Event 27, No-Limit Hold'em - Live Updates

07/21/2006 (8 years ago)

Rahmn completes the comeback!

Mats Rhamn has battled all the way back from being down 2-1 and won Event 27. Richard Toth, who was starting to get low, moved all-in after a flop of J♥ 10♠ 9♣. Rahmn called and showed K♦ K♥. Toth flipped over J♥ 8♣ for top pair and a straight draw juice cards. The turn is 5♠ while the river shows 10♣. Rhamn's Kings are good and he is the 2006 WSOP Event 27 Champion.

Level

1

Blinds

50/100

Average Stack

0

Players Left

1

Tables Left

1

07/21/2006 (8 years ago)

Rahmn storms back

After being down 2-1 going into heads-up play, Mats Rahmn has fought his way to the top and now has a substantial lead of $2,435,000 to Richard Toth's $755,000. Rahmn went all-in with #K-6♣ against Toth's K♦ Q♦. The board read K♠ 9♠ 6♦ 4♥ 10♠. Rahmn doubled up with his Two Pair.

Level

1

Blinds

50/100

Average Stack

0

Players Left

2

Tables Left

1

07/21/2006 (8 years ago)

Rahmn storms back

After being down 2-1 going into heads-up play, Mats Rahmn has fought his way to the top and now has a substantial lead of $2,435,000 to Richard Toth's $755,000. Rahmn went all-in with #K-6♣ against Toth's K♦ Q♦. The board read K♠ 9♠ 6♦ 4♥ 10♠. Rahmn doubled up with his Two Pair.

Level

1

Blinds

50/100

Average Stack

0

Players Left

2

Tables Left

1

07/21/2006 (8 years ago)

Heads-up players trade blows

Mats Rahmn and Richard Toth are going back and forth. Rahm will win a few hands and then Toth will win a few. No one has stepped forward and really controlled the game as of yet. Toth still leads with $1,850,000 while Rahmn has $1,340,000.

Level

1

Blinds

50/100

Average Stack

0

Players Left

2

Tables Left

1

07/21/2006 (8 years ago)

Parkinson knocked out

Padraig Parkinson has been eliminated from the competition. He called all-in preflop and Richard Toth made the call. Parkinson flipped over A♣ 4♠ while Toth showed A♦ 3♠. The flop came A♥ 6♥ 3♥ giving Toth Two Pair. The turn, which was K♥, provided no help for Parkinson marked cards. The river came 3♣ and filled Toth's boat. Parkinson has been eliminated third, good enough for $203,139. Richard Toth now has a 2-1 chip lead over Mats Rahmn in heads up play.

Level

1

Blinds

50/100

Average Stack

0

Players Left

2

Tables Left

1

07/21/2006 (8 years ago)

Dinner Break

The players are on dinner break until 9 p.m.

Level

1

Blinds

50/100

Average Stack

0

Players Left

3

Tables Left

1

07/21/2006 (8 years ago)

Trip Counts

The chip counts with three players left in the tournament:

1.	Richard Toth	$1,645,000
2.	Mats Rahmn	$1,045,000
3.	Padraig Parkinson	$500,000

Level

1

Blinds

50/100

Average Stack

0

Players Left

3

Tables Left

1

07/21/2006 (8 years ago)

Birchby Busted

Chirs Birchby was eliminated from the tournament in 4th place earning $145,100. Birchby moved all-in with Q♦ 5♦, and Mats Rahmn called with K♦ 7♠. Rahmn flopped a pair of K's and Birchby didn't recover.

Level

1

Blinds

50/100

Average Stack

0

Players Left

3

Tables Left

1

07/21/2006 (8 years ago)

Toth Doubles Up

The action has slowed down a little and not many big pots have been played during the last our. However, Richard Toth doubled up against Chris Birchby and took the lead in the tournament. Birchby made a pair of 8's on the turn and moved all-in. Toth called with pocket Q's and won the hand.

Level

1

Blinds

50/100

Average Stack

0

Players Left

4

Tables Left

1

07/21/2006 (8 years ago)

Intensity Increases

Play is intensifying for the four finalists who are currently on a five minute break.

Level

1

Blinds

50/100

Average Stack

0

Players Left

4

Tables Left

1

Taking One Shot at the Big Time

Every player who takes the game seriously enough to know the names Tom Dwan, Di Dang and Huck Seed has considered putting it all on the line to take one shot at the poker dream.
Every year, players crowd around poker tables across the globe and all over the Internet to trade pots worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Some of the world's top online players are winning and losing over a million in a single day. It's no longer remarkable to see online pots larger than $500,000.
Poker has exploded since 2003, and in the last couple years we've seen the largest increase in regular high-stakes action ever. Until recently, nosebleed stakes games have only run occasionally, restricted to private tables.
Now, at any time of any day you can log on to sites like Full Tilt Poker, and watch (or join) intense high-stakes action.
All of this action has made the high-stakes poker lifestyle a more tangible reality. Anyone can look at multiple cheat poker players who went from nothing to millions, some of them in almost no time flat.
Making a million dollars in less than a week is a dream that most people would love to realize.
Poker players can realistically take a shot at this dream anytime they want. The highest-stakes cash games and tournaments are all open to anyone willing to put up the stake.
It may seem far-fetched to people on the outside of the game, but it's surprisingly common for players to put everything they own on the line for one shot at making it.
Real-life people (by this I mean people not living the professional poker lifestyle) have all their money tied up in debt and, for those lucky enough not to be just living paycheck to paycheck, in assets and savings.
Poker players may have debt, savings and assets as well, but they also have a lump of cash known as a bankroll.
Mike Caro compares a poker pro's roll to the shop and tools owned by a mechanic. The roll is the means of making an income. There is almost no mechanic who would put his shop on the line at a 3,000-1 shot at making a score - it's just not realistic.
If your "shop" is nothing more than a roll of $100 bills, however, it gets really easy to put it all on the line.
Ready, Aim, Fire
In the post-Chris Moneymaker world, it's not uncommon for players to win a satellite entry into a tournament before making a run for the win. You hear all about these stories, especially if the players got their ticket by playing their satellite online.
What you don't always hear about are the players taking a shot with their roll.
In every major tournament marked cards lenses, there is a large group of players: professionals on the outs, putting up their roll for one last swing. These players decide to gamble on their future, aware that they'll have to live with either of the two possible outcomes:

• They win, and rock a fat roll
• They lose and go home broke, and find themselves a job

These players play from a unique mental perspective: nothing left to lose, already defeated, yet full of hope, aggressive and unpredictable.
These stories are rarely told, because the players who miss their shot disappear into the real world, sometimes rebuilding and returning for another swing. And the players who make it often don't want the world to know that they were ever as close to defeat as they actually were.
The latest story of such an event is described wonderfully by the player himself - Jason Young. Jason was down to his almost his last dollar, resolved to head home to do ... who knows what if he lost. Not only was this his last lump of cash; it was bank-borrowed money.
He prophesized the win before the event ever happened, and won himself a WSOP bracelet and the cash that comes with it, making him the latest player to publicly hit his shot.
Odds of Making It
Tournament poker, like all poker, comes down to statistical odds and probable ROI. This means the following:
A player has to have sufficient skill and edge on her competition to finish high enough in the money often enough so that she can net more money from her winnings than she loses in the attempts.
Just to give a simple example, let's say that Jane Doe will play a $1,000 buy-in tournament with 1,000 players every day. To keep it very simple, she will always finish in one of two places:

• On the bubble (losing her $1,000 entry fee)
• In first place (winning $300,000 prize money)

This means she has to finish in first place a minimum of once in every 299 attempts to make money.
Let's say that she is a profitable player, and will finish first in 1/200 attempts. This will net her a total of $100,000 for every 200 attempts. In order for her to make this money, though, she needs to have $200,000 worth of money to pay her buy-ins.
There's no telling when she'll make her first-place finish out of the 200 attempts, meaning she could be down $199,000 before she makes any money.
The problem with taking a shot is that even though you're clearly good enough to make money in this specific tournament, you are gambling that your one available buy-in happens to be the one you win the tourney on.
For Jane Doe, that's a 0.5% chance that she hits her shot - 99.5% of the time she ends up humping a crappy job on the graveyard shift.
No matter how good you are, the odds are not in your favor when you take a shot.
But one thing to remember is the classic cliché: you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Some players spend years taking shots until anything pans out, the most famous of these possibly being Howard Lederer.
If taking shots is the route you choose, you may have to be prepared to sleep on couches and run errands for other players to build up enough of a stake for your next shot. It could be a long time before you ever hit your target.
Then again, just like Jason Young did in the 2008 WSOP, you may hit the next shot you decide to take.