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The 40th Annual World Series of Poker held the Media Tournament during the off day between Day 2 and Day 3 of the Main Event. On July 9th, Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc. joined with Dream Team Poker to sponsor the Charity Event. This year’s event was different than those in the past due to the Team Poker concept pioneered by Dream Team Poker. The concept of Team Poker is that the three players will each compete for the Individual Championship, but the finishing order of each player is given a numeric value. The three point totals are then combined and the team with the lowest aggregate total becomes the Team Champion. Several previous Dream Team tournaments have been played around the country this year and a non-bracelet $1,500 Dream Team Championship will be played during this year’s WSOP on July 12th.The 40th Annual World Series of Poker held the Media Tournament during the off day between Day 2 and Day 3 of the Main Event. On July 9th, Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc. joined with Dream Team Poker to sponsor the Charity Event. This year’s event was different than those in the past due to the Team Poker concept pioneered by Dream Team Poker. The concept of Team Poker is that the three players will each compete for the Individual Championship, but the finishing order of each player is given a numeric value. The three point totals are then combined and the team with the lowest aggregate total becomes the Team Champion. Several previous Dream Team tournaments have been played around the country this year and a non-bracelet $1,500 Dream Team Championship will be played during this year’s WSOP on July 12th.
Most media outlets could field a team (or in many cases, several teams) consisting of three players each. Some teams were formed by players that did not have enough players to form their own team. Since the media tournament is a “Fun” event, there is a lot of serious poker played and bragging rights are at stake. Both the top three players and the top three teams were playing for nice loving cup style trophies and the final table would have a $500 donation made in each player’s given to The Nevada Cancer Institute.
I was placed on a team with syndicated poker talk show host, Michael King and Charity Tournament facilitator Annie Van Bebber. Though we were named Kings Poker, our Captain, never showed up for the event, which gave us a DQ for player 1 and greatly reduced our chances for the top spot. Players were divided into three separate starting sections to keep players from competing against teammates until the final table. Early on, Annie was short-stacked, but held on and began increasing her stack. I started with an early double up on a Big Blind Special when I flopped Kings Up and beat a suited K J that did not improve. A dozen hands later I lost over half of my stack (about T$2,500) when I was dealt the hand that costs me more money than any other, a suited Big Chick/Little Slick (or more easily recognizable Ace - Queen). When Ace-small-small rainbow came on the flop, I bet out T$500 after my opponent’s check. When he again checked after another small card at the Turn, I tried to misrepresent my hand and checked, too. When I saw a Nine fall on the River, I actually violated one of the basic tenets I espouse in my book Winning Blue-Collar Hold’em. Instead of checking on the River as my opponent did, I got greedy and made a T$1,000 raise which he called. When we flipped our card I realized I had knocked my stack down to a below starting stack of T$1,500.
Not long after that hand, our table broke. The next table I went to had some healthy stacks against my paltry T$1,300. I made some good moves with inadequate hands when I reached the Double-up or Out stage and then when I had some chips to play with I again played some solid poker. A half-dozen hands or so before the break, Dennis Phillips joined our table. In case you don’t remember, Dennis was the 3rd place finisher in last year’s Main Event and besides his blog in Card Player Magazine, he has a Poker Show on local radio in his native Missouri. He had a relatively short stack and was playing some really marginal hands when he came to the table. At the break, about an hour and a half into the tournament I had a top ten stack of over T$14,000 and Annie was still in the tourney. With the chip lead at the table I was not able to get a 4 times the BB bet from early position with either my pocket Kings or Queens on consecutive hands.
With another half hour under our belts and the blinds getting ridiculously high, Dennis was still frequently shoving All-in, often stealing the blinds, but also winning some nice sized pots. When I looked down to a suited Ace - Ten, I felt I had a chance to take down Dennis and move my stack near the top of the leader board, since I had him covered. Unfortunately, He turned over the best hand I had seen him within the last forty-five minutes, an unsuited Ace – Jack. Unfortunately, my hand did not improve, and he took down over T$12,000 chips. Instead of adding to my stories of besting a famous player (as I did when I felted Barbara Enright a month after she was inducted into the Hall of Fame), I was severely crippled.
With only a few thousand left, I was involved in a three-way with Dennis and another player with a King – Ten to Ten-Ten and Dennis’ King 8. When no King materialized, I was left with T$400 chips which I put in blind on the next hand, My Three - Five of Clubs was close in the end, since I wound up with four to a Flush and four to a Straight when Dennis knocked me out. On the previous hand, Annie had been knocked out on her table so not only were my hopes for an individual crown crushed, any chance for a team trophy was shattered. At the time I left the Rio, Annie and I finished somewhere between 10th an 15th in the Team competition.
The hand against Dennis really brought out the realization that a single hand can change the course of a tournament (and in some cases, the course of poker history). Just as Humberto Brenes found out when Chris Moneymaker knocked him out in the 2003 tournament. With Humberto’s pocket Aces against Moneymaker’s pocket Eights, it looked like the amateur player’s main event was over. Instead, an Eight on the Turn ended Humberto’s quest for another Main Event Final Table. Cracking the Aces gave Moneymaker the chips he needed to take the tournament lead and the rest, as they say, is history.
Editor's Note: At the time of this writing, Dennis Phillips was heading to Day 4 of the 2009 WSOP Main Event.
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