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LA Poker classic Final Table Preview: Hellmuth and; This is going to be a great one to watch
Topic Started: Feb 28 2008, 05:35 PM (142 Views)
MANGLER
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Thu Feb 28 15:59:28 PST 2008
Final Table Preview: Hellmuth and Ivey Battle For History
Final Table Preview: WPT L.A. Poker Classic

By BJ Nemeth

This is a story about two Phils. One is arguably the best poker player in the world, and the other will argue that he's the best poker player in the world.

But in all seriousness, these are two of the most successful players in poker, with 16 WSOP bracelets between them, 11 WPT final tables, and more than $17.85 million in career earnings in live tournaments. But there is one glaring hole on both their resumes.

Neither one has ever won a World Poker Tour event.

Both players have a singular goal tonight -- win. Anything else will be a failure.

Obviously, there is only one winner, and in addition to each other, they'll be battling four other players looking for the top prize of nearly $1.6 million, including young gun Nam Le, who does have a WPT title to his credit.

Here are the official chip counts:

Seat 1 - Quinn Do - 1,450,000
Seat 2 - Nam Le - 1,180,000
Seat 3 - Phil Hellmuth - 2,380,000
Seat 4 - Phil Ivey - 4,100,000
Seat 5 - Charles Moore - 1,510,000
Seat 6 - Scott Montgomery - 2,680,000

As the chip leader, there will be additional pressure on Ivey to close the deal tonight, but pressure means little to Phil Ivey. Hellmuth is in good shape in third place, but he's out of position to Ivey. With the stakes so incredibly high for Hellmuth, it's unlikely that he'll be able to contain his emotions, and we're expecting some big outbursts from him -- whether they are positive or negative depends on how well he finishes.

Even though the money is secondary to the two Phils, there is still a significant prizepool at stake:

1st - $1,596,100
2nd - $909,400
3rd - $625,630
4th - $411,770
5th - $296,860
6th - $229,820

The final table is scheduled to start at 5:00 pm PT, and you won't want to miss a moment of it. We should be tied into the audio system, and able to provide some of the table talk along with the hand updates. So keep your browser refreshing on WorldPokerTour.com all night for every check, bet, call, raise, and fold as these six players fight for their place in history.

- - - - - - - - - -
Seat 1
Quinn Do
1,450,000 in chips

Quinn Do (aka "Mighty Quinn") is a 32-year-old restaurant owner who was born in Vietnam and raised in Seattle, Washington. He's been playing poker for just four years, and while his resume isn't as long as either of the two Phils, he is the only other player at this table with a WSOP bracelet.

Quinn won his bracelet in 2005 in $2,500 Limit Hold'em, earning $265,000. While this is his first WPT final table, he did finish second in the Bellagio Cup I championship event -- an event which was added to the World Poker Tour this season.

- - - - - - - - - -
Seat 2
Nam Le
1,180,000 in chips

Nam Le is 27 years old, and has only been playing poker for about four years. But his poker accomplishments are already so great that he would be headlining most final tables that didn't include the names Ivey and Hellmuth.

Nam Le is the only final tablist with a WPT title -- he won the Bay 101 Shooting Star back in Season IV. This is his fourth WPT final table, and he has reached the final two tables nine different times. Nam Le has earned more than $1.6 million on the World Poker Tour.

Nam Le has also racked up a lot of smaller poker victories, and his career live earnings of $3.9 million put him in the top 50 on the all-time money list. If he picks up his second WPT title today, he'll skyrocket to 27th place on the all-time money list, bumping Doyle Brunson out of that spot and coming in right behind Barry Greenstein.

- - - - - - - - - -
Seat 3
Phil Hellmuth
2,380,000 in chips

If you want to know about Phil Hellmuth's poker accomplishments, just ask him. Humility is not often associated with Hellmuth, the man who wrecked a race car in the parking lot of the 2007 WSOP and still showed up to the Main Event in a racing suit and with 11 female models to represent his 11 WSOP bracelets.

Oh, if you haven't heard, Phil Hellmuth has 11 WSOP bracelets.

As much as Hellmuth is mocked for his tantrums and self-aggrandizing ways, it's undeniable that he is one of the greatest hold'em players in history. He has more than $9.8 million in career earnings, and regardless of his finish tonight, he's guaranteed to become just the third player in poker history to cross the $10 million mark (behind Jamie Gold and Joe Hachem). Amazingly, he's made it that far without a single million-dollar victory -- the biggest cash of his career came 19 years ago, when he earned $755,000 for winning the WSOP Main Event (24 years old at the time, he still holds the record as the youngest WSOP Main Event champion).

With all that success, he has comparatively little success to show for his time on the World Poker Tour. And it bothers him. This is just his third WPT final table, and his first since Season II. With $585,000 in career WPT winnings, he'll need to finish third or higher to add his name to the list of WPT Poker-Made Millionaires. A fourth-place finish will leave him about $3,200 shy of a million.

More than anything else, Phil Hellmuth wants to fill the hole in his resume by winning a WPT title. His singular goal is to go down in history as one of the best who has ever played, and a victory here tonight will remove any lingering doubts.

- - - - - - - - - -
Seat 4
Phil Ivey
4,100,000 in chips

Phil Ivey is arguably the greatest poker player in the world, even with six fewer WSOP bracelets than Phil Hellmuth.

At the WSOP, Ivey has won five bracelets, including three in one Series (a record he shares with Hellmuth and Ted Forrest). A master of all poker games, Ivey finished third in the inaugural $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event against one of the toughest fields in history. What about the WSOP Main Event, you ask? He finished in the top 25 three times in a four-year period (23rd in 2002, 10th in 2003, and 20th in 2005).

Even though he plays most of his poker in U.S. cash games, he still found time to finish second at EPT Barcelona (Sep '06) and win the 2005 Monte Carlo Millions.

Speaking of cash games, he's a regular player in the Big Game at Bellagio, honing his skills against the best in the world -- Doyle Brunson, Barry Greenstein, Jennifer Harman, and others. The late Chip Reese once said that Ivey will eventually win more money playing poker than any of the others in the Big Game, and Greenstein rates him very highly on his website, calling Ivey "the best tournament player in the world."

After Brunson's "Corporation" of high-stakes players had lost millions of dollars to Texas billionaire Andy Beal in February 2006, Phil Ivey stepped in to turn the tide. Ivey would quickly make up their losses -- and then some. He won $10 million from Beal in one day and $16 million overall, saving the Corporation plenty of money and even more embarrassment.

But after all that, there is one glaring hole on Ivey's poker resume -- he has never won a WPT title.

He has actually had a great deal of success on the World Poker Tour by most standards. This is his record eighth WPT final table, and he has an unbelievable streak of reaching the final table every time he has cashed. But all those final tables just draw more attention to the fact that he has yet to win one. Unlike Hellmuth, however, Ivey's career WPT earnings of $1.2 million make him a member of the WPT Poker-Made Millionaires.

Ivey's total career earnings are more than $8 million, and with this final table he's guaranteed to crack the top 10 of the all-time money list.

But for Ivey, like Hellmuth, anything but a victory tonight will be a failure.

- - - - - - - - - -
Seat 5
Charles Moore
1,510,000 in chips

Charles "Woody" Moore is 59 years old and from Dallas, Texas. He retired from the oil industry ten years ago, but has been playing poker for most of his life, and a lot of the long-time players know him well.

Moore isn't a regular on the tournament circuit, but he has already made one WPT final table, finishing fourth in Aruba back in 2002. He also has a WSOP final table on his resume.

Moore's wife Becky will be cheering him on in the stands.

- - - - - - - - - -
Seat 6
Scott Montgomery
2,680,000 in chips

Scott Montgomery is a 26-year-old online player from Perth, Ontario, Canada who plays under the name "r_a_y." Montgomery is a former English teacher who has been playing poker professionally for several years. This is his first WPT tournament (entered via a $500 satellite), and he is making the most of it.
Thu Feb 28 11:03:31 PST 2008
History in the Making: Ivey and Hellmuth Battle to the Final Table
Day 5 of the WPT L.A. Poker Classic

By BJ Nemeth

Day 5 of the WPT L.A. Poker Classic started with 18 players, but most of the eyes in the poker world were on just two -- both named Phil. One is arguably the best player in the world, and the other will argue that he is the best player in the world.

Both players are modern day legends, with impressive poker resumes that stream for pages. Between them, they have already earned over $17.85 million in live poker tournaments, won 16 WSOP bracelets, and reached 9 WPT final tables.

But both of their resumes have something missing -- with all that success, neither one of them has ever won a WPT event.

Phil Ivey started the day as chipleader, in the middle of a very unusual streak. He has finished in the money seven times on the World Poker Tour -- each time, he has made it all the way to the final table. Seven cashes, seven final tables. Could he make it eight-for-eight? (No player has ever reached eight WPT final tables.)

Phil Hellmuth started the day in third place, followed in fourth place by Nam Le, who already has a WPT victory under his belt (WPT Bay 101 in 2006). There was also a celebrity still in action -- actress Jennifer Tilly won the Season IV WPT Ladies Championship, and she was looking to become the first female in history to win an open WPT event.

The prize money is huge (nearly $1.6 million for first place), but seemed almost secondary in importance to these players chasing history.

PLAYING DOWN TO THE FINAL SIX
Jennifer Tilly struggled with a short stack most of the day, and eventually busted in 12th place. While she was disappointed at missing the final table, she broke her own record for highest finish by an Academy Award nominee. (She finished 15th at the 2006 WPT Borgata Poker Open, and fellow nominee James Woods finished 24th here at the L.A. Poker Classic two years ago.)

When the next player busted (Blair Hinkle, 11th place), the final ten combined to a single table, and the random draw put Hellmuth and Ivey side by side. Hellmuth dominated the first half of the day, and his stack of 3.8 million dwarfed the others. Ivey was in second place, and he had barely half as many chips (2 million). Nam Le was still alive with a below-average stack, patiently waiting for the right situations to make his moves.

Shortly after 9:00 pm PT, Theo Tran was eliminated in eighth place, and the final seven were one spot away from the televised final table. That's when we started to see some significant action between Hellmuth and Ivey.

Hellmuth raised under the gun, only to have Ivey reraise him. Hellmuth thought for about four minutes before folding, saying he had a mid-level pocket pair. He felt that Ivey had pocket jacks or ace-king, and was tempted to play the hand, hoping to flop a set.

The next hand, it was Ivey who raised under the gun, and everyone folded to Hellmuth in the big blind. Hellmuth stared at Ivey and said, "This time I'll at least call you." It would turn out to be a mistake. They built a huge pot, and when Ivey bet big on the river after checking the turn (the board was Q10210K), Hellmuth was flustered, asking, "What is this B.S.?" Hellmuth called to see Ivey's AA, and he couldn't beat it. Ivey pulled in a pot worth nearly 2 million, and moved into the chip lead -- slightly ahead of Hellmuth, who was fuming.

Hellmuth regained the chip lead over the next half hour, but then he made his second big mistake of the day. Hellmuth raised from the cutoff, and Ivey reraised from the button. Hellmuth stood his ground, moving all in with AK -- but Ivey had AA. The best hand held up, and Ivey double up to the biggest chip stack of the day -- more than 5.5 million. Hellmuth plummeted down to about 1.2 million.

Phil Hellmuth, who had the chip lead with seven players left, was now a short stack. If he were to bust, it'd be one of the biggest blowups in WPT history -- and that's to say nothing of the tantrum he was likely to throw.

Hellmuth steadied his temper and refocused his play, patiently waiting for the right situation. After nearly two hours of seven-handed play, Wei Kai Chang moved all in with a short stack, and Hellmuth found AQ in the small blind. He had found his situation, and he called. Chang hung his head as he showed his dominated KQ. Hellmuth's hand held up, busting Wei Kai Chang in seventh place and setting the stage for Thursday evening's televised final table.

THE FINAL SIX

Ivey continued his amazing streak of turning WPT money finishes into WPT final tables, and sets the record with his eighth final table. Ivey is in a strong position with the chip lead, but Hellmuth has a shot at the title himself in third place. Nam Le is the short stack, but he is one double up away from becoming a serious threat. Here are the official counts:

Seat 1 - Quinn Do - 1,450,000
Seat 2 - Nam Le - 1,180,000
Seat 3 - Phil Hellmuth - 2,380,000
Seat 4 - Phil Ivey - 4,100,000
Seat 5 - Charles "Woody" Moore - 1,510,000
Seat 6 - Scott "r_a_y" Montgomery - 2,680,000

First prize is $1,596,100, but there's much more on the line than that. Nam Le is looking to join the elite club of multiple WPT winners, and Hellmuth's claim to be the best in the world is hard to back up without a single WPT title (or a million-dollar victory of any kind). As for Ivey, in seven previous visits to the final table, he's come up short. At what point does a losing streak get labeled by the media as a curse?

The WPT final table is scheduled to start at 5:00 pm PT. Return to WorldPokerTour.com for live hand-by-hand coverage of every check, bet, call, raise, and fold. This is a must-watch poker tournament if there ever was one.
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