The Final Table SUCKED Thread

[rafiki]

I've been playing poker for a while, but I know this. if I got to a final table with pros, I would do my absolute best to avoid seeing flops. That said the pros here should have adjusted accordingly.

[TimTimSalabim]

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I've been playing poker for a while, but I know this. if I got to a final table with pros, I would do my absolute best to avoid seeing flops. That said the pros here should have adjusted accordingly.

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Exactly, Yang was using the perfect TPFAP strategy for someone who was the least experienced at the table. In most cases, that's the player who tends to play just the opposite. Props to him, he earned his win.

[gsolis]

If my memory from the broadcast serves me, Hachem's final table was 11ish hrs and Jimmy Gold's 14hrs+, a record until this year.

overall, i agree while Jerry's play was unconventional the pros did not adjust accordingly.

I particularly did not like Lee Childs who raises from the SB weith KJo with a shortstack instead of just pushing Yang off the J8 that ended his tournament.

[shmergle]

Especially when they're pointless and unfunny

[EverettKings]

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For people saying it was the least entertaining final table for a while: how many final tables have you watched live without hole cards? It was definitely too slow, but given that my main experience watching live tournaments is with HEAVILY edited footage on TV, it's not clear that it's that far out of the ordinary. Was this even longer than the Hachem final table, and if so, by how much?

[/ QUOTE ]

I watched last year and LOVED it. Watching Allen Cunningham play in real time against Jamie was great, and both of them acted fairly quickly with little to no Hollywooding. It was wonderful to watch.

This year was just unbearable. I kept checking in just to see what happened, and every 20 minutes I'd check the live updates and review the hands that had been played to see a total of like three hands that looked like this:
1 - Jerry yang raises and takes the blinds and antes
2 - Jerry yang raises and Tuan Lam calls from the blinds. The flop is Q85 with two diamonds. Tuan checks, Jerry bets and Tuam folds.
3 - Everyone folds to Jerry yang in the big blind
Which all somehow required 20 minutes for a total of four non-fold actions.

[Lampsteen]

Why didn't they all have racing suits on so they could have had more advertising on them. I was watching 9 guys whore themselves out.
Plus, what is with all the black being worn at the final tables??? I also noticed it on the first week of ESPN's 2007 WSOP broadcast. That is really lame too.

Yes, the table was boooorrrrriiiiinnnnngggg! Could Yang move any slower?? Unlike a lot of you, I'm a Christian and I really do believe you check God at the door when you sit down at the felt. But, who knows. All I know is that he was really creeping me out.

[FireStorm]

1) Too slow. Borderline decisions being overthought, and players like Yang and Kravchenko who play extremely slowly anyway, make for hands which take forever. Not good TV, and leads to bad decisions later on from players who are tired/bored/restless.

2) Yang is never folding A5 against Rahme regardless of what he says. Rahme is eliminated as soon as he CR shoves AI. He could have led at the flop and shut down, and ended the hand with 20 million in chips, still deep enough to make a dent.

3) The poor play of people deepstacked in the first 30-40 hands isn't something you expect to see. Watkinsons move is unnecessary as is his idiotic explanation that he didn't want to blind out. Hilm should not busto 9th when starting almost 100 BB's deep unless he gets megacooled TWICE. Calling it off with KJo is unacceptable, you aren't even ahead of sgarbage hands which Yang is overplaying. The fact that he had a worse J is a Godsend.

4) Disagree that no one played back at Yang. Kravechenko managed to get it in 4 times against him, all either good or racing.

5) ESPN will be saved by the fact they they actually have a lot of hands to choose from to show. Eight bustouts, three Kravchenko doubles thru Yang, Rahme doubling thru Yang, Tuan Lam doubling with Ah5h and 4d3d, the hand where Childs mucked QQ faceup, etc etc. Shouldn't be too difficult to fill two episodes once you factor in some incidental bluffs/aggression hands.

[NotFadeAway]

I really enjoyed this year's final table, as I thought it was extremely exciting and great fun to watch how they were playing (or, in the case of everyone except for Yang, not playing.) I didn't see last year's FT though, so I don't have anything to compare it to, but I did have a lot of fun watching it.

[EGO]

I think in a month when the FT airs on ESPN we will all be very happy with the new influx of maniacs at the table.

Granted, I didn't think anyone other than Raymond (who made the worst play of the FT) really took advantage of Yang's inability to play post-flop. I'd have tried to see many, many flops against this guy. Nobody took a stand.

Are you counting all the breaks in your hand calculations. There was some time for dinner, and 15-20 minutes every two hours or so. Probably three of those hours nobody was at the table at all, if not more. Still pretty slow.

The slow deliberateness of the play, combined with the weak-tight play overall by Yang's competitors suggests that many of these players were simply trying to move up the money ladder. At least after the first guy was eliminated.

I think Yang's win was good for us, though. I agree with the OP's sentiments. With such deep stacks, I really hoped to see more poker played. Yang simply ran the table over, and nobody had enough cajones to play the high-variance, but correct, way against him. Call his raises, take flops, value-bet, value-bet, value-bet.