Pair the Board

I’m not sure I’ve ever been witness to a more incredible and ridiculous game of poker, either in person or on TV. I just saw a jaw-dropping, hands-on-face, mouth-open-and-screaming day of cards, and it came on poker’s grandest stage.

The November Nine took to the felt at precisely noon-or-so on Saturday to face off for all the Benjamins. Specifically, 8,547,042 million of them. And the shiny precious-metal bracelet. The poker fan in me could not have asked for a better vantage point to watch the ensuing madness unfold; Garry, F-train, and I were perched on the stage 20 feet behind Phil Ivey. Donnie, Matthew, and Elaine had the bird’s-eye view in the press box atop the theater, practically straight up from the stage.

Peter Eastgate and Doyle Brunson came to the stage together to give the starting orders, and Doyle’s brief speech included the sentence, “Someone’s gonna make poker history here today.” Cue the dramatic foreshadowing. Last year it was Eastgate setting records, and this year, they were all broken.

The atmosphere inside the Penn & Teller Theater was too unique for words; poker media, hall-of-fame players, and rabid fans packed into the stands elbow-to-elbow. Shirtless body painters. Thunder sticks. Ja Rule in the balcony. Multi-lingual shouting. Bright lights and television cameras. And the tension of playing for life-changing money. The cards went into the air eventually, and the table played it passively for a few orbits, passing the blinds and antes around as they felt each other out. Despite the pay jump being just over $36,000 between ninth and eighth places, nobody wanted to budge.

It took 44 hands for anything really notable to happen. James Akenhead was the baby stack, and he went with for his tournament life. Steve Begleiter called initially, but he never got to see the flop. Eric Buchman woke up with and raised Begs out, but Akenhead spiked a queen on the turn and faded a river spade to triple up. It was deja vu for Akenhead. On Day 8, he doubled up over 5 million when his king-queen luck-flopped Jamie Robbins’ two red aces.

Back to live action. Darvin Moon had a mini blowup the very next hand when Antoine Saout flopped two pair with jack-deuce. Moon three-bet shoved with ace-high and absolutely no chance of a fold, and Saout was up to 22 million just like that. A few hands later, Akenhead ran pocket kings into Kevin Schaffel’s pocket aces and gave back all of those triple-up chips. Schaffel would finish him off in Hand #59 with pocket nines against Akenhead’s threes, and the Brit became the first casualty of the final table.

Just like Akenhead, Schaffel couldn’t hold onto his chips for long, and it was aces versus kings for him as well. Except Schaffel was the one with aces! Steve Buchman called with the suit-dominated kings, but he would find his trips right in the door. Just to rub it in, the case king drilled the turn to leave aces drawing dead to the Four Horsemen. With no river needed, Schaffel was out in 8th place on Hand #68. Buchman overtook Moon for the chip lead shortly thereafter, and the action was really settling into a groove. The remaining seven went to dinner after 112 hands, stacking up like this:

Darvin Moon: 41,250,000
Phil Ivey: 14,900,000
Steve Begleiter: 38,100,000
Eric Buchman: 54,725,000
Joe Cada: 10,700,000
Antoine Saout: 28,725,000
Jeff Shulman: 7,175,000

Ivey had been picking his spots, chipping up bit-by-little-bit. He lost a flip to Cada in Hand #131 though, and he would slide backwards for a while. Everyone seemed nervous for him. Seven-handed play lumbered on for hours and hours; I don’t even know how long really. More than 100 hands. Then Ivey found his spot. Worked back down under 7 million, Ivey got it in good with against Moon’s . A disastrous in the door took the air out of the building, though Ivey barely flinched. He had been munching on an apple before the hand, and he continued to pick away at it while his 7th-place fate was sealed by the turn and river. Donnie was ready to pack up and go home. We were all bummed.

I happened to catch Ivey’s bustout from my seat on media row. Made me wonder when D-SLRs will get auto-focus for video. But it’s watchable:

Things would roll pretty quickly from there on out. The play got looser and looser as the payout jumps got more and more significant. It was getting late. And I heard that Moon was up at sunrise playing the Hold’em table game down in the casino with Schaffel for $10 bets. He was still playing poker 24 hours later, though the stakes had gone up considerably.

Begs was next to go out despite also getting it in with the best hand. His pocket queens were no match for the run-good of Darvin Moon and his mighty ace-queen. The board was clean until the river, but the curse of Barry Greenstein struck Begleiter. The ace of diamonds on the river was not a good card at all, and a stricken Begs slinked his way to the rail and into the arms of his family. They were right in front of our table, and they were amazingly supportive of their guy. But media row was glad to have heard “Begs! Begs! Begs!” for the last time.

The pace picked up. Cada and Buchman had been pushing the action, but Cada was stuck around 10 million in chips. He got them in with pocket threes on Hand #195, and Shulman made the call with two jacks in the hole. As F-Train said in the blog: “Wow. Run good one time, Joe Cada. It’s a trey in the window.” Yes indeed, it was the three of diamonds, and Cada notched the unlikely two-out double up. It would not be his last.

Shulman would double up his short stack one and linger around for a while before bowing out next in 5th place. By now the theater was nearly empty. And mostly quiet. When there was significant action, a big three-bet or a sick turn card, they would rouse themselves to life a bit. But not much. Cada’s late-teen friends were still going the strongest, but even they had begun to fade. Fortunately things would continue to speed up.

At 4:20am, the big blind was a cool 1 million chips, and the four players left were drawing even in chips:

Eric Buchman – 56,100,000
Darvin Moon – 53,775,000
Joseph Cada – 46,325,000
Antoine Saout – 39,600,000

Buchman lost the biggest pot of the tournament when he shoved on Antoine Saout with ace-queen. Saout tanked and called all in for his own survival with ace-king. He would find two more kings on board to take the pot and the chip lead with nearly 90 million! In a weird two-hand sequence, Buchman would double up with  against , then go broke with against  . And both were against Darvin Moon. Kings on the board both times first saved, then eliminated Buchman in 4th. Cada was now the short stack with half the chips of the other two.

This is getting wicked long, so I’ll pick up with three-handed action in Part 2.