Belated Final Table Thoughts

After unsuccessfully avoiding all spoilers, I finally got to watch the November 9 get after it, and like many, I was pretty disappointed.

Actually the first hour kept me pretty entertained as chip stacks fluctuated and the scenery alone was something to behold. But there is one thing that caught my attention the most and it was the play of the amateurs. I don't think it can be disputed that Phillips and the Canadian accountant (Surho or something?) were affected the most by the long layoff - and I'm not talking about in the obvious way of something like Phillips losing his momentum.

Instead, I'm gonna make a bold statement and say that the coaching they received was the biggest mistake they could of made. Of course this is strictly opinion but by being coached (with the limited action we actually see on TV), it surely looked like they both had a plan of attack set in their mind and to be honest I think it that was a huge mistake. As if they were assuming 'Player X' would play a certain way because the TV said so.

For example, I could almost see whomever it was that coached said Canadian say something like, "Demidov knows your conservative so if your in a hand w/ him and make a big move, he can't do anything but fold...." That is unless Demidov is holding the nuts that is. What it comes down to is that I certainly can't see this Canadian guy make a move like that 4 months ago. And if he can't make a move like that without the coaching, he still has a lot of chips to wait and play HIS game that got him this far.

And the hand where Ivan and Dennis played with AQ and AK almost made me puke. It was pretty obvious that Phillips was more concerned with advancing in the money and put to justice the 4 months of concentrating on the chip leader in the media, along with pleasing his contingent in the crowd.

But I suppose similar to baseball, sometimes you just gotta tip your cap to the opponent for being outplayed.


Anyways, I remember hearing Negraneu talk about how this final table would be the most "sophisticated" one ever played. That alone got me giddy to watch it but I think in the future things would be a lot more exciting if ESPN actually showed the FT live and cut out all the personal stories we already knew by there being a layoff. This is what I thought the original plan was.

So in the end it's painfully obvious that I should be running ESPN and the WSOP.