$1,500 Seven Card Stud

"Toto Walks the Ivey-Covered Yellow Brick Road"
By Andrew N.S. Glazer

We sure aren't in Kansas anymore, and that's a good thing, because I don't believe the local gaming regulations would allow an event as exciting as the 33rd Annual World Series of Poker.

Today, in a return to tradition, the final table of the $1,500 Seven-Card Stud event held only eight players, unlike the ten we'd seen in earlier events. Although the tight nature of tournament stud makes big multi-way pots unlikely, WSOP organizers made a good decision to keep the final table at eight for stud games and avoid the potentially awkward "community card river" that could happen in a big multi-way pot in a ten-handed game.

Actually, it looked from the start like this was going to be more of a two-handed game than an eight-handed game, because Atlantic City's Phillip Ivey, one of the most rapidly rising stars on the poker tournament circuit and one of my two dumbest omissions from my "top 30" picks to win the Big One at the end of the Series (England's Ben Roberts being the other), and Los Angeles' Toto Leonidas had so many chips that it looked like everyone else was playing for third.

The starting seats and chip positions were:

Seat Player Chips
1 Dan Torla $8,700
2 Ron Durante $29,500
3 Toto Leonidas $83,800
4 Gene Frank $14,700
5 Peter Moore $34,300
6 Steve Flicker $25,200
7 Phil Ivey $142,100
8 Johnny "World" Hennigan $44,500

For a while, I though we were playing the WSOP "Everything Goes" Championship, because three of the eight starters wore the bright purple t-shirts that have been showing up around here. It turns out that "Everything Goes" is a courier service started by Johnny "World" Hennigan, a popular player whose friends have been helping him out by serving as human billboards. Durante and Ivey also wore Hennigan's shirts today.

HARD FOR THE SHORT STACKS TO SIT TIGHT

We started playing with $300 antes, a $600 low card bring-in, playing $2,000-$4,000, which meant it would cost a minimum of $2,400 to sit out a round, and if you caught the low card your fair share of the time, it would cost $3,000.

Dan Torla, the smallest stack, could catch neither a break nor a hand: he picked up the forced bring-in five times in the first two rounds, and even though he survived his first all-in test, when he three his last $1,500 in as a raise and his two eights held up, the clock went off moving us to the next level, $400 antes with a $1,000 low card bring-in, playing $3,000-$6,000, which made Torla's conservative approach even more problematic.

Torla missed on his second all-in effort, when he started with two sevens and got his meager stack all-in against Ivey, who had nothing at the moment but caught a pair of eights on the very next card and then caught running sixes right after that to send Torla out and add a few more chips to the mountain he was building.

DOES "EVERYTHING GOES" INCLUDE THE OWNER?

This poker game we play is an odd one: just because you're friends with someone away from the table doesn't mean you don't try to rip his heart out AT the table, and when Johnny World, who had started as one of the few players who could have at least hoped to overtake the chip-heavy and talented Ivey-Leonidas duo, pushed his pair at Ivey, Ivey hung in, made a flush on sixth street, and Johnny "World" Hennigan departed seventh, leaving behind two t-shirts and at least the knowledge that the chips he'd lost would help ensure one of his other billboards would remain at the table a while longer.

How could a world-class player like Hennigan, who'd made it into the money in the Big One last year, go out faster than an unknown like Gene Frank, an Evansville, Indiana native who was playing in his first-ever seven-card stud tournament?

Unlike Torla, who was SO short stacked he felt he had to wait for a hand, and so anted himself into a position where his bets could never really threaten anyone, Frank realized he had just enough chips to try to push, and popped quite a few pots early. He was getting good odds on his bets, too: with the table still eight-handed, his raise to $2,000 meant he was collecting $3,000 in dead money if no one opposed him, and early on, at least, no one did, so Frank built his small starting stack into something that let him play.

GOOD VETERAN STRATEGY BY THE TOURNAMENT ROOKIE

Maybe he just had a lot of good cards: we never got to see them. It looked, though, that the stud tournament rookie had decided on a good tournament strategy, and had been fortunate enough to push when no one else had anything to push back with.

If you've been around the poker world for a while, you've probably heard Steve Flicker's name: he's a lowball specialist who enjoyed a great deal of success when that game was popular. Lowball isn't very popular anymore, and so Flicker's name doesn't come up as much, but he ventured into a game where you want high cards instead of low ones, and made a final table.

Unfortunately for Flicker, when the moment of truth came, he played his final hand more like a lowball specialist than a seven-stud high specialist, because he got all of his chips in on a flush draw. In lowball, it's impossible to make a great hand in three or four cards: you need five of them. In stud, you can have the real deal right away, and Flicker never caught the hearts he needed against Norcross, Georgia's Peter Moore.

In one of those annoying little ironies, Moore caught unneeded hearts on both sixth and seventh street, making it clear there were plenty left in the deck, but they weren't going to be Flicker's, and he exited sixth.

With the game now five-handed, the odds on the steal attempts shifted a bit. Five antes and a bring-in left $3,000 in dead money on the table, and the completion raise was that same amount, so instead of the 3-2 odds Frank got in the early going, attempted thieves were getting only even money now. On the other hand, they were only facing four opponents, not seven, making it less likely someone else had a real hand. Of course, everyone knew this, making the re-steal more likely. "I know that you know that I know that you know," that's part of what makes poker so much fun.

NARY A $1,000 CHIP TO BE SEEN

It was very difficult to keep track of chip counts, because tournament officials never chipped anyone up from the $100 and $500 chips in play. We never saw a red, white and blue $1,000 chip the entire tournament, which meant that Phil Ivey had quite a stack of the yellow-gold $500s in front of him. After Flicker left, Moore had gotten himself back into the hunt, and it looked like the short-stacked Durante and Frank were going to be content to battle for the ladder move from fifth to fourth.

Durante, Moore and Ivey hooked up in a pot that stayed three-way for a while, until Moore dropped out on fifth street, when the boards showed

Durante, (??) 2h-8d-6c
Ivey, (??) 10c-5c-3c

Ivey, as had been his pattern throughout, had raised the hand early, and kept pushing through fifth street, when Durante decided there was no point in playing on as a tiny stack and re-raised all-in, pushing Moore out of the pot and giving his own hand its best chance to win, because it turned out, once Ivey called, that the actual hands were

Durante, (2-K) 2h-8d-6c
Ivey, (9h-Jh) 10c-5c-3c

Durante's pair of twos gave him the temporary lead, but he never improved, and Ivey spiked a ten on the river to make the game four-handed. It had only taken about 80 minutes to knock the first four players out of the game.

Just when it looked like Ivey, a very pleasant, soft-spoken young man who had captured a bracelet in pot-limit Omaha in 2000 (and in doing so becoming the only man ever to beat Amarillo Slim Preston at a WSOP final table), was about to completely overwhelm the final four, he and Leonidas (a true tournament star in his own right, although looking for his first bracelet) hooked up on a huge pot where Toto's kings and jacks held up against whatever it was that Ivey mucked (it could have been queens up or a draw, we'll never know, although I have a hard time imagining Ivey endangering so many of his chips against the one player who could hurt him with a draw), reallocating the chips so that they looked about like

Leonidas, $145,000
Frank, $16,000
Moore, $60,000
Ivey, $179,000

Ivey took another hit when he and Moore hooked up in a big pot. Moore showed the Kd as his doorcard, and made the initial raise. Ivey re-raised showing the 10s and Moore popped him right back, so we had a big one going before we even hit fourth street. When Moore caught the 9d and checked to Ivey, who'd caught the Qc, Ivey bet, and Moore called.

Ivey bet straight out when he caught another queen on sixth street, and Moore hesitated a long while. He almost put his chips into the pot, almost took them back, and kept wavering until he took a look at the size of the pot that was already out there. Finally, he called, even though he'd caught an unhelpful-looking 2c.

TO FINISH, OR NOT TO FINISH; THAT IS THE QUESTION

Moore knows seven-stud: all that wavering involved making a decision as to whether he was willing to go to the river with his hand, because he called fairly quickly when Ivey bet again on sixth and Moore caught another useless looking card, the 4c. Ivey bet the river and Moore called. Ivey turned over his queens and tens.

"Well, I gotta hit to beat you, pal," Moore said, and then checked his river card. "I did" he said, flipping up the nine he'd caught on the end to give him nines to go with the kings he'd started out with. Moore was now an official threat: we no longer had a two-man game.

Frank, who had played so well in the early going, had faltered a bit in the middle, laying down a hand on the end to Ivey when neither player showed anything of consequence on board, but he doubled up when he got his last few chips in with pocket eights that held up against Leonidas' flush draw and king overcard. Thanks to the two trailers winning these hands, the game had suddenly grown more balanced:

Leonidas, $105,000
Frank, $40,000
Moore, $94,000
Ivey, $140,000

Moore gained even more ground when he won another pot against Leonidas, and looked poised to make a run at the whole thing when he hooked up in this duel with Ivey.

Moore started with the Ac, and completed the bet to $3,000. Ivey re-raised to $6,000, showing the 6d, and Moore made it $9,000, with Ivey calling. Moore bet out when he caught the 6s, and Ivey called catching the 9h. Moore bet again when he caught the 8c, and Ivey called with his Kd.

On sixth street, Ivey caught an open pair of nines, and bet out $6,000. Moore had caught a third open club, the 2c.

"Oh, let's see if I have a club draw," Moore drawled, and he checked his hole cards. He looked down below, and raised to $12,000. Ivey didn't look happy as he called, and he check-called the river.

OLD TRICK DOESN'T WORK TOO WELL ON THIS YOUNGSTER

Ivey had just proven why once you're in on fifth street you usually stay to the river, because his two pair, nines and sixes, were good. Moore only had aces and missed the flush draw as well as the attempt at a second pair. Against a lot of players, the raise on sixth street might have bought him the pot, but Ivey is a seven-stud specialist, and despite his youth has seen most of the tricks in the book.

The huge pot knocked Moore back down to about $65,000, and once again shot Ivey into a gigantic lead.

The clock went off, moving us to $600 antes, a $1,200 low card bring-in, playing $4,000-$8,000.

Almost immediately after the break, Frank again showed he didn't understand the "in for a dollar, in for a dime" principle, going to the river against Ivey and again folding for Ivey's last bet. He'd played well early, but this was the second time he'd committed a huge number of chips to a pot and refused to see it to its outcome.

Heck, even I know this concept. At the final table of a $500 seven-stud event at the Tournament of Champions, Ivey bet his last $1,000 at me in a big pot when I only would have had $3,000 left if I called and lost, so the $1,000 was pretty important. I called him with a pair of twos, and they were good (great call, yes, but let's skip the part about how I got into that situation holding only a pair of twos).

FRANK'S VALIENT FIRST EFFORT FALLS SHORT

The fold left Frank with just about zero hope of anything better than a fourth place finish, and that's where he wound up when he got his last few chips immediately at the start of a hand that came down:

Frank, (10-10) 3-8-2-3 (?)
Ivey, (A-Q) J-K-A-6 (10)

Ivey's river ten gave him a straight, although any second pair would have done the job, and we were three handed. Let's give Frank some credit: he made it to fourth place in the first ever seven stud tournament he ever entered, and he played well enough at the start to move from seventh up to fourth. He didn't know one important concept, and it hurt him, but fourth in the World Series is a hell of a way to start your seven-stud tournament career.

We were three-handed at 4:45 p.m., with the chip counts approximately

Leonidas, $50,000
Moore, $80,000
Ivey, $250,000

Moore had done nicely to this point, but he tried to coffeehouse the wrong guy. Already having lost some chips to Ivey when Phil made a straight, he tried talking his way through Toto Leonidas when the boards looked like this:

Leonidas, (??) As-Jd-7c-7d
Moore, (??) Qs-9s-10d-8s

Owning the open pair of sevens, Toto also owned the right to act first, and he asked Moore how much he had left.

TOTO'S HEARD THEM ALL, TOO

"You're a little ahead of me," Moore replied. "You'll still have a few left if you lose." Toto's seen all the tricks in the book, too. Moore's statement immediately caused him to bet his hand, and it was pretty clear Moore didn't yet have a straight or flush, because he just called.

Toto bet the river, and Moore raised his last few chips all-in. Toto had an easy call with his sevens full of aces, but he didn't need that much, because when Toto called, Moore said, "You got me, I don't have anything."

I asked Moore about this afterwards. Had he misread his hand, I wanted to know.

"No, I didn't misread it," Moore explained. "I had just come too far, and if I lost that pot I had no chance at all. The only hope I had at all was that he (Toto) only had the pair of sevens and wouldn't want to call that last bet. It wasn't much of a hope, but it sure was better than trying to win if I'd given up on the end when I missed the draw."

#2 BEATS #3, DISTRESSING #1

The three-way point in a tournament is usually a pretty key time. If #1 knocks out the low man, he has a huge chip lead. If #2 takes out #3, #2 usually has enough ammunition to make it a fight. Toto trailed, but it wasn't hopeless at all, with Ivey leading roughly $230,000-$150,000.

It was about 5:00 p.m. when the duel commenced, and between the relatively small blind and bring-in structure compare to the stack sizes, and the respect each player for the other, we entered a stretch wherein the vast majority of the hands were "bet and take it" poker, about as stark a contrast to the hugely exciting action-packed no-limit event the night before as you could imagine.

Phil Gordon, the tall (6'9"), lanky, good-looking guy who had made a big name for himself by coming in fourth in the Big One last year, came in to do his second job of "guest announcing" during this Series, and I'll give him credit, he kept the crowd pretty entertained, a tough job because he had almost no material to work with. His own efforts to find synonyms for "Phil raises and wins" or "Toto raises and wins" were more entertaining than the poker.

That's neither Leonidas's nor Ivey's fault, of course. They weren't there to entertain the crowd, they were their to win a bundle of no-deal cash and a bracelet. Ivey in particular is about as quiet a poker player as you'll ever find. I think this trait (along with his excellent play, of course) is what let him beat Amarillo Slim in 2000, because poker's all-time championship talker couldn't get Ivey to engage in any distracting conversations. Phil had a job to do, and he was going to stay focused.

NOTHING TOO FRISKY FOR IVEY

He stayed focused this time, too. The pots all stayed small for about half an hour, when finally Ivey won a big one with trip tens…only to see Leonidas get the chips back on the very next hand when he made trip fours. Neither of these fellows was going to get into a fight without the goods, not when the low blind structure wasn't going to force them to play fast.

In the end, though, it was Ivey's relentless pressure that did Toto in. Ivey raised at almost every possible opportunity, but wasn't reckless about it: if Toto played back at him, he either let the hand go, or looked at one more card and let it go unless the card helped him. Even though winning $2,400 at a time when there was nearly four hundred thousand in play doesn't sound like much, at the speed one plays heads-up poker, it starts to add up, and Ivey was getting more than his fair share of the uncontested pots.

Check that. It was fair. Ivey was winning with his aggressive style, and Toto, who started out trailing, just couldn't find the cards to fight back with. That 230-150 lead gradually extended out to 280-100, then a little more, and a little more, and before Toto could do much about it, he was in a position where he was going to have to win a big hand to get back into the game, and Ivey wasn't going to let him do that unless it was big hand vs. big hand.

FOLLOW THE YELLOW CHIP ROAD

The road to victory was going to be paved with those yellow $500 chips, and Toto was down to about $65,000 worth of them when he finally got the chance for that big hand. Ivey opened with a raise, showing the Qd, and Toto re-raised showing the 3d. Ivey's pressure remained relentless and he re-popped it, with Toto calling. Ivey bet and was called when he caught the 3c on fourth street while Toto caught the 4s, and Ivey bet again when he caught the Ah on fifth.

Toto raised it to $16,000, and Ivey made it $24,000. Toto called. When Toto caught the an open pair with the scary-looking 4c, he bet out, and Ivey just called with his 8h, leaving the boards looking like

Leonidas, (??) 3d-4s-6s-4c
Ivey, (??) Qd-3c-Ah-8h

Toto looked at his river card, and checked. Fear didn't get Phil Ivey to this final table. He bet out. Leonidas had only about $10,000 in front of him, the bet was $8,000, and there was about a hundred grand in the pot. It was one of those bets you just had to call. If you don't call it, you're trailing $370,000-$10,000, and even I could beat Phil Ivey with that kind of a lead.

Leonidas folded.

I guess he figured he had some equity with ten grand in front of him, and none with two grand, and he also must have figured that Ivey, who had shown him enough respect earlier to fold an open pair of eights to a raise when Toto had an open pair of fours, could beat his pair. All the earlier re-raises must have meant something, too. I guess I'm applying a double standard, because I criticized Frank for not calling in situations like this, but it's hard to criticize a player of Toto Leonidas's ability.

Regardless, the fold essentially sealed his fate. He did manage one double-up, but just as the clock went off to move us to $1,000 antes, $2,000 low cards, playing $6,000-$12,000, they got it all in with the hands

Leonidas, (K-8) 3-8
Ivey, (A-6) A-Q

Leonidas was never able to make a second pair, and the aces were enough for the East Coast's seven-card stud ace, Phil Ivey.

WAS IT THE CHIPS, OR THE STYLE?

In the aftermath, I asked Ivey if his huge chip lead was what allowed him to apply relentless pressure to everyone else throughout the day.

"No, not really," Ivey said. "I mean, it probably helped a little, because people didn't want to get involved with my big stack, but that's the way I usually play, I apply pressure."

I also wanted to know what he thought about the multiple hands wherein opponents folded to a bet on the river. "Didn't you find that surprising," I asked, "when even at events like the Tournament of Champions, some fools will call you with a pair of twos on the end?"

I think that question got the first smile anyone saw out of Phil Ivey the entire day. "Hey, that was a good call then," he said, "and as for today and the folds on the end, all I can say is, 'Thank goodness.'"

Poker being the game of deception that it is, this line probably meant that Ivey's foes were right to fold on the end today, but you don't have to be right in those river situations very often for the calls to be correct.

I THOUGHT THIS WAS OLD NEWS, BUT…

I wasn't even going to bother mentioning that Ivey is of African-American descent, because it's old news. An African-American won a bracelet in the late 1970s, Ivey won in 2000, and Paul Darden won one in 2001, so Ivey's ancestry didn't seem relevant, but Ivey wanted one thing to go on the record.

"I want to say one thing," Ivey said (and when a man who says as few words as Phil Ivey does say some, you write them down). "I wanted this bracelet for itself, and for the money-it costs a lot to play all the events here-but Paul Darden gave me the motivation to win."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "Did you want to have the most bracelets of any African-American, or something like that?" Oops.

"No, nothing like that at all," Ivey said. "Paul's win last year just inspired me, and it made me hungry for another one."

Paul Darden or no Paul Darden, if Phil Ivey stays hungry, he'll probably have a half dozen of these things before he's through. His table stoicism doesn't make for great copy: he's sort of at the opposite end of the Amarillo Slim universe in that way. But the man can play great poker, and sometimes that's all the talking anyone needs to do.

Final Official Results
$1,500 Buy-in Seven-Card Stud
253 Entries, Total Prize Pool $356,730

1. Phil Ivey, $132,000
2. Toto Leonidas, $67,780
3. Peter Moore, $33,880
4. Gene Frank, $21,400
5. Ron Durante, $17,840
6. Steve Flicker, $14,270
7. John Hennigan, $10,700
8. Dan Torla, $7,500

9th-12th, $5,000 each: Bill Gibbs, Tony Cousineau, Steve Simmons, Barry Shulman.
13th-16th, $3,560 each: Chris Bigler, Steven Banks, Ron Preston, David Colclough.
17th-24th, $2,140 each: Patrick Burton, Edward Scharf, Pierre Peretti, Terry Fleischer, Mickey Seagle, Barbara Enright, Edward Fishman, Max Cabot.

Editor's Note: My apologies for the late delivery of the Lee Munzer article yesterday: Lee had some computer problems (one reason why, aside from my proclivity to dump Coca-Colas into my machines, I have brought two laptops to this Series).

I'd also like to extend another apology to those of you who have had problems reading the reports (although that group still may not be able to read this…and I have to admit, it's nice to be able to apologize for someone else's mistakes/problems instead of my own for a change). Apparently some computer systems are not reading the blue background with white print as that, and instead are reading the white print as black print, making the reports nearly unreadable.

Thanks for writing and informing me of this immediately. I passed the news along to the folks who own and run the website in Sweden, and they have promised to try to fix it as soon as possible. I hope it's fixed by today's report. Eventually, all the reports will be viewable on the www.poker.casino.com website archives, but the site owner's delay putting them on the site for several days; only subscribers get the reports "hot off the presses," as it were.

To the top

Comments & Contact

I love getting reader feedback and questions. Don't be shy about disagreeing with anything you read in Wednesday Nite Poker. If I decide you're right, readers will hear about it (with attribution or without, as you prefer); if you're wrong, you'll probably learn something important when you hear why you're wrong.

Email me at: wednesdaynitepoker@casino.com

If you would like to read previous issues of Wednesday Nite Poker you can find them here.

Interested in advertising in this newsletter? Contact us at: ads@casino.com.

Wednesday Nite Poker is is published by the Casino.com Network
(http://www.casino.com) twice a month. The Casino.com Network publishes other popular newsletters; Craps Companion, Slots Report, Blackjack Insider, Casino Travel Showcase, CasinoWire Newsletter and The Casino.com Spin. If you wish to subscribe sign up here!

If you wish to unsubscribe from this newsletter please click here.

To the top