Final table fish?

[pokerplayer1]

Is Yang a massive fish. I read the summary on PokerListings and it looks like Yang is a complete fish/calling station. Is my assumption correct?

Which players at the FT were not fish?
Watkinson and Kravchenko?

I don't understand how fish can get to the FT of a 6300+ man tournament. i would expect the FT players to be much better than the average player.

the fish might win 1, 2 or even 5 lucky hands but that's not enough luck to reach the FT or win the ME. what's going on?

[Austiger]

I don't recall Alex or Rain making any real donkish plays. Everyone else had their moments. Yang, however, more than made up for his fishy calls (if you even want to call them that since he had the best hand on most of them) by being relentlessly aggressive.

[Dunkman]

Honestly I think it's pretty hard to judge someone's game based on this. None of us can imagine the amount of pressure they were under...8 million dollars does strange things to people. Aside from playing way too scared, I didn't see any glaring errors from anyone (ok, so the KK hand was pretty bad.) As for Yang, obviously he made some donkish calls, but you can't argue with the success his total maniac style had...no one would play a hand with him, and when they did he did well enough.

[Dranoel]

Yang was somewhat aggressive at the table. Raising, re-raising & being the big stack bully. If you tried to limp, he would raise & put the pressure back on you. A lot of the time it was folded to him & he took the pot.

He did not play the role of fish. Did he get some suck-outs? Yep, but so does anyone playing poker.

[pokergrader]

He went from 8th in chips to chip leader without showing down a hand in the beginning. That was pretty impressive.

[vixticator]

Definitely not a fish. Hyper-aggro LAG that calls too loose against jams PF, the only defense was to really pick up a big hand and jam with it or see a lot of flops OOP (Jerry's flop play HU was quite good though IIRC). Unfortunately the first 5 players kept jamming with nothing PF... you'd think after he knocks out 3 players you would stop pushing with weak hands deep but... okay.

[Cornell Fiji]

[ QUOTE ]
Is Yang a massive fish. I read the summary on PokerListings and it looks like Yang is a complete fish/calling station. Is my assumption correct?

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He might be a fish at life but he played a very solid chipleader game. He has leaks but he made up for them with aggression.

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Which players at the FT were not fish?
Watkinson and Kravchenko?

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Kahn should definitely be on this list, maybe others


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I don't understand how fish can get to the FT of a 6300+ man tournament.

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LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL You are way off buddy. It is very easy for a fish to make it through a field of 6300 players and it happens in every single MTT ever played.

Also, the ME is the softest tournament field of the year... there are a ton of bad players in this tourney

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i would expect the FT players to be much better than the average player.

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on average players at the FT are better; that is to say that in the long run better players will make more FTs then worse players

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the fish might win 1, 2 or even 5 lucky hands but that's not enough luck to reach the FT or win the ME. what's going on?

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6300 people flip a coin. If you get heads you go on, if you get tails you are eliminated.

1st flip - 6300 people
2nd flip - 3150 people
3rd flip - 1575 people
4th flip - 788 people
5th flip - 394 people
6th flip - 197 people
7th flip - 98 people
8th flip - 49 people
9th flip - 25 people
10th flip - 12 people

So if the field consists of 6300 fish flipping coins for their whole stack 12 people will win every single flip up until the final table.

[betgo]

Hilm and Lam are also pretty good players. Rahme is not a strong player, but he used his tight image sometimes and overbet to simplify. I was not impressed by Childs or Kalmer.

All were pros besides Yang and Rahme. I think this was the most pros at the final table atleast since Moneymaker won.

[pokerplayer1]

thanks for all the replies. very informative.

[Beachman42]

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He did not play the role of fish. Did he get some suck-outs? Yep, but so does anyone playing poker.

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lol WSOP donkament

[jedi]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Is Yang a massive fish. I read the summary on PokerListings and it looks like Yang is a complete fish/calling station. Is my assumption correct?

[/ QUOTE ]

He might be a fish at life but he played a very solid chipleader game. He has leaks but he made up for them with aggression.


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Don't forget he started the FT 8th in chips and had to play aggro just to get to the point where people are berating him for his chip leader plays.

[Dranoel]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Is Yang a massive fish. I read the summary on PokerListings and it looks like Yang is a complete fish/calling station. Is my assumption correct?

[/ QUOTE ]

He might be a fish at life but he played a very solid chipleader game. He has leaks but he made up for them with aggression.


[/ QUOTE ]

Don't forget he started the FT 8th in chips and had to play aggro just to get to the point where people are berating him for his chip leader plays.

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Quit interjecting reality in this discussion. You know that does not count.



/Sarcasm off /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[llleisure]

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He did not play the role of fish. Did he get some suck-outs? Yep, but so does anyone playing poker.

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lol WSOP prayerament

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FYP

[kleath]

Imo Yang had leaks but was aggro enough to cover for most of those, Hilm played terribly in the few pots he played, and Kalmar played pretty bad in a few different pots. Other than that from what I saw everyone played pretty decent.

[Rottersod]

I missed the entire FT until about 6:15 pm after the first 5 had busted out so I never got a chance to see Yang make those "fishy" plays. All I saw was him playing 4 handed for a long time and then down the the victory and what I saw impressed me. Obviously he's only been playing poker for 2 years and to me - as someone who has played for a couple decades - this makes his performance even more impressive. He was the aggressor and he made more re-raises than I've seen at any FT of any tourney. He owned the other 3 and this is saying something as Alex and Tuan have worlds more experience. Yang kept his composure even when he got sucked out a couple of times and he did get his money in as a favorite every time. What more could anyone ask for?

Alex and Tuan decided to play tight so they could try and double up and they missed the fact that after the one double up by Tuan 4 handed Yang slowed down for a while and during that time they didn't bother to make the raises and play the post flop game that could have paid dividends. The way they played it looked like they were afraid of Yang because of his aggressiveness and that tells me that Yang was not the fish at that table.

[xxx]

[ QUOTE ]
Is Yang a massive fish. I read the summary on PokerListings and it looks like Yang is a complete fish/calling station. Is my assumption correct?


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Yang was more LAG than anything- CS is WAY off IMO.

[MyTurn2Raise]

Kravchenko limp-folded way too much
he played worse than anyone IMO

[jogsxyz]

Why is calling Watkinson with A9o a fish call?
Since Yang was right, shouldn't overbetting with
A7o be a fish overbet?

Yang outplayed the table. Only he didn't play the way
Gordon would have played. Maybe it was the analysis
by Gordon that was off base.

[recipro]

If you exclude about two or three calls from Yang where he was behind, and remove his prayer during all-ins and such, this whole forum would be commenting what an incredible player Yang is.

Aside from a couple calls, he rolled over the table, and made a ton of calls where he was ahead that many would not make.

[trevorwc]

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If you exclude about two or three calls from Yang where he was behind, and remove his prayer during all-ins and such, this whole forum would be commenting what an incredible player Yang is.

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Agreed - if it was a BIG name pro in his shoes, and made the EXACT same pros...everyone would be talking about the utter domination of the final table. But he's a no-name so he made a ton of mistakes and just got lucky. I'm not necessarily saying he's a good or great player, but that night, he was by far the best of the nine.

[BigSlick75093]

I don't know why everyone has such a problem with Yang. Doesn't a fish simply limp, check, and overcall? Yang was dominating the table and getting it in with the best hand. Just because he called these holier than thou "professional" palyers bluffs when he had the best hand, that makes him a fish?

I've see pros like Gus Hanson and Allan Goehring make sick calls and suck-out after being way behind.

I'm sure when all these young internet whizzes hit the felt, all the old-timers were putting them down for the way they played. Now all you young internet whizzes are critizing Yang for the way he played.

Now Chris Moneymaker was lucky. That's the only way he won. But Yang dominated the final table. He kicked their butts. But I will admit, get him at a high-stakes cash game and he'll be eaten alive, just like Jamie Gold was last season on HSP. But let's give him his due for the way he played tournament poker.

Everyone should at least wait until we see his hole cards on the ESPN coverage before throwing Yang under the bus.

[betgo]

Yang was right to make the loose calls of the pushes. You can't run over the table if you fold in those situations.

As far as I could see Yang put on an awsome display. However, I agree he is not at the level of a top pro.

[MegaFossil]

Assuming you could afford to stake someone for 5/10 NL, which players from the final table would you be comfortable staking 5/10 NL on Stars. I would probably only consider Lam, Kravchenko, Watkinson, or maybe Khan. I'm sure Watkinson and Khan have attempted similar stakes online, but I'm not sure how successful they were.

[MegaFossil]

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Yang was right to make the loose calls of the pushes. You can't run over the table if you fold in those situations.

As far as I could see Yang put on an awsome display. However, I agree he is not at the level of a top pro.

[/ QUOTE ]

Exactly. It's one thing if a dude like Rahme is raising then calling pushes with A9, but if you're gonna play as LAG as Yang is then you have to be willing to call some pushes with weaker hands or you'll get 3 bet to death. The J8 push from the BB was fine IMO, the JT call vs. Kravchenko may have been questionable, but overall you have to say Yang had a plan and executed it superbly at the final table. It was also mentioned that Yang had been very tight in the days leading up the FT which makes his performance even more brilliant.

[youcanhaveitall]

[ QUOTE ]
Assuming you could afford to stake someone for 5/10 NL, which players from the final table would you be comfortable staking 5/10 NL on Stars. I would probably only consider Lam, Kravchenko, Watkinson, or maybe Khan. I'm sure Watkinson and Khan have attempted similar stakes online, but I'm not sure how successful they were.

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Why are you talking about cash games now, its a totally different skillset.

[Kalashnikov]

Hilm plays 50100 regular online.