All Over But the Shouting
2007-12-16 13:56:57
By:
Gene Bromberg
And no doubt there will be some noise tonight at the
UltimateBet Online Championship comes to an end with our $750,000 Guaranteed Main Event. That begins at 5pm EDT, and over the course of eight or so hours we'll learn who takes home our biggest prize of the year.
But it took only a bit longer than that to figure out who would end up atop the
UBOC Leaderboard. Whatever drama there might've been heading into the final few events was ended by the remarkable run Greg "Wild Duck" Hobson enjoyed last weekend. Greg won UBOC Event #2 (the $100 NL w/rebuys) and followed that up by winning Event #4, the $200K Guranteed No-Limit Event. That,
as I wrote at the time, was impressive enough. But Hobson wasn't done--even as he was winning Event #4, he was charging through the field of Event #5, and made it all the way to the final table. He finished fifth in that tournament...as he did in Event #10. Two wins, four top-five finishes was good enough for Greg to lap the field at the top of the Leaderboard.
I asked Greg about the secret of his success, and it turns out to be not such a big secret:
"I think playing to win is one of my keys. I know that sounds stupid because everybody wants to win, but I'm not worried about moving up the money ladder; I'm just focused on winning. I'm not afraid to gamble and this leads to me getting chipped up toward the end of tournaments and thus having a better chance of finishing the job."
Winning a big
poker tournament is the dream of every
poker player. Winning two back-to-back is more than one should hope for. Winning two back-to-back...and then final tabling ANOTHER a few hours later is flat-out ludicrous. So for the mere mortals among us, what's it like when you're playing for your third title in 30 hours?
"I think I was still doing fine emotionally and physically when I got to the 3rd final table. I'm used to putting in long hours and having draining days
playing poker and so it was nothing new. Mentally, I was still focused, even though I had already won the previous 2 UBOC events because I know how tough it is to make final tables and it is so important to finish them when you get there."
And when you don't finish them, even after you've won two poker tournaments in a row?
I think I was disappointed because as I mentioned earlier, it is very difficult to final table a big poker tournament. I think after I had a chance to remove myself from that last tourney, I was able to appreciate the big picture and be happy with my results, but not immediately.
And if you think Greg's success was due to a sick run of luck, realize that luck runs both ways. In Event #10, Greg was sitting at the final table of the 6-handed event when he was dealt pocket Kings. After some pre-flop raising the flop came Queen high. And...that's when Greg lost his interent connection. He wasn't able to reconnect until the hand was over, and what might've happened had that technical difficulty not popped up is hard to say. And had Greg's pocket Tens not been outflopped by pinballguy's pocket Nines (the flop came Nine high and all the money went in), well, who knows?
But what we do know is that Greg "Wild Duck" Hobson made the second
UltimateBet Online Championship his own, and he's no doubt focused on making tonight's Main Event the final jewel in his crown.
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