Who played the best/worst among the last four at the FT?

[VarlosZ]

[SuperUberBob]

Rahme played horribly. He refused to adjust to shorthanded play and was a total nit throughout. How many hands did this guy play of note? Two, maybe three at most.

Yang was the best that day. He was dominant and ran over the table for 15+ hours straight.

[Dynasty]

Other than his mini-tiltfest, he played fine through most of the final table.

The table was deepstacked and Rahme was simply patient and waited for hands. It was a viable strategy and it gave him the second biggest stack at the table when he busted.

[Senor Cardgage]

I hated Yang's personality and some of his earlier plays enough that I feel like I'd have to watch the final table again to rate his play fairly. I'm not great at NL so my bias against him probably gets in the way and I'll defer to other people's opinions on his play. For what it's worth, I personally rated Kravchenko's play slightly above his.

I agree that Rahme was the worst. I don't think playing a tight fashion was too bad of a strategy for the majority of the final table, but I'd like to see what his hole cards were in a ton of cases (for instance, what he had on those tilt-shove hands). I puked a lot (a whooooole lot) over his exit hand with KK.

I also look forward to seeing what Lam had during the first 20 or so hands of HU. That was a ton of folding.

EDIT: Didn't see Dynasty's post before writing mine. Glad to see at least I'm not alone in the opinion that Rahme's earlier play wasn't insanely nitty and tight. Then again, the final table WAS like fifteen or sixteen hours (counting breaks), so I can't remember a ton of the earlier action.

[vixticator]

I think Alex played best given his stack size and situation. Yang a close second, ran over table and got people to make less than optimal moves over and over and over again. Rayme kind of melted down after dinner, he was playing solid before that then looked like he wanted to go home. Lam played okay, not sure why he folded so much head's up though and the push with A5s (??) into Yang's raise where I believe Rahme called -- anyone remember that? What was this all about?

[BenTurpen]

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I think Alex played best given his stack size and situation. Yang a close second, ran over table and got people to make less than optimal moves over and over and over again. Rayme kind of melted down after dinner, he was playing solid before that then looked like he wanted to go home. Lam played okay, not sure why he folded so much head's up though and the push with A5s (??) into Yang's raise where I believe Rahme called -- anyone remember that? What was this all about?

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A5h I think it was. At the time, I think he had 13mil and it was four handed. He seemed severley card dead and just decided this was a time to shove, then ran into QQ behind him.

Kravchenko played the best. Rahme hands down has to get the worst just based on the fact that the four handed match was pretty much the final table.

[talentdeficit]

i think lam and rahme played the best, yang and kravchenko the worst.

i didn't stay up to watch the heads up portion, but from the sounds of it, lam was pretty aware he had time and the edge in skill to chip away at yang, he just didn't get the hands he needed to make it work and the chip disadvantage was too much to overcome. i liked his push with ah5h, and i think that while he misplayed a few hands against yang during 4 handed play his overall strategy was solid.

rahme had his little tilt fest which was obviously very bad, but he was tired and frustrated and it's really just three bad hands out of many that he played very well. he seemed to realize how large his stack was relative to the blinds, i don't remember him once getting his money in bad. sure, he had AQ against QQ and sucked out, but against yang i think you have to be thrilled to get action with AQ.

kravchenko got a lot of props, including from me, for hanging on with his tiny stack, but he never once capitalized on any of the chips he got from his pushes and double ups. he'd just let them slip away until he went into pushbot mode again. he also won a lot of consecutive races just to stay alive.

yang sucked. i mean, i don't care that aggression won him the title, his aggression was horribly applied and he got lucky. he also had an absolutely horrible call with jto against a three bet all in from a supernit. i don't see how he can be considered good.

[BenTurpen]

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i think lam and rahme played the best, yang and kravchenko the worst.

i didn't stay up to watch the heads up portion, but from the sounds of it, lam was pretty aware he had time and the edge in skill to chip away at yang, he just didn't get the hands he needed to make it work and the chip disadvantage was too much to overcome. i liked his push with ah5h, and i think that while he misplayed a few hands against yang during 4 handed play his overall strategy was solid.

rahme had his little tilt fest which was obviously very bad, but he was tired and frustrated and it's really just three bad hands out of many that he played very well. he seemed to realize how large his stack was relative to the blinds, i don't remember him once getting his money in bad. sure, he had AQ against QQ and sucked out, but against yang i think you have to be thrilled to get action with AQ.

kravchenko got a lot of props, including from me, for hanging on with his tiny stack, but he never once capitalized on any of the chips he got from his pushes and double ups. he'd just let them slip away until he went into pushbot mode again. he also won a lot of consecutive races just to stay alive.

yang sucked. i mean, i don't care that aggression won him the title, his aggression was horribly applied and he got lucky. he also had an absolutely horrible call with jto against a three bet all in from a supernit. i don't see how he can be considered good.

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While I agree about Kravchenko slipping after a couple of the double ups, he was all-in with AK vs. 88 for the chip lead.

[recipro]

Yang easily played the best. He was super-aggressive the whole time, raising and 3betting many pots. In addition to all this aggression, when the money went in, he was quite often ahead, despite the fact he was raising a ton of pots. I didn't like his antics, but he ran over the table. Further, heads up with Tuan, he absolutely steamrolled him.

The worst player was either Tuam or Rahme. Rahme had his mini-tilt where he was open-shoving 20M, and Tuam simply rolled over heads up. He may not have been getting cards, but he still needed to take a stand sooner, rather than calling 1 million on the flop, and check-folding the turn, and twice betting big, folding to a raise heads up.

[PokerFink]

talentdeficit,

I don't see how you can come up with the idea that Yang was the worst. He went from 8M to chipleader without showing down a hand and basically steamrolled the entire table for fifteen hours or whatever. He built a big chiplead with agression and then used that chiplead to bully players and take marginal chances when approprate. He was consistantly all-in with either the best of it or in a race and ran about even in all-in pots. He played great.

Rahme played the worst based only on the one KK hand. Ye gods. What a meltdown.

I thought Tuan played well, because I have a feeling he was very card dead. Rain commented during his interview that Tuan was playing surprisingly passive and said that he was probably card dead since Tuan is generally an active and aggressive player.