2009 WSOP Main Event

I just finished watching it.

I am very disapointed with the winner Joe Cada. ESPN's coverage was good and they showed a lot of good hands. But once Ivey went out in 7th the whole broadcast turned into all in wars. Cada got lucky so many times. He should have went out in 6th after pushing with 3s against Shulman's Jacks. Cada was probably one of the worst players at that table and yet he walks away with the title.

This goes to show why a pro will not win anytime soon unless they change their approach. Both Ivey and Shulman played extremely conservative and they waited too long. Like Cunningham in 2006. The pros know they are the best at the table but they pride themselves too much on that and they do not play aggressively like the others do.

In 2004: Fossilman impressed with his domination of the table
In 2005: Hachem bided his time and went from the bottom to top impressively
In 2006: Gold produced probably the most impressive performance. His chip stack just continued to swell and he never had a misstep at the final table.
In 2007: Yang started 2nd to last on chips and got chips early. Then grabbed the table by the straps and dominated with aggresive play. Plus he completely owned Hilm who went into the table as the chip leader.
In 2008: Eastgate played tight for a long time and waited till the table was down to 5 to start making his move.

In 2009: Cada was not anywhere near the best. He made a lot of bad decisions and got lucky.

Ivey and Shulman were the best at the table, but they played to tightly to win. The player who played the best at this year's table was Sauot. Sauot played very well, making good reads after staring from the bottom. He also bluffed Ivey off of a hand in there. He got a sucker punch from Cada when 3 were left that ultimately was his crippling blow. Darvin Moon also played pretty poorly. Making way too many pre flop pushes. Steve Begleiter deserves and honorable mention as well, he played well too.

But I guess this is qhat TV does. The amount of hands shown was very few compared to the very many played. From what they showed me Cada should not have won.

 

Cada is a pro, he'd been playing online and making a living it at for awhile before the Main Event started. When people say pro, they mean TV pro, or name pro. The past two ME winner's were people making a living playing poker before they won. They just haven't been well known players.

That said, this wasn't the best played final table. Even Ivey didn't play well, they showed his JJ fold, and there were a number of other hands that he just seemed to play weakly, granted we didn't see the cards, so we can't know for sure. But he did a lot of calling pre-flop, and folding to a bet, and doing it with a stack where he really couldn't afford to be doing that. But, this final table has become a huge stage. Its not like it used to be, when it was just a small to medium crowd watching play. There playing in a huge theater, that can probably hold a couple thousand people, plus its being broadcast to millions of people, and they've spent the previous three months hyping the hell out the event. Its a lot of pressure on these guys, and the type of thing that's not always conducive to a person's best play.

The broadcast looked like a lot of just shoving and getting lucky, but that was 2.5 hours of broadcast from a Final Table that total, took about 17-18 hours. They played 13.5 hours down to heads up, and then heads lasted about 100 hands, and maybe 4 hours of play. And I will give Joe Cada credit, I thought he done very early. When he was down to 2.5 million, I thought he'd be out soon. But, he made a hell of a run to get back into the game. When you get that short, and when you're coming back that far, you have to get lucky. You're at a point where you're just picking a hand and going with it, and hope you can get lucky to stick around. And on the whole, he seems like a good kid, he played very well in the first 8 days of the ME, and he seems like a pretty respectful guy. I think it said a lot about him, that after the final card came out, and his friends tried to mob him, he pulled away from them, so he could go over and shake Moon's hand before really celebrating.

I will say this. I don't think it showed much in the broadcast, but Moon played a hell of game heads up. He's taken a lot of heat, for being just some guy, but he really played well, it just didn't come through when they showed, maybe a quarter of the hands played heads up. We'll probably never see him again, but I hope he plays next year. He's a humble, down to earth guy who's upfront about this idea that he ran hot through the ME, and has almost no experience playing poker. I liked him.

 

I have no complaints abaout the broadcast early on. The showed a lot of interesting hands, but once Ivey went out they have to make the final 6 play down to a winner in something like 35 minutes. I didn't watch the Main Event this year until there were about 27 players left. I also thought Cada was done after he was down to 2.5 and at that point I felt that Shulman had a great chance to win. I thought Saout had it at one point to.

I think recently the big pros that have made the final table have played too tight and relied on their reputation a lot. Matusow in 2005, Cunningham on 2006,Watkinson in 2007, Chino Reem in 2008. None of those players got any traction or momentum at the final table at all. Why? Because the others were much more agressive than them. They tried to pick their spots but ended up just whittling down their stacks.

My initial reaction has subsided a bit. I have read some things that say Cada is a good guy and will probably be good for the game in the future.

But I still didn't enjoy the final 6 that much. I was really loving the early part of the table, because I truly had no idea who would win. I also believe they went out of their way to show Ivey hands and again I never felt like he had any traction. You mentioned the mistake fold he made when he had Jacks. I think that was in part due to Saout and the way he was playing at the moment. Ivey recognized Saout as a solid player. I think he may have called against a more volatile player like Buchman.