Allen Cunningham's FT Performance

[RacersEdge]

Just getting into to NL, this ME FT was the first time I have watched an entire table play for 13 hours straight. I have to say I didn't really see anything that spectacular from AC in this time span. For all the talk from almost every guest pro in the booth about what a fantastic player he is, he seemed to fall into the same mode as the other "worse" players there by getting pushed around by Gold. I didn't really detect any techniques he used to adapt to the table dynamics.

Also, he seemd to get sucked into Gold's bantar the same as everyone else, although maybe he was trying to use it to his advantage more than the other players. But overall if I didn't know he was considered a great NL player, I would never have put him above Wasicka, Binger, etc as far as poker skill goes.

Did he have a bad FT, is 13 hours too short to judge, or is he overrated?

[Qwartzy]

Gold used position on him very well. But as far as playing a shortstack goes, I think Allen played terrifically. His cards just wouldn't allow him to get momentum.

Harrington had the exact same problem in 2003. He played brilliantly with a shorstack but just couldn't get the cards. Moneymaker and Farha wouldn't be as popular today had Harrington gotten a little boost from his cards.

[A_Junglen]

Well, he didn't win a single race and never really caught a break. I still think he's probably underrated, and one final table experience is not justified reasoning on a players skill.

Ever see the Season 4 WPT Championship? James Van Alstyne...anyone?

[Brent.]

He sure made a nice call with Ace high.

[Ungoliant]

Virtually everyone that's played against him agrees that he's one of the best players in the world and I seriously doubt he forgot how to play or was any more affected by the pressure than anyone else there. How many hands did he play, like 200? That's a ridiculously small sample size and I think it's obvious he just wasn't catching cards in the right situations. While Gold was busting people with QQ vs. JJ, AC either wasn't getting those kind of hands at all, or was just unlucky that no one else had a good hand at the same time and he just won the blinds. There are almost infinite ways luck can affect the result and it's pretty clear that Allen just wasn't catching any breaks.

As for getting pushed around by Gold, I think part of it was just not getting the cards to play back at him, and part of it was just good strategy. Allen knew he was the best player there and there were a lot of amateurs with a lot of chips. There's no sense in playing big pots with marginal hands against the one guy that can bust you when you can just sit back and wait for some donk to push JJ preflop against you or get too attached to top pair when you flop a set. I think Allen got involved in the table talk becuase he's good enough to use it to get a read on Gold, not because he was getting "sucked into it".

Basically, yes, I think it's too small a sample to draw any real conclusions. Anyone who knows anything about tournaments would have said before the final table that Gold was the favorite and Allen was a significant underdog just based on chip counts.

[restrikt]

Allen was very aggressive, and picked up a lot of pots pre-flop, and post-flop with good continuation bets. A lot of the other players were clearly staying away from him and his post-flop play.

As someone already mentioned, Binger got extremely lucky against Cunningham on a few occasions. Especially the AQ vs. A10 hand, if Cunningham had won that, who knows what would've happened.

If you noticed, a lot of the other players did well because of other players' mistakes. For example, Wasicka got lucky when Binger stupidly called the all in with A9 and dumped the chips he stole from Cunningham to Wasicka. Similarly, Richard Lee was a huge donk and lost his huge stack with JJ. Cunningham, unfortunnately, was just never the beneficiary on those major occasions.

Bad cards. You could tell.

[bottomset]

[ QUOTE ]
entire table play for 13 hours straight

[/ QUOTE ]

the averaged 20!!! hands per hour

he played fewer hands at the final table, than most 4tablers play in 1hr online

that should put it into perspective

[Five-Star]

[ QUOTE ]
or is he overrated?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm dumbfounded at this, both he and Phil Ivey......

[cold_cash]

Allen Cunningham is the exact opposite of over-rated.

[boondoggle]

are your other 3699 posts equally useless?

EDIT:

Yes to the above question.

cheers
Boon