[Vincent Lepore]

When I heard this hand described previously on this forum I thought that given Matasows chip position he could have layed his kings down. There was an early raiser and then a hefty reraise by a player that was relatively short stacked. What can a short stack have to reraise an early raiser for something less than all of his chips? Gee there are only 2 hands I can think of and Matasow had one of them.

Then I watched the final table. After a while I realized that just because it was the final table of the WSOP did not mean that the play was worthy of the title. There was some horrible play at that table, especially by Lazar. Matasow would have had to give the hand a lot of thought and realized that the most likely hand the reraiser had was A,A. I'm not sure that was possible. Another reason Matasow probably can't give the reraiser Aces only is that the tight play seen when they were nine handed and trying to get to the final table and a 400k increase was now replaced by a situation that saw the next increment of money only 150k more and 7th only 150k more than that. This was a very unfotunate place for Matosow to find himslef but he still had a good stack when the hand was over. Another reason to go for it. He blew up after that hand in my opinion. Bottom line is I don't think the situation lent itself to Matasow not playing the hand and a solid reraise does nothing because the reraiser does not have very many chips. However if he reraises and the original raiser now comes over the top he might get away fro the hand. That is a reason for not moving in and just putting in a pot size raise.

Vince