The luckiest run in WSOP main event history

The luckiest run in WSOP main event history

Consensus seems to be Jamie Gold in 2006. He was basically the cheap leader from day 4 onward and had a run of cards that defied probability.

Do people agree with this?

26 June 2024 at 06:38 AM
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64 Replies

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by JVinegar k

Ivey making that FT at the height of his powers is probably one of the sickest things ever tbh. If he won that AK to AQ pot he very well could be a main event champ

Could have been main event champion twice if he avoided a sick beat against Chris Moneymaker too.


by OmahaDonk k

Filippo Candio

Yep. I’ve played with him. I reckon he’s a losing 2/5 player. Yang is too apparently


phil hellmuth obv


by feel wrath k

Yep. I’ve played with him. I reckon he’s a losing 2/5 player. Yang is too apparently

Yang was obviously terrible.

But if you win the main event and after that you're NOT a losing 2/5 nl player you're doing it wrong.


+1 for Hal Fowler

This is from an article about the man he beat in the head's up that year, Bobby Hoff:

By the time of the 1979 WSOP Main Event, Hoff was one of the most respected players in the world. Names at the final table included Johnny Moss and Chip Reese. The table also included a wasted marketing guy, with only a vague idea of the rudiments of poker, Hal Fowler, who seemed to be munching valiums “like they were candy”. He was also hitting every gutshot in sight. Doyle Brunson once said that never, before or since, had he seen such a concentrated display of good luck. Hal Fowler was the poker world champion who check-called his way to victory.

Heads-up was billed as a David and Goliath match. Somehow it lasted ten hours. In the final hand Hoff’s Ah Ac was outdrawn when Fowler hit another gutshot on the turn, with 7s 6d on a board of Js 5h 3c 4s 10d. You can watch that hand on YouTube. Hoff looks dismayed. Fowler looks, well, stoned. Bobby confessed to having bad dreams about the final hand for weeks afterwards. The outcome, he said, haunted him for years. Maybe that’s why he didn’t play too many tournaments.


Gold got people to make a lot of mistakes against him in 2006.

Obv got smashed by the deck as well, but I think he deserves some credit for closing.

Right player, right situation, right time. It all came together for him. A magical run.


+1000 to Jerry Yang

Gold was lucky for sure but he was good enough to talk people into -EV moves. Counts for something


by BulltexasATM k

Lexy Gavin Mather almost cashed

Lol I sat next to her at a WSOP tournament a few weeks ago. She was annoying.


by Defarse k

George Holmes still only having two Hendon cashes is pretty baller. And didn't he come back from the dead a couple times in that run?

Yes. One of the most remarkable stories in Main Event history. On day 7, he was down to ONE big blind, at roughly 500K in chips. By the end of that day, he was the chip leader with 68 MILLION. Ended up finishing second to Aldemir.


by VincentVega k

The real answer is all of the main event winners of the last 20 years.

Otherwise, I'd go with Jerry Yang as everytime I've rewatched the 2007 ME (he wasn't on a ton of coverage leading up to the final few tables) his skill level looks worse and worse. He looked as good as a mediocre aggro 1-3 player.

Gold at least had a characteristic which appeared to fool a lot of people.

But Yang didn't get his rush of cards until the final table. His stack was below average most of the tournament.

Also Lee Childs folding QQ on the flop to Jerry's all-in reraise will go down as one of the worst plays in final table history.


by RDS24 k

But Yang didn't get his rush of cards until the final table. His stack was below average most of the tournament.

Also Lee Childs folding QQ on the flop to Jerry's all-in reraise will go down as one of the worst plays in final table history.

Haha that was hilarious.


Seeing Noel Furlong's play at final table in 99 I'm suspecting he ran pretty good with some questionable play along the way!!


by borg23 k

Haha that was hilarious.

It was unreal. Childs was literally saying, "Jerry I'm gonna show you the respect and lay this down" and folded his pocke queens face up. He also was talking to his dad during the hand.


by TB303 k

Seeing Noel Furlong's play at final table in 99 I'm suspecting he ran pretty good with some questionable play along the way!!

True!


Robert Varkony


by OmahaDonk k

Robert Varkony

Math player, coached by other math players. If you put him in the luckbox camp, you may as well include Chris Ferguson and Greg Raymer.


by RDS24 k

It was unreal. Childs was literally saying, "Jerry I'm gonna show you the respect and lay this down" and folded his pocke queens face up. He also was talking to his dad during the hand.

The talking to his dad thing was kinda insane. Literally like if someone went to their rail and was like what should i do.

I’m also pretty sure after he showed the queens, he seemed to have some regret about the fold and the rest of the table was like bro how the f did you fold that to Jerry


by _billyjex_ k

The talking to his dad thing was kinda insane. Literally like if someone went to their rail and was like what should i do.

I’m also pretty sure after he showed the queens, he seemed to have some regret about the fold and the rest of the table was like bro how the f did you fold that to Jerry

Childs flat called the 4-bet preflop raise by Jerry. So at that point, Childs obviously did not put Jerry on AA or KK. Probably AK, JJ, TT. That means on the flop, Childs was ahead, as there were no A, K, J, or T, on the flop. If I'm not mistaken the flop was like 752, all low cards. Childs bet more than half the pot on the flop and then Jerry moved all in. Hard to give Jerry credit for a set. His most likely range is AK, JJ, TT. If Childs folded because he put Jerry on AA or KK, then why hell did he call the preflop raise?


Yang didn't 4b, he 3b. Lee flatted then donked the flop and folded to a jam.

I think one thing that can sway this discussion in Yang's favor is that the 2007 FT might be one of the worst of all time. So many bad players and punts on that FT.


It really is the nut low final table of the post-boom era. Hevad Khan was probably the best player and he quit poker within a couple years.

I struggle to think of another FT since then that yielded so few relevant players.

A lot of times the final table of the Main is a launching pad for players to grind high volume and achieve bigger things, but those guys disappeared.


Kassouf was pretty lucky to still be walking at the end…


Surprised no one has said Steve Dannenman. I am not sure I've ever seen someone who was as outmatched as he was at the final table, although to his credit he was well aware of that being the case. He did go on to earn another $500k in tournaments, but who knows how much it cost him to do so.


by Rawlz517 k

Yang didn't 4b, he 3b. Lee flatted then donked the flop and folded to a jam.

I think one thing that can sway this discussion in Yang's favor is that the 2007 FT might be one of the worst of all time. So many bad players and punts on that FT.

The positive I remember from Yang's performance at the final table was his aggression. There was alot of passive play at the table from people apparently scared of getting knocked out before laddering up, and Jerry exploited it with hyperaggression and, yes, good card distribution.


by namisgr11 k

The positive I remember from Yang's performance at the final table was his aggression. There was alot of passive play at the table from people apparently scared of getting knocked out before laddering up, and Jerry exploited it with hyperaggression and, yes, good card distribution.

This, totally. In fact, I want to say that might have been a relative peak for that style of play. The boom brought a bunch of new blood to the game (myself included), and many people imitated what they saw on TV: playing for stacks pre or on the flop, thus forgoing any turn and river play.

I remember Gavin Smith talking about it on PokerRoad Radio back in the day. Whether intentional or otherwise, Yang lessened any skill gap at the final table by simply making it a preflop game – raising it 4x, 5x or even larger pre. It forced players to be willing to gamble on early streets. This style, Gavin said, reduces the skill gap because there are simply fewer decision points. You can't outplay someone on the turn if the chips went in pre.

Consider the elimination hands:

• Three-betting Lee Childs AIPF with J8s, getting called by Childs' KJo, then hitting the 8 on the turn.
• Calling Lee Watkinson's massive 3-bet (36x) with A9o, only to discover he's way ahead against Watkinson's A7o. He did the same thing to Daniel Alaei (ATo vs A5) when there were three tables going in a spot where Alaei would often be huge (limp/shove).
• Winning what is effectively a coin flip against Hevad Khan (JJ > AQ), with the last 20 BBs going in on a king-high flop after Rain shoved dark.
• Winning a 68x AIPF coin flip with Kravchenko (88 > AK)
• Calling Raymond Rahme's 16x 3-bet with A5o, getting an AJ8hh flop, then calling Rahme's check-shove. Rahme had KK and busted in third.
• Winning yet another coin flip against Tuan Lam (88 > AQ) for 84 BBs.

Of course, Yang had some help along the way. The aforementioned QQ vs JJ hand is a hand Lee Childs probably wanted back immediately after mucking, but especially after seeing the way Jerry played for the remainder of that table. That hand is to Yang's run what Farha's fold was to Moneymaker's bracelet – a play that shouldn't have worked, but did.

Anyway, I always remember Gavin talking about the 2007 ME final table as an example of how weaker players can take on more skilled players in the short run – reduce the number of poker decisions. Sklanksy had taken this concept to the extreme when he created "The System," in which a complete novice could hold their own by simply folding or shoving, regardless of stack size. In the long run, this will catch up to the user, but in the short run, it might be their only real chance.

I can't imagine how well Yang must have run in the first few days to amass his stack in the first place, though. Even watching that run almost two decades later, it seems like he was frequently mashing buttons and getting lucky – by sucking out, by winning flips, or by happening to be ahead in spots where he will often be way behind. Sure, any tourney winner will have their share of each of those lucky moments, but from our seats, Yang seemed to win on only those.


by Steve00007 k

Could have been main event champion twice if he avoided a sick beat against Chris Moneymaker too.

The funny thing is Ivey and Greenstein have talked about that hand in some vlog type videos they've done.

Apparently Greenstein had told Ivey from the day it happened that he played the hand bad. Ivey said at the time when he was younger he thought it was a bad beat, but in the present he realizes the mistakes he made in the hand. Even saying all that, Ivey had like 85% equity with one card to come.

As it pertains to the landscape of poker, I've always believed this was the most pivotal hand in poker history. Ivey wins that pot and not only is he the prohibitive favorite going into the FT, but Moneymaker's chances of winning drop substantially. Poker was on the rise anyways and Ivey would have been great as the young face of poker to the masses in '03. The stars aligned with Moneymaker though. He was the right person at the right time, with the most relatable story and the perfect name. You couldn't have written it up in a script any better.

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