Bigger Deal

After ten long days of play, not to mention 54 previous events over six weeks, we’re at last down to the final table of the WSOP ‘main event’. The elimination of Washington State’s Steve Garfinkle soon after 4 a.m. this morning left just nine players still standing out of the 6,358 starters (including Yours Truly) aspiring to the title of 2007 world champion.

And the chip leader is a Brit! Well, kinda. Leading the field, with more than 22 million, is Philip Hilm, billed as a Dane now living in Cambridge, England. So, okay, it’s a stretch. But what I want to know is this: how come Hilm played for the Polish team that won last summer’s World Cup of Poker in Barcelona, in which I was playing for England (see Chapter Ten of Bigger Deal)?

I, too, aspire to be a Citizen of the World. But this is ridiculous.

A look back at the PokerStars blog from Barcelona reveals that Hilm was Team Poland’s ‘celebrity’ player (my own dubious billing for England), then described as ‘based in Denmark, although his family background is Polish.’ Hmmm. England captain Andy Booker might well be entitled to demand a replay of that entire contest…

Nationality is irrelevant, of course, at the WSOP final table – apart from noting the very new-poker fact that only four of the nine remaining players are American. Three are Europeans – two, if you count Hilm, Brits. You may wish to root for a dashing Polish Dane living in Cambridge, or you may prefer to support the only true Brit at the table: the less dashing but extremely proficient online favourite John Kalmar from Chorley, Lancashire, better known as ‘Skalie’, who lies in third place with 20,320,000.

The only problem is that Skalie’s support team has been behaving like classic English football fans abroad, drunkenly spraying f-words around the bleachers every time he’s involved in the action. More than once yesterday, after his wife told him they were making him ‘look bad’, and the tournament director gave them an official warning – one more f-word, and they’d be ejected from the room – their hero felt obliged to go over and have a word with these uncouth specimens, asking them to ‘chill out’. Let’s hope they don’t besmirch our national pride during the long hours of play at tomorrow’s final table (today, Monday, is a rest day).

Between Hilm and Kalmar in second place, with 21,315,000, is a 40-year-old Vietnamese Canadian, a former dealer from Ontario named Tuan Lam – whose supporters, by contrast, quietly play hand-held video games during the action. Except when Lam is in a pot. Once they hear the announcer mention his name, they all look up, shut down their Gameboys and yell ‘Go, Tuan’. Well, poker – even the final table of the World Series – can be very boring to watch.

One of three PokerStars qualifiers at the final table, Lam’s screen name is BabyHam. Behind him in fourth place, with 16,320,000, lies another – and my personal favourite, if only because of his age: 62-year-old Raymond Rahme from South Africa, a ‘semi-retired entrepreneur’ who took up Hold’em only two years ago, after decades as a stud player. Genial, white-haired Rahme has had a South African film crew following his every move since he got here – and indeed before. Have they stumbled upon the greatest fly-on-the-wall documentary subject ever? If so – and he wins the world, er, crown – let’s hope they get the right scenes in the right order…

Fifth with 13,240,000 is Lee Childs, a 33-year-old Virginian former wrestler, as you can tell by looking at his formidable frame, complete with menacingly shaved head. Add the shades, and Childs is a tough opponent, even if he turned pro only last month, and this is his first WSOP event. Tangle with Lee at your peril.

Half a double-up behind him in sixth place, with 9,925,000, is the most experienced player at the table, 40-year-old respected professional Lee Watkinson, an economics graduate from Washington State with one World Series bracelet already to his name (for the 2006 $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha event). Ironically, Watkinson lists ‘wrestling’ as one of his recreations, so it will be interesting to watch him butting heads with Childs. With career winnings in excess of $2.6 million, Watkinson qualified for the main event on FullTilt, who are committed to throwing in a bonus of $10 million if he wins the $8.25 million first prize.

To help him more than double his prize-money, Watkinson has FullTilt’s top ‘sweater’ among his classy supporters on the rails: Full Tilt pro and WSOP bracelet winner Perry Friedman, who claims to be one of the most successful ‘sweaters’ in the business. He sweated his friend Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson to four of his five WSOP bracelets, including the 2000 world crown. Friedman’s job, in his own words, is ‘to ensure that a powerful winning force surrounds the player in the field’. Yesterday he was joined in the bleachers by ‘Jesus’ himself, making Watkinson’s progress to the final table all but inevitable. The same force field will no doubt be there for him tomorrow. In, as it were, force.

Next, with 9,205,000 comes an excitable young PokerStars qualifier from Poughkeepsie, NY, named Hawad ‘Rain’ Khan (online name RaiNKhaN), who gives ESPN’s cameras value for money every time he wins a hand, leaping around and yelling to a degree unseen before the advent of televised poker.

Eighth with 8,450,000 is Californian Jerry Yang, an L.A. hospital worker with five children whose Laotian parents have made their first visit to Vegas, forgetting briefly about all 32 of their grandchildren, to root for him from the rails. ‘Hallelujah!’ cried his mother yesterday, when Jerry’s all-in 8-8 beat two overcards to put him briefly in the chip lead. ‘Son – very good boy!’ she tells all inquirers in her barely existent English.

Bringing up the rear with a mere 6,570,000 is Alex Kravchenko from Moscow – the first Russian, as far as I can establish, to reach the final table of the WSOP main event. Winner of several European events – the Austrian Masters, St. Petersburg Winter Tournament, Helsinki Freezeout and the UK’s Pacific Poker Open, this self-styled ‘businessman’ has had a stellar World Series, winning the first-place bracelet in the $1,500 Hi-Lo Limit Omaha event, and cashing in no fewer than four more (including the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E). The first Russian to win a World Series bracelet, Kravchenko has won a total of some $267,000 so far – and now stands to add a minimum of $525,934 more tomorrow.

That is the prize money for ninth place. Eighth wins $585,699, seventh $705,229, sixth $956,243 – and the top five all become dollar millionaires (if they aren’t already), winning $1.255m for fifth, $1.853m for fourth, $3.048m for third, $4.841 for second and $8.25m (not to mention the custom-built gold bracelet) for the title.

I’ll be watching from the comfort of the ESPN truck, where my friend Eric Drache has reserved me a behind-the-scenes seat to watch – and maybe join the commentary team on – the pay-per-view coverage available at ESPN from 3pm local time (11pm UK). Apparently this is no ordinary truck; there are comfy seats, food and drink, interesting companions. Who will, one assumes, behave decorously – making it the perfect seat from which to disown the foul-mouthed yobbos supporting ‘Skalie’.

Apart, of course, from the impeccably mannered snooker champ Steve Davis, into whom I bumped on the bleachers yesterday, rooting for his Ladbrokes pal. If Steve gives ‘Skalie’ some tips on the pressure out there under the lights – his immunity to which, says Steve, helped him make the money himself here last year – Britain could yet have its first world poker champion since Iranian-born, Cardiff-based restaurateur Mansour Matloubi in 1990 – the year Big Deal was published. Yes, that long ago.

See you back here on Wednesday with a full report.