson on the button, who raised it up to 30k I think. He had 1.2M in his stack. I had 156k before the hand was dealt, so my stack now was 124k on top of Magnus' raise, just enough to make him fold a few of the raggier hands he might raise. I looked down at QTo and decided this was good enough to make a stand. Magnus quickly called with A9s, and I was out after an A-high flop left me needing runner runner to win. I've gone over the hand a lot since (obviously) and whichever way I look at it, the shove is about a breakeven play in the long term. Since folding costs me 8000 chips and leaves me hoping for a better spot, I have no regrets (well, almost).

I shook hands with the rest of the players, then for some reason interrupted the dealer's shuffling to shake hands with him, and exited stage left. There was a scrum of people in the only doorway from the final table room, where all the TV crew, cameramen, editors and teeny tiny interviewer were waiting to ambush me upon my exit. The big friendly tournament director (sorry I've forgotten your name) escorted me through, and made sure nobody bothered me for an interview except for the official group covering the event, at least until after I'd been to the cash desk to collect my winnings. At the desk they asked me if I wanted my £61,540 in cash, a cheque or a combination of both. I resisted the temptation to ask for a fat wad of cash and took £60k as a cheque and the rest in cash. After a couple more interviews with the Sik Tilt guys and someone from Sky Sports, I rejoined my friends and departed for the serious business of celebrating my win and spending the £1500 in my pocket!!

If you've gotten this far, I hope you've enjoyed reading about my experiences from the WSOPE. I'll be writing more soon about stuff that's gone on since, and if all else fails I'll be back at the WSOPE for the next three years anyway as a winner of Betfair's magnificent Threedom Pass promotion, where Team Betfair final tablists get bought into the event for the next three years afterwards!

Thanks for reading,

James Keys

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