$2,000 Limit H.O.R.S.E Event

"A Day at the Races"
By Andrew N.S. Glazer

HORSE is a game familiar to basketball wannabes, once-weres, or never-wases, because you don't have to run, jump, or be in particularly good physical condition. All you need is a decent shot and perhaps a good trick shot or two.

In poker, H.O.R.S.E. is, well, a horse of a different color, because rather than the basketball version wherein one or two skills can earn you a victory, in the poker version, you need to display ability in five separate poker games: Hold'em, Omaha eight-or-better, Razz, Seven-card stud, and Seven Card Stud eight-or-better.

At the World Series, one plays this rotation-style game in half-hour increments, meaning the limits have increased to the third level before you ever get to the stud eight-or-better. It's an excellent test of overall poker talent, and while like in all games (save possibly no-limit hold'em) you need to make some hands reasonably early in the tournament, one expects solid players to reach the final table of an event like H.O.R.S.E.

Perhaps even more, one expects high limit money players to get there, because the high stakes money players favor rotation games, in order to ensure that a one-game specialist can't take their money, so they have experience in shifting games that most money and tournament players don't own.

I GALLOPED AROUND THE ROOM AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

It was just such a high-limit specialist, Johnny "World" Hennigan, who arrived at the final table with the chip lead, but before we review the usual chip leaders and seat positions, allow me a few words about the dually equine and theatrical comedic title I selected for this story.

This won't quite be a typical report, because just (well, perhaps not "just") as the Marx brothers covered a lot of ground in the film whose title I've borrowed, I spend a fair amount of time moving about the room today, because there were a LOT of different kinds of action available for viewing by those mobile enough to check it all out, and I'm going to jump in and out of the tournament report to mention some of the more interesting moments. (Wow, I just described myself as "mobile." I'm going to have to check my dosages.)

When we reached the final table today, there were 32 minutes left on the clock in the Razz (seven-card stud played for low, with no qualifier) round, and the seats and chip positions as follows:

Seat Player Chips
1 Stephen Wolff $43,900
2 Ron Long $28,700
3 George Shah $49,700
4 Men "the Master" Nguyen $31,300
5 Brent Carter $9,700
6 Ben Tang $15,900
7 Johnny "World" Hennigan $102,800
8 Phil Ivey $30,100

Although the tournament looked to be Hennigan's to lose, he faced four opponents who had won WSOP bracelets in their careers (Long, Nguyen, Carter, and Ivey). Ivey in particular figured to be a threat: he has been playing very well (a bracelet already this year as well as two wins already booked in the bracelet-holder heads-up match competition), his confidence level is high (information like that is hard to pry out of the quiet, non-braggadocios player, but you can see it in his eyes) and Ivey is also a noted high stakes player.

To add even more to Ivey's chances/expectations, the first three games of the day were to be Razz, Seven-card stud, and stud eight-or-better, which figured to be his three strongest games, thus sending him off to a quick start. Hennigan is a world class stud player too, but it was obvious he was going to have to watch out for Ivey.

"Obvious" isn't the same concept as "accurate," though, because in a rather shocking development, the well-credentialed Ivey was gone fifteen minutes into the day's play. He never even made it out of the Razz. That's one of the problems when you're playing with $300 antes, a $600 high card bring-in, and $2,000-$4,000 poker. If you take one big hand to the river, as Ivey did with Hennigan, you can go through close to $30,000 pretty easily, and that's all Ivey had.

HAD ONE CARD FALLEN DIFFERENTLY, IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN FIRST RATHER THAN EIGHTH

Had Ivey managed to win this early confrontation, he'd have been right back in the hunt with his specialty game up next, but as it was, the young Atlantic City pro was an early casualty.

There isn't a rule or trick that veteran Brent Carter doesn't know, but he started the day with only $9,700, and when he caught bricks on both fifth and sixth street in a hand against Hennigan, he was drawing dead, and exited seventh.

As both Ivey and Carter either knew or learned, Razz can be a cruel game, and the other star to learn more about its cruelties was Men "the Master" Nguyen, who technically survived the Razz, but did so with only $1,000 left. He lost that on the very first seven-card stud hand, ironically enough losing with cards that would have served him very nicely in Razz: he started (5-4) A-6-8.

We hadn't even played forty minutes, and three of the eight starters were history, or at least mythology. The chip counts now were approximately

Wolff, $56,000
Long, $65,000
Shah, $25,000
Tang, $70,000
Hennigan, $96,000

Tang, a Scottsdale, Arizona pro who normally plays at Casino Arizona, had made the big early move the old fashioned way, by connecting on some hands. Most of the players were playing fairly silently. The "trash talking" was being done from the rail, where Mike Laing, who had already dispatched T.J. Cloutier and Mickey Appleman from the bracelet-holder tournament, was trying to egg on announcer Diego Cordovez (who had already beaten Humberto Brenes earlier in the tournament and Barry Shulman earlier in the day) to take a break from his volunteer announcing duties and play their match.

"C'mon, Diego," yelled Laing. "Let's play, I'll have you spinning in so many directions, you won't know which way is up. I'll have you back here in 15 minutes and you can go back to announcing. I'll bust you like a red-headed step-child."

It took me a minute to figure that one out, but Cordovez was having none of it.

"OH, YEAH, AND YOUR MOTHER, TOO"

"Sorry, Mike, I'm going to finish announcing the final table," he said. "Besides, I don't care what they say, you're selling yourself short, I think you're good enough to last at least a half hour against me."

Don't bother coming to the World Series if you're going to leave your self confidence at home. Cordovez wanted to play poker, not gamesmanship, but he wasn't going to let himself get run over verbally. Cordovez won the match, his second of the day.

With the chips fairly evenly balanced in the main event, I decided to see what was happening in the early stages of the pot-limit hold'em event that started today. A crowd had gathered by the rail, and the reason was soon obvious enough. A random draw had placed T.J. Cloutier, Phil Hellmuth, Bobby Hoff, Jason Viriyayuthakorn, and Hasan Habib at the same table. Gosh, what fun. Tournament pro David Plastik, no slouch himself, was also at the table, and got burned by more than just the draw. A passing waitress dumped a cup of hot coffee all over his arm. Fortunately Plastik neither melted nor burned badly, and a little while later, they broke the table.

Before they could do this, Hellmuth added his best musical contribution to a salute to "A Day at the Races" with some singing and dancing, even without headphones. I advised him not to quit his day job, and that one Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott was probably all poker could handle.

DIFFERING DEFINITIONS OF "THE BEST"

Cloutier pulled me aside when I murmured something to him about the bad table draw.

"That's not the only funny thing about this table," said tournament poker's all-time leading money winner. "You've got the guy who thinks he's the all-time best at no-limit, the guy who a lot of people think is the all-time best at no-limit, tournaments at least, and the guy I think is the all-time best at no-limit, at least as far as money play, Bobby Hoff."

Cloutier caught a real break. They moved him out of this gang of killers and promptly seated him directly in between Erik Seidel and Scotty Nguyen. I don't think the pitchers who faced the '27 Yankees had to deal with a Murderer's Row worse than that.

Checking back on the H.O.R.S.E. final table, I noted they'd moved into the stud half hour, and the time when Hennigan might have best been expected to shine was dominated by Ben Tang, who had such a good time of it at this game and the next that it was clearly the Hour of Living Benergously. He moved up to a chip lead that was approximately

Wolff, $71,000
Long, $57,000
Shah, $22,000
Tang, $94,000
Hennigan, $68,000

As we moved to the stud eight-or-better round, they took the $100 chip off the table, and moved the antes to $500, with a low card bring-in of $1,000, playing $3,000-$6,000.

Everyone has his or her better games in this event. The next 20 minutes were all-World, as Johnny jumped up to $145,000, and most distinctly non-vulpine, as Wolff, a South African now living in California, lost nearly $50,000. He escaped from the eight-or-better round looking to be in serious trouble, but as we moved to hold'em, he almost immediately flopped a set of queens on a Q-7-6 board, got action from Hennigan, and more than doubled through when the last two cards came 7-K.

THE PROS DECIDE TO LET BYGONES BE BYGONES

When Long became the short man, I thought I should stay near the final table, but he doubled through twice, allowing me to wander off to watch the start of the Negreanu-Men "the Master" heads-up match. This talented duo had had some harsh words for one another in the months preceding the Series, although lately had kissed and made up (without the kiss)…but I still want to see if any of the old tension would emerge. As nearly as I could tell, each was a perfect gentleman, but it was also clear each wanted to win very badly.

There's this little thing called "ego" in high stakes poker, and everyone in the heads-up match tournament was taking his or her match quite seriously. Actually, it became only a "his" tournament in the second round when 1983 World Champ Tom McEvoy eliminated the only woman in the field, high stakes pro Jennifer Harman. The newly blonde Negreanu wound up eliminating "the Master," meaning he had eliminated two Nguyens in a row (1998 World Champion Scotty in the first round).

Starting to get the idea that there was a lot happening in the room today?

Long had survived his first two all-in situations, but on the third, he took pocket nines up against Hennigan's pocket tens, and that one pip was enough to send Long out fifth. Oddly enough, we'd started the day with four bracelet-holders at the table, and they were the first four players to exit.

This left the new chip count

Wolff, $30,000
Shah, $66,000
Tang, $95,000
Hennigan, $121,000

Wolff's slide at the higher limits continued straight downhill, and it because pretty clear that hold'em wasn't the game that had gotten Wolff to the final table when he battled Hennigan on a hand when Hennigan raised to $6,000 from the small blind, and Wolff 3-bet the hand from the big blind. Hennigan called, and Wolff had only $5,500 left in front of him.

The flop came KsKhKc, Hennigan checked and Wolff bet straight out for $3,000. I assumed Hennigan would either fold or go ahead and put Wolff in for his last $2,500, but assuming is a dangerous thing. Hennigan just called.

A POKER PUZZLE IS PUZZLING POKER

The 4h hit the turn, Wolff checked, Hennigan bet, and with $26,500 in the pot to be claimed if a call could get lucky, Wolff decided to fold, leaving himself with only $2,500, $1,500 of which immediately had to go into the next hand as the small blind. If anyone can explain to me what hand can be good enough to 3-bet with before the flop and to bet with on the flop but not good enough to call with on a blank turn when getting more than 10-1 pot odds, please let me know.

Wolff survived a couple of all-ins, but exited as soon as the Omaha round began, flopping two pair with his J-7-5-3 on the J-3-4 board, but his short stack couldn't move Tang off the hand, and when the lone four in Tang's hand turned into trip fours, Wolff was gone.

The blinds were now $2,000-$4,000, playing $4,000-$8,000, and with $312,000 in chips on the table, one might think we'd have plenty of play left, but the chips weren't evenly distributed:

Shah, $28,000
Tang, $160,000
Hennigan, $125,000

Tang had taken his measly 15k starting stack and put himself into position to win the tournament, but Hennigan plays for this kind of money in REAL chips on a regular basis and wasn't about to be knocked off stride by the rush. It didn't hurt that very shortly thereafter, Tang played a pot to the river with Hennigan, only to fail to call the last bet, reversing chip positions with Tang and one of the two hands that, by Tang's own admission, he didn't play well near the end.

Having grabbed the lead back with a weak Tang play, Hennigan added pressure with a big hand, the two queens in his hand flopped a set and rivered a full house. In a very short span of time the chip positions had changed dramatically:

Shah, $22,000
Tang, $95,000
Hennigan, $195,000

Shah got the last of his chips in with a strong Omaha/8 hand, Ad-Qd-3-4, facing Tang's As-8s-8-4, but hands that are superior in full games don't always hold the same advantage shorthanded, and when the board finished J-2-7-J-K, Tang's lowly pair of eights scooped the pot, and we were heads-up. Thanks to finishing off Shah himself, rather than leaving it to Hennigan, it looked like Tang was going to have a good chance, trailing only $132,000-$180,000

Heads-up, the small blind goes on the button (SBB) and acts first before the flop and second after the flop. Tang very nearly evened the match on one the first heads-up hands when he flopped two pair, but when the final board came K-J-7-4-Q, Hennigan's A-10 gave him the nut straight and a lead of $210,000-$97,000.

TANG PICKED THE WRONG MOMENT TO RUN BAD

At these stakes, with shifts of $30,000 and $40,000 fairly easy to imagine on any given hand, Tang had plenty of reason to think he could get back into the match, but he hit one of those stretches that cause most poker players to swear they are giving up the game forever (of course these oaths are usually good for about 48 hours).

Hennigan immediately scooped Tang twice, once when a low failed to come and a second when two jacks hit the board and Hennigan held A-J. Tang only had $30,000 left when the game switched to Razz, $500 antes, a $1,000 high card bring-in, playing $4,000-$8,000.

Nothing of consequence happened for four hands, but on #5, they got all the money in on fourth street with cards that turned out to be

Tang, (A-Q) 8-10
Hennigan, (6-4) 10-K

Tang certainly had the lower hand at this point and plenty of reason to suspect he could win, and matters improved on fifth street when he made his queen low when he hit a four and Hennigan hit a nine for a king low. But Tang paired his aces on sixth, while Hennigan hit a trey, giving him a ten-low, and when Tang hit a king on the river, Hennigan's final card didn't matter.

The 32 year old high stakes rotation game expert had finished the job everyone expected him to finish when the day began, thus beating eight tough opponents: the seven at the table, and the burden of expectation.

I asked Tang about his comeback from a starting chip position of $15,900.

"I didn't have any particularly brilliant strategy," said the modest young man as his girlfriend consoled him. "I just hit a lot of hands early, and got particularly hot during the hold'em round. But then once we got heads up, I played a couple of hands less than perfectly-I think I could have saved a few bets-and every time I had a hand, he caught a bigger one. It's not too bad, considering where I started, but…."

JUST IN CASE YOU THINK THESE GUYS DON'T CARE…

Tang trailed off, looked into his girlfriend's eyes, and clenched an "Argh" through his teeth as he bent over and leaned on the rail, clearly disappointed not merely at his chance for a bigger payday, but that elusive gold bracelet.

As for Hennigan, the popular player once again wore one of his ubiquitous "Everything Goes" purple t-shirts. By the time this Series is over, every poker player in Las Vegas is going to be using this Hennigan-owned courier service (although just exactly what it is that poker players courier to one another, I'm not sure). Given the number of players who have appeared in the shirts at final tables this year, and poker players' proclivity for superstition, the shirts may soon be selling at a premium, although I think they've been giveaways so far.

"World" got his nickname because he's been successful at a lot of games (don't try to take him on at pool), and like most true pros, the payday for first means more to him than the bracelet does, although he was certainly excited to win the tournament.

$117,320 could easily be one session's results, at the stakes Hennigan plays for on a regular basis, so I asked him why he was spending the time in the tournament.

"The truth?" he asked. "It was going to be nice to win one, but the reality is that the chance to get the exposure for my new business was more important to me."

Now, if only some company like Microsoft or Coca-Cola would start thinking along the lines Johnny "World" Hennigan does, and we might have some World Series tournaments wherein we wouldn't have to put up all our own money.

FINAL OFFICIAL RESULTS, $2,000 BUY-IN H.O.R.S.E.
156 Entries, Total Prize Pool $293,280

1. Johnny "World" Hennigan, $117,320
2. Ben Tang, $58,640
3. George Shah, $29,300
4. Steve Wolff, $17,600
5. Ron Long, $14,660
6. Men "the Master" Nguyen, $11,740
7. Brent Carter, $8,800
8. Phil Ivey, $5,860

9th-12th, $4,400 each: "Detroit" Al, John Cover, Steve Schulman, Vince Burgio.
13th-16th, $2,940 each: Allen Cunningham, Joe Schulman, Andrew Prock, Mickey Appleman.

OTHER WSOP NEWS AND NOTES:

The heads-up bracelet-winner tournament continues to move along. Those who have won matches not mentioned above, and since yesterday's report, include:

Phil Hellmuth, Jr. def. Mel Weiner
Diego Cordovez def. Mike Laing
Steve Zolotow def. Billy Baxter

The highly anticipated Chan-Seidel match in round two hasn't happened yet, primarily because both players are still, as we pass midnight tonight, alive and well in the pot-limit hold'em tournament that started today.

I may prove to be a popular late night dinner companion. I went to a nice Japanese restaurant last night with four player-friends. Cordovez won two matches in the head-up tournament today, putting him into the money, and the other three late night diners, Seidel, Bill Gazes, and John Juanda, are already in the money and were among the chip leaders the last time I checked downstairs.

Of course, Cordovez, Gazes, Seidel and Juanda were all among my "top 30" picks for winning the Big One, so I'm not sure we can draw a causal connection between their success today and sharing sushi the night before.

CHRIS FERGUSON'S BEST GAME

By the way, speaking of that "top 30," when mentioning the great Chris "Jesus" Ferguson in it, after noting that he is highly principled, kind, generous, and 42 other important positive things, I said that I was including him in my top 30 picks to win the Big One even though "no-limit hold'em probably isn't his best game." In a joshing manner, Chris has been giving me a hard time about this, even though I pointed out that it's a pretty serious compliment to be put in the top 30 no-limit players if it's not even your best game. Nonetheless, because Nolan Dalla, who prepared his Poker Digest story completely separately from mine (a sneaky way of saying I take no responsibility whatsoever for the odds he set, some of which I disagree with vehemently) used almost exactly the same line about Chris, Chris was wondering where this theory had its genesis.

I told him I thought HE'D been the source, but he denied it, and said he thought NLH probably was his best game. Far be it from me to argue. Next year, when I pick the top 30, I will include Chris, say no-limit is his best game, insist he's inept in all the other forms of poker, and to make sure I correct any other errors in the 2002 paragraph, will note that he is unethical, unkind, miserly, and 42 other miserable things.

Nah, I can't even say that as a joke. Chris Ferguson is one of the nicest people in poker and the least ego-inflated champion I've ever met. I knew him before he won and I've known him since he won, and he's exactly the same guy, except for the $100 bills he hands out to everyone he passes on the street.

WELCOME "BACK" TO A NEW ANNOUNCER

We've had many popular guest announcers during the tournament. Today, long-time poker aficionado and comedian Gabe Kaplan agreed to take the microphone for some of the upcoming final tables or heads-up matches.

A number of readers have asked for interesting high-limit side game stories. There remain plenty of these games, and I'll collect more as the Series moves on, but just in case you thought the "live straddle" was something reserved for your local $2-$4 game, I had a fun hour watching a $400-$800 game wherein the live straddle was a fairly popular move. The players didn't want their names used, but when I observed the, shall I say, "loose" play in the game and mentioned something about going to my safe deposit box, I was informed the game was closed at five players. Probably just as well: one nights an awfully hefty bankroll for a game that big that includes live straddles, heftier than mine, but it was awfully tempting!

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