Wasn't Meant To Be
2008-02-29 11:59:10
By:
Gene Bromberg
Both Phil Hellmuth and Phil Ivey
arrived at the final table of the L.A. Poker Classic looking to fill in a gap in their respective resumes. Neither of these poker legends had a WPT title to his name and they doubtless shared the same, singular goal--victory or bust. Second place would mean the same as sixth--nothing.
Unfortunately for Phil Hellmuth, yesterday would not see him add yet another major title to his long, long list of accomplishments. Phil lost a big hand early to Nam Le when he flopped top pair to Le's bottom pair, but a King on the turn gave Le two pair and that's when all the money went in the middle. ""I can't believe you caught a king," Phil said after the cards were turned over, but Le did, and that hand left Hellmuth in dire straits. He moved all in with A-9 and found himself dominated by Charles Moore's A-Q. Phil couldn't conjure a Nine and was eliminated in 6th place, earning $229,820 and a standing ovation from the crowd.
Scott "r_a_y" Montgomery was the next to be eliminated. Montgomery seized the chip lead early on after he won a few big hands and Ivey dropped a huge pot to Moore. But Scott lost two big hands to Quinn Do--on one Montgomery called Do's all-in with A-5 and found himself leading Do's Q-J. But a Queen fell on the flop and Montgomery couldn't catch an Ace. A bit later on Do won a monster pot with a Jack-high flush that left Scott with under a million chips. As he did yesterday Scott played his short-stack aggressively, doubling up when his J-9 outflopped Moore's A-6. But when he tried pushing Nam Le out of a pot Le took a long time to think the matter through and called with K-J. He had Montgomery's J-8 dominated and that spelled the end of r_a_y's run. He won $411,700--not a bad return on the $500 satellite he won here at UB.
Charles "Woody" Moore went out in third place, his biggest tournament success to date. His name sounded familiar to me but I couldn't quite place it, not until I read his brief bio in the live update log. This was actually Moore's 2nd WPT final table--he finished fourth in the 2002 Aruba Poker Classic, playing at the "amateur" table that Juha Helppi won on his way to victory against Phil Gordon. Moore won $625,630, enough I think to lock up a seat in this year's Aruba Classic, if he so chose.
But in the end, yesterday belonged to Phil Ivey. On the very first hand he doubled up Moore and surrendered his chip lead, and aid afterwards that he was thinking "here we go again". Ivey has had some bad luck at WPT final tables but yesterday that luck changed, most notably in a hand where he cracked Nam Le's Aces when he made a set of Threes on the turn. That hand eliminated Le and put Ivey in total command. Moore moved all-in with an open-ended straight draw and Ivey called with two pair; the blank on the river set up Ivey with more than a 3-1 chip lead against Do. That heads-up battle lasted all of two hands, as Ivey made Aces full of Eights and Do moved all-in, hoping Ivey wasn't holding an Ace. Do was drawing dead when the card were revealed, and that gave Ivey the WPT title that had eluded him for so long.
No doubt this episode will garner a lot of attention when it airs. Though I'm sure most people were hoping for a Hellmuth-Ivey heads-up battle at the death. That would've been a clash of the titans...oh well. The rest of the WPT slate still remains, and the World Series of Poker is just a few months away. Still plenty of time for those two to butt heads again.
Permalink:
http://www.ultimatebet.com/poker-blog-post/Wasnt-Meant-To-Be/2492
