Will another unknown win WSOP?
'I’m figuring out I can’t bluff anybody,' '03 champ Moneymaker says
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LAS VEGAS - Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson is known famously to have regretted writing his landmark poker instruction manual “Super/System,” because it allowed average Joes to get into the minds of the masters.
With the advent of television and the hole-card camera, players sitting on their sofas at home now also get unprecedented access to the inner workings of those who have won millions at the tables, making it difficult for pros to successfully play the same game they did before.
This year at the World Series of Poker $10,000 buy-in main event, the scenario is no different.
In a starting field of 6,358 players, the pros are facing many well-educated players who have read the professionals’ books, studied them on TV, know their strategies at no-limit Texas Hold ’em and try to fight back with an eye on the tournament’s $8.25 million top prize.
As play began Tuesday for 1,032 players, or about half the remaining field, many of the missing were poker’s pros.
Dan Harrington, a poker professional known for his “Harrington on Hold’em” series, said in a few years he might have to write new books to counter the detailed hand analysis he espouses.
“As my books become absorbed into the general poker-playing population, the good players develop counterstrategies,” he said.
But Harrington also throws the odd curve ball, like playing strange cards against opponents who perceive him to be more conservative.
“Fortunately I haven’t had to turn the hands over,” he said. “They were pretty bad.”
Chris Moneymaker, a one-time unknown who set up his 2003 main event win with a colossal bluff against pro Sammy Farha, said it cost him chips to learn this year that the same maneuvers weren’t working.
“I’m figuring out I can’t bluff anybody,” Moneymaker said. “So, I know that information now and it cost me 3,500 to find out.”
The 2006 champion, Jamie Gold, beat a hasty exit on Day 1 and said he failed to change the somewhat loose but devastating play he used last year to dominate the field.
“I planned on completely changing my game, and then somehow I just kind of fell into the style that I had played last year,” he said. “Everyone was waiting for me to play that way and everyone wanted to bust me. Nobody was backing down.”
Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari’s bag of tricks was reduced to waiting for cards after appearing on TV so often that his deceptions were revealed to the world.
“They tend to think I’m always bluffing,” said Esfandiari, who busted out early Tuesday morning in his first day of play. “I couldn’t really push anyone around. I was pretty much always waiting for a good hand.”
Dealer Christopher Bowen, 54, who’s worked the World Series 13 times, said the least famous players have an edge.
“The player who ends up winning is generally, in my opinion, the player who gets most lost in the crowd,” Bowen said. “It’s the players who don’t flamboyantly make dramatic entrances into the pot that are going to be there at the end.”
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Harrington had only a suited ace and queen, and busted out when the community cards didn’t improve him, giving Simon the better hand. Simon and the other player, Jim Marrone, who folded a king and queen, were surprised.
“His play was not from his books,” said Marrone, a 36-year-old pediatrician from American Samoa. “I thought he’d at least have a pair of jacks or better, or even ace-king.”
Simon joked afterward, referring to the World War II movie “Patton,” when U.S. Gen. George S. Patton believes he has defeated Erwin Rommel in North Africa using the German field marshal’s tactics against him.
“He yells out, ’You son of a b----, I read your book!” Simon said after sending Harrington to the rail. “I decided it would be a graceless thing to do.”
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