Taylor Paur Wins Event #18 in Strange Circumstances

Tuesday was Day 3 of the $1,000 No Limit Hold'em event, a tournament that despite the relatively low buy-in attracted some of the best poker players in the world. Two of these players, Phil Ivey and Taylor Paur, navigated their way through to Day 3 where just 14 players remained. Ivey would bust in 14th while Paur would go all the way and win a bracelet.

By the time my shift started at The Rio, Event #18 was already heads up. Paur and a gentleman named Roy Weiss were returning from dinner break to battle it out one-on-one for the $340,260 first place prize and a coveted, gold WSOP bracelet. I asked my colleague, who had covered the entire day's play, how the tournament had progressed and she informed me that Weiss had been playing a passive style where she had seen him check-call with hands as strongly as two-pair.

She also told me that Weiss had become increasingly frustrated with the loud Paur-supporting rail and had, at one point, refused to continue playing unless the floor staff quietened them down. Apparently, while Weiss sat refusing to play his hand, Paur called the clock on him. You could say there was a little bad blood between the two. This was exaggerated further when Weiss refused to play on through the dinner break when Paur wanted to continue playing.

Weiss returned from dinner in a fresh change of clothes and a new style of poker. He had obviously looked up Paur on the internet and discovered Paur has over $4,000,000 in online tournament winnings and decided he was not going to beat him in a game of skill so took away the skill factor altogether and made Paur play high variance poker, which is something most professional poker players prefer not to do.

The first hand back from the dinner break was the 220th of the final table and saw Paur move all in and Weiss fold. Weiss then proceeded to open-shove each time he had the button and three-bet all in whenever Paur had the button! He did this for 23 hands straight, regardless of his chip stack.

Weiss doubled up twice using this unorthodox style and the frustration in Paur's face grew and grew. At one stage Paur asked Weiss,

"Are you even looking at your cards? I can see your eyes are open, but are you even looking?"

Paur then turned to me and said, "This is so fu**ing stressful!"

That stress was obliterated when on Hand #243 of the final table, Weiss moved all in and Paur called. Weiss had made this latest move with Kc-8c and Paur called with Ad-5d. The Kd-6c-As flop gave both players a pair; Paur stayed in front with his pair of aces. The turn was the Ac, which gifted trip aces to Paur, but also gave Weiss outs to the club flush. Those outs failed to arrive, as the river was the Qh to bust Weiss and send Paur and his rowdy rail into raptures.

WSOP Event #18 Final Table Results

1st - Taylor Paur: $340,260
2nd - Roy Weiss: $211,794
3rd - Tai Nguyen: $147,220
4th - Alexander Barlow: $106,027
5th - DJ MacKinnon: $77,491
6th - Phillip Hui: $57,324
7th - Daniel Idema: $42,962
8th - Ryan Austin: $32,608
9th - Kyle Cartwright: $25,041

The history books will only show that Paur defeated a man called Roy Weiss heads-up to win the first of what I predict will be many bracelets in his career, but that is only part of the story. The fact that Paur grew increasingly frustrated with Weiss' approach and the fact Paur failed to adapt correctly to Weiss shows how effective this style of all-in or fold poker can be against a thinking poker player.

Weiss' approach first came to light in the "Kill Phil" book by Lee Nelson, Blair Rodman and Steve Heston that was first publish in 2006. Here, some seven years later, Weiss put it to use and it almost worked.

What are your thoughts on Weiss' play? Is it unethical? Paur said it made a mockery of the game, do you agree? I would love to hear your thoughts.

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