Jonathon Duhamel the champion of the world
It’s always the best poker day of the year. The final table of the WSOP main event, where first prize is a shot at immortality. Oh, and about nine million dollars. And this year, fans were actually able to watch the final table stream live on the Internet. I’m a fan, and it was awesome.
It’s big business these days, the WSOP, and in the two months the nine players had to prepare, you weren’t anybody if you didn’t get a high profile coach. Soi Nguyen was under the wing of Nam Le, Jason Senti took on Phil Galfond and Annette Obrestad, and Matthew Jarvis enlisted the help of Sorel Mizzi.
Show 20 (November 24) about WSOP Main Event final table is online now! Click the play button to listen:
Prefer to download? Right click here and Save As.
I remember meeting Sorel Mizzi at the Irish Open. I don’t think he had yet turned twenty, but his game was one of the brightest things I had seen that year. I had never heard of him before, but I remember having a conversation with Padraig Parkinson along the lines of we knew we’d be seeing him again. Sorel cruised to the final table as chip leader before coming third to Roland de Wolfe and the eventual champion Marty Smyth. He had frizzy hair and a scruffy beard, but even then he played the cards like a dream.
The treat was more than twelve hours straight of continuous coverage, in the most high pressure situation that you could build. “Am I really,” said Jason Senti when I talked to him later, “after I flew a hundred of my friends and family out to watch, am I really going to shove it in light on the second hand?”
A big pot developed almost immediately between Sorel’s man Matthew Jarvis and the unflappable Joseph Cheong. Matthew Jarvis barrelled the turn and river only to be met by a raise all-in. One thousand people held their breath before Jarvis let it go. He had been bluffing, but as Sorel said, “I believed his line. I thought he could have had something there!”
Jonathon Duhamel, the young Canadian hockey geek, is the new champion of the world. And after watching nearly the whole thing and then being lucky enough to talk to some participants, I’d say it’s an honor well deserved.
Show 20 (November 24) about WSOP Main Event final table is online now! Click the play button to listen:
Prefer to download? Right click here and Save As.
