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| EVENT #7 | 4/27 to 4/28/98 |
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| TEXAS HOLD'EM (No Limit) $2,000 | |
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| TOTAL PRIZE MONEY - $700,000 | PRIZE MONEY TO DATE - $3,533,000 |
| ENTRIES IN THIS EVENT - 350 | TOTAL ENTRIES TO DATE - 1,926 |
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The Final Table How they finished Live From the 'Shoe The Play-by-Play |
 TO BE OR NOT TO BE There was going to be a coronation today. A new "Prince of Poker" was to be crowned. In a direct line from Stu "The Kid" Ungar nearly twenty years ago, through Phil Hellmuth Jr, and Huck Seed, there have been new Princes crowned on a regular basis. Few are able to wear the crown for very long. There are always more eager young men in their twenties jousting for the coveted title. Now it was Prince Layne of Flack's turn. Everyone knew it. Even the players were ready for it. All they had to do was deal out the hands, place the crown on his head and strike up the band. GETTING TO THE PALACE With three left to the money, the lovely Phyllis Meyers thought her 7's could take a blind. Scotty Nguyen thought his Kings meant otherwise. Scotty liked his hand on the river, quad Kings. Phyllis was 30th. A disgusted Dewey Weum threw his hand away when he was shown the nut flush by Layne Flack. Layne had K 9 of Hearts. Dewey had 29th. Sam Korman made a large bet from the small blind. Freddy Deeb went all-in. Both had a mountain of chips. Sam had a few boulders more. He called. Freddy's 6's lost to Sam's 8's. Freddy had given away a certain payday in 28th. ENTERING THE ROYAL DINING HALL Alex Kong with a J 3 was all-in for the big blind. Easy pickings for Bob Feduniak's A Q off. An Ace came on the flop along with a three. That ended Alex Kong's dream to be King. Alex was 12th. Layne Flack ended David Evans day, as he had so many others. This time Layne used a J 9 of Hearts. Evans was 11th. Sam Korman had entered the money with two mountains of chips, his own and all those formally belonging to Freddy Deeb. They weren't enough. He mistakenly drew a seat at the same table as Layne Flack. Sam's all-in with a pair of 7's was, of course, no match to Layne's K 4 off. A King came on the turn and Korman could go back to making bad movies. One away from the final table, Sam finished 10th. This was where Prince Layne of Flack would receive his "guests" for their final meal. Where he would inform them of the exact time and method of their preordained executions.
Prize Money
At first, pretending not to know his part in the script, Barry Shulman turned on another guest, David Kim. When David went all-in on the first hand of the final table with A K off, Barry called with pocket Q's. The Q's stood up and David Kim was 9th in three minutes flat. A new record for speedy executions. Henceforth, there shall be no more of that, said the Prince. This is my coronation and I am the sole executioner here. Mickey Finn was the first. Making the mistake of sitting immediately to the Prince's left, Mickey went all-in on the button when he called the Prince's raise with A K off. What folly! The Prince promptly turned over A A. Mickey Finn took a "Mickey Finn" and was knocked out in 8th place. "He couldn't put me on Aces," joked the Prince with the courtiers. They laughed as courtiers do when royalty wants them to. It was going to be a fun party afterwards and everyone (but the guests) were in a great mood. Next the Prince, ever the playful fellow, had a special trick for the only female guest at his table. Marsha Waggoner went all-in with red pocket Kings. Prince Layne of Flack called with Q 9 off. Catching running spades, the Prince dispatched Waggoner with a spade flush. His 9 was a spade. "I wish my Kings had held up," Marsha said as she was led away in seventh. Enjoying the fun of waiting to the last card to sustain the suspense, Taz Kampf saw the Prince's Queen fall on the river to make two Queens and beat his fives. And another one bites the dust. Taz is sixth and the third straight for Prince Layne of Flack. Next! Shouted the Prince. Here! Returned Bob Feduniak. His chip count exhausted, Bob went all-in with K Q off. The Prince, growing bored of the river game, decided the turn game would be more fun. His K 10 of diamonds hit a 10 on the turn and Feduniak was the fourth to go at the hands of the Prince, in fifth place. Now it was time to pay back the careless Barry Shulman for executing David Kim on the first hand of the final table. He should have known better. Barry who had been nearly pauperized by Scotty Nguyen a few hands earlier when his Queens lost to Scotty's 7's (Scotty turned a seven high straight) now had to go all-in with A 9 off on the button. The Prince had an especially cruel plan for Barry. As the small blind, Prince Layne called the all-in bet, just as he had called almost all of the all-in bets for two days. And as had been happening for the last two days, he got where he wanted to go. His A 4 off caught a four on the flop and a four on the turn. Who didn't know that! Barry Shulman was fourth. Five players in a row were put out of the tournament, when something terrible happened to the Prince. Layne Flack - a mere mortal from Bozeman, Montana - woke up from his dream of becoming the new Prince of Poker. Layne had accumulated a princely stack. $535,000 out of a total of $700,000 on the table. He'd played well, but even he would admit that he caught everything but malaria for two days. Q 9, J 9, K 9. Any two cards would do. Whatever he needed, whatever card he could dream of, that's the one that came. For two days, Layne Flack had cracked more good hands than a mean nun. It was awesome, it was insane, and it was over. Suddenly and without warning, Layne's patented brand of fromage turned from Brie to Swiss. Before, he was hitting everything, now all he was hitting were the holes. The palace revolt started innocently enough. Layne lost to Jeff Ross, when Layne had the best hand pre-flop. Since he hardly ever had the best hand before the flop, this came as somewhat of a surprise to the railbirds. They tittered, "You should have played the worst hand, Layne." It was trivial, everyone thought. Layne joked, "How do they get these hands." It was okay to joke around, no one could lose a tournament with this kind of chip lead. Next came the basis for a challenge. Jeff Ross and Scotty Nguyen were playing for second place. They knew it. Everybody knew it. You could barely see Layne behind his mountain of chips. It looked like he was running the cage for the casino. But somebody had to finish second. It meant an extra $66,500. That's a lot of money in some places. From the button, Scotty Nguyen raised the blinds $40,000. Jeff Ross must have thought it was a move because he called with a K 7 off. Layne Flack folded. The flop came 7 10 3 tri-suited. Scotty probably thought that Jeff had none of that or that he couldn't call with just a piece of it, but he was wrong. Scotty went all-in for $50,000 more. Jeff had maybe $10,000 more in chips than Scotty. The winner of this hand would surely finish second. Jeff Ross called with second pair and an overcard to the board!!!. The turn was a 5 and the river a 6. Scotty had an A 2 off and third place. Now for the first time at the final table someone else had some chips besides Layne Flack. That fact changed everything. Flack had come to the final table with nearly half the chips and almost a five to one lead over his nearest rival. He'd been terrorizing everyone with his stack raises. No one could stand up to him for fear of getting busted. Now there was competition. And now, as if in a nightmare, Layne's hands went completely dead. This takes us to the key hand. With a 5-3 chip lead, Layne called a Jeff Ross raise with J 8 off, something he'd been doing to everyone with outrageous success for two days. The flop came J 5 4 with two diamonds. Layne had top pair, and he didn't bet!!! He gave Jeff Ross a free card. That free card was the 6 of Diamonds. Ross bet $40,000. Now Layne went all-in. Ross delightedly called. Layne had waited one card too long. We'll never know if Jeff Ross would have called all-in, with a flush draw on the flop. Maybe Jeff doesn't know himself. We do know that he called the turn bet all-in, with a King high flush. And he now had what most of us thought was impossible for him to get, the chip lead. It started to get away from Layne very quickly from this point on. Layne would raise with K J, Ross would call with A 2. An Ace would fall. Layne would call the blind. Ross would raise. Layne would fold. It was becoming alarming. It was obvious that Layne had become unglued. Jeff Ross was playing him and Layne couldn't stop it from happening. Jeff Ross was taking pot after pot. At one point, Layne turned to Johnny Chan, his friend and mentor, in the first row and said plaintively, "I can't make a hand." Soon thereafter he said to Johnny, "If I see one more 3 5..." his voice trailing off. Finally, with the stack situation completely reversed, Layne moved all-in with J 8 off, after Jeff checked a 9 6 7 flop. Jeff, holding K 7 and second pair didn't hesitate in calling Layne's remaining $90,000 in chips. Ironically, Layne had the hand that had killed him earlier - J 8, and Jeff Ross called with the hand that had given him his chips against Scotty Nguyen - K 7. The turn was a Q. Layne needed a 5, a 10, or a Jack on the river to keep his fairy tale alive. Sometimes fairy tales don't come true. The Ace of Clubs gave Jeff Ross the title. FINAL RESULTS
$2,000 No Limit Holdem
SUPER SATELLITES (Patty Hughes and Rudy Lotief) The No-Limit Super Satellites start each evening at 8:40 PM in the Satellite area. The Entry Fee is $220 for $200 in Tournament chips and there are unlimited $200 re-buys during the first hour, if you have less than $200 in Tournament chips. You may also make a single or double add-on at the end of the re-buy period. Blinds start at $5/$10 and increase every 20 minutes. Available monies will be converted into non-negotiable, non-transferable, non-refundable seats in the $10,000 World Championship event, with at least $5,000 in cash and $500 Lammers being divided among the final table players. WSOP SUPER SATELLITE #12 Tuesday 28 April 1998 COULD ANYONE WIN A SUPER SATELLITE? Mea Culpa #2. For some reason I keep trying to put Bill Gazes into the Championship. But he's not there yet. Previously, I mistook Allen Cunningham for Bill Gazes and tried to give Allen's seat to Bill (inexcusable). Yesterday, I gave Bill's two Kings on the final hand of Super Satellite #11 to Jan Lundberg and then threw Jan out of the Big One in favor of Gazes. This is getting ridiculous. Jan Lundberg won a seat Monday night. Bill Gazes, as erroneously reported by some dummy, did not. My abject apologies to both gentlemen, their families and friends. I can't try any harder, I'll have to try smarter. Tonight, 169 players bought 139 rebuys bringing the prize pool to, $61,600. The following were the rewards for making the final table:
Some of the "names" who competed were:
Susie Isaacs None of these esteemed players made the final table. In thirteenth, Luis Santoni didn't show his hand. John Juanda showed A J when the board did likewise. Ken Lennard, a recent Event final table participant, tried to pick off the blinds with A 7 off. Mike Ivins called with K 9 off. The nine of the flop sent Ken to the showers in 12th. John Ivins didn't show his hand when John Gordon caught a 10 on the flop to go with his K 10. John was 11th. Rick Young pulled off a miracle to make it to the final table. He made it through a three chip blind with only one chip. This cost Jim Waltenburg. Now he had to face the blinds with one chip. His 7 5 couldn't bet an A 3. So he got bubkus, otherwise know as 10th place. The final table:
Ever wonder how tough it is to win a seat in a WSOP Super Satellite? I do every night. I watch some of the greatest players in the world, night after night, fail to get to the final table. These players are so much better than I am. How crazy am I to even consider trying? You have to beat over 90% of the best players in poker, just to get your money back. Then, would you want a $10,000 seat that you can't sell? What if you went all-in with Aces on the first hand and lost. How would you feel? Mel Judah is a perfect case in point. If you've been paying attention to the list I post every night of the "name" players who've registered, you've noticed that Mel plays most of these Supers. You'll also notice that tonight is his first final table. Mel Judah only made $541,000 in last year's WSOP, with a third in the Championship event and a win in a Stud event. He is un arguably one of the finest players in the world. But the guy can't win a seat in one of these Super Satellites this year. An Tran and Louis Asmo are in the same boat. Play every night, lose every night. Should that encourage you, that great players don't win, so if you get lucky you have as good a chance as anyone? I can't decide. E-Mail me your opinion at: MikePaulle@aol.com. I'd be interested in what you think. Rick Young had run out of miracles. But he had $800 for 9th place, that he didn't have before. As luck would have it, the hand that called Rick's one chip was A A . Kent Hori felt pretty confident considering he had $13,000 in chips. The Aces stood up against Rick's K J of Spades. With only few chips left, the K Q off looked promising to Mike Sukonic. Gary Bloodworth called him with A 6 off. No King, No Queen, No Seat. Mike was 8th. Now it was Gary Bloodworth's turn to try a move for chips. His K J off was drawing very thin to Fariborz Azina's A K off. The board proved to be positively anorexic for Gary and he finished 7th. Almost every night we reach the $2,000/$4,000 blind level in these Super Satellites. And if we do it's always been the last level we play. There just aren't enough chips in the tournament for everyone to get through it. Tonight Patty Hughes announced that the blinds were going to $2,000/$4,000 on the next hand. Mel Judah thought he would need more chips to play that level. He raised all-in with A 3 off. Fariborz Azina almost threw his hand away. He finally decided to call with A Q off. Mel Judah still hasn't won a seat in the Championship event. He was 6th. The winners for Super Satellite #12 were:
Kent Hori SINGLE TABLE SATELLITES (Becky Kerber, Barbara Lotief and Terry Vanderlip) Single Table Satellites are run continuously 21 hours every day (8:00 AM until 5:00 AM) and usually last around 90 minutes. There are featured Satellites each day for the next day's event, as well as other Satellites depending on demand. Single Table Satellites for the $10,000 Main event and for the next no-limit Holdem event are spread frequently. Binion's charges $10 per player in a Satellite. For the $220 buy-in No Limit Holdem Satellites, ten Players start with $800 each in chips. The blinds start at $10/$25, increase every 15 minutes, and the winner gets four $500 Lammers plus $100 in cash. The first Single Table Satellite for the $10,000 Championship Event was run this evening. Ten players paid $1,010 each to win a $10,000 Final Event seat. Each player got $4,000 in chips, the blinds started at 25/50 and increased every 20 minutes. Don Holt took the seat and paid Sam Korman $5000 cash when they got Heads up with stacks that were about equal. Single Table $10,000 Satellites aren't scheduled events, and occur when there is a demand for one. We'll report results as best we can. LAS VEGAS WEATHER The Temperature sign atop Binion's Horseshoe read 79 degrees at 3:00 PM on Tuesday. Hardly any wind. The sky was clear, except for a few low lying clouds to the North and to the West. LENGTH OF FINAL TABLE
WSOP DEALS
McCLELLANDisms Jack played in a couple of the early Super Satellites at this year's WSOP. When asked what he would have done if he had won a seat, he said he would have rolled it over until next year (which is permissible) when he would be retired from the tournament circuit. Last year he said that he would be retiring before this year's WSOP. The total prize pool is up almost 2 % over last year for the first seven events. FREE ROOM AT THE HORSESHOE In addition to the money and a gold bracelet, each winner of a 1998 WSOP Event will get free rooms at next year's WSOP. If you win more than one Event, you can roll subsequent hotel accommodations over to later years. PLAYER CONDUCT Any player abusing employees or other players, either verbally or physically (swearing, throwing cards, etc.) or disrupting the tournament will be penalized. The following will be the MINIMUM penalty imposed:
FIRST OFFENSE - 20 minutes away from the table.
(Blinds and/or antes to be forfeited)
SCOREBOARD
TOURNAMENTS Jack McClelland is assisted by Steve Morrow and Jeff Vanderlip as Assistant Tournament Coordinators. The 1998 WSOP continues the two-day format that was inaugurated last year, for most of the tournaments. Also, all two-day events start one level lower than in past years, and each level at the Final Table has been lengthened from 60 minutes to 80 minutes. Limit Holdem and Omaha events have two new levels of betting. First day play continues until the field is reduced to the Final Table, and Final Table play begins at 4:00 PM on the second day. POKER ROOM Shift Supervisors Jimmy Stefan, John Buchanan, Tony Shelton and Cathy Wood run the Poker room where the lower limit games are played. A recent check showed the following games being spread:
SIDE ACTION Shift Supervisors John "Scoff" Sheffield, Kathy Hudson and Marshall Kassoff run the higher limit games on the south end of the Tournament Pavilion. A recent check showed the following games were being spread:
$10,000 CHAMPIONSHIP ENTRANTS Updated through Tuesday Noon 28 April 1998
Alphabetized:
Greg Alston  Jeffrey Ross, a $1-$2 Friday night poker amateur, pulled off a startling victory over 349 competitors in the $2,000 No Limit Hold'em event, winning $259,000 and a custom-designed gold WSOP bracelet he never dreamed he could own.
Ross said he had flown here to try to enter this event, "just to say I played in the World Series. It never dawned on me I would win anything. I could easily have been knocked out five or six times. It's a completely gut-wrenching experience, but the final table was very exciting." After a flurry of eliminations in a short time at the final table, Ross found himself heads-up against Layne Flack who had held a dominant chip lead throughout. Ross had $130,000 in chips while Flack's stack totaled $570,000. Seven minutes later a seemingly innocuous flop developed into the tournament's key hand: J-5d-4d gave Flack, with J-8, top pair and gave Ross, with Kd-2d, a flush draw. The flop was checked. A diamond six fell on the turn. Ross bet $50,000, Flack went over the top and Ross called all-in with his winning flush. The $440,000 pot suddenly propelled Ross into the chip lead which he never surrendered until the end a half hour later. In the final hand, Flack again had J-8 offsuit and was all-in with a flop of 9-7-6 against Ross's K-7. The pair of sevens held up when Q-A showed, and Ross had achieved his improbable victory just over two hours after final-table action had begun. Flack, a 29 year-old operator of a Montana cardroom and a former small casino manager and poker dealer, was playing in his first World Series tournament. "I'm a little shocked," he not surprisingly declared. "When you come in with that kind of chip lead, you feel pretty confident. I made one bad play and just ran into a big hand. After that I couldn't pick up a hand." Scotty Nguyen, 35, a Vietnamese-born tournament veteran, took third place, his second final table and third money finish at this WSOP. Nguyen is riding a run of tournament successes this year and pledged that "you will see me at more final tables here." He has now won $244,462 at the WSOP. Nguyen, all-in with A-2, was knocked out by Ross's Kc-7c with a board of 10-7-3/5-6. Fourth place went to Barry Shulman, 51, an owner of Card Player magazine who found himself playing against and just outlasting his next-door neighbor. Shulman noted that his chances were effectively doomed when his pocket queens lost to Nguyen's pocket sevens with a board of 6-5-4/3-J. Bob Feduniak, 5l, a retired Wall Street executive and Shulman's Las Vegas neighbor, took fifth place and said, "I'm delighted. This is my highest finish ever at the World Series. And, it's a nice way to celebrate my marriage ten days ago. My wife and I just returned from our honeymoon." Feduniak has now won $67,087 in six WSOP money finishes. Sixth place was taken by Taz Kampf, a 54 year-old attorney and "semi-pro poker player for ten years." His first WSOP money finish left him "disappointed and at the same time elated. It was a tremendous learning experience." Australian-born executive casino host Marsha Waggoner, who finished 12th in last year's Championship Event and has now cashed 11 times for a total of $181,805, took seventh. She remains third on the Women's Top Money Winners list. "I feel pleased I got to the final table," Waggoner said. "But I'm disappointed my kings didn't hold up." She was eliminated by Flack who held Q-9s when the board came Qs-J-7s/8s-As. Mickey Finn, 54, the expatriate American co-founder of the booming European Poker Players Association, finished eighth at his first WSOP final table. "I felt very fortunate to get there," he said. Finn, a former European no-limit Hold'em champion, has now cashed four times here. Poker "amateur" David Kim, 34, the shortest stack, went all-in and out on the first final-table hand, his A-K falling to Shulman's pocket queeens. It was Kim's first World Series effort. 
The Final Table
NOTES
d = dealer First action reported in a betting round, normally means the first player that put money into the pot in that betting round. A check is usually not reported as the first action in a betting round. Folds are not always reported. If there are four players at the beginning of a betting round, and it's reported that one player bets and is called by one other player, then the remaining two players folded.
*** 28 minutes remaining - 1,000 Ante - 2,000/4,000 Blinds
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"I'm the greenest guy around," said Ross, 5l, the first
World Series winner from Hawaii. "I play kitchen table
poker about twice a month, dealer's choice for one dollar -
two dollars, but not no-limit. I've almost never played
no-limit but I won a satellite to get into this tournament."