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It’s become an annual tradition. Ever since Chris Moneymaker’s victory in 2003 launched poker into a new stratosphere, students and lovers of the game have huddled around their laptops and the final table, talking about the possibilities inherent in known entities taking home the championship of the World Series of Poker.
You can’t blame them. Moneymaker was the fulfillment of champagne hopes and caviar dreams. When he made that final table, Sammy Farha and Dan Harrington were the buzz names. The next year, despite Greg Raymer’s big stack, Harrington’s and Al Krux’s names were being thrown around. In 2005, the possibility of a Matusow monarchy loomed larger than life. Last year, it was all about the coronation of Allen Cunningham. Of course, none of these best-laid plans ever came to fruition.
The name players, on average, play poker at a higher caliber than their no-name counterparts. That’s an inevitability created by the continual addition of the faceless masses to the latter group. Still, the difference in level of play, as exhibited in one tournament (no matter how big) just isn’t big enough to make the stories we know rise to the top. This has become so blatant a reality now that insiders find themselves asking if we’ll have a name champion ever again.
Of course, the championship has a transformational effect. Raymer, Hachem, and Jamie Gold were all but unknown to the greater poker world at large before their wins. Now they can’t walk down the street without being recognized. The guess here is that the cycle will also find itself repeating. This time, it will be for amateur pokerplayer- turned-world-champion Jerry Yang.
We all watched Scotty Nguyen surge towards the final table, then speculated on bracelet winners Alex Kravchenko and Lee Watkinson once Scotty went down. In the day and a half break between getting down to nine and resuming play immediately afterwards, many names were issued as guesses towards our next world champion. It’s possible that with the second smallest starting stack and the least recognizable tournament experience, it was Yang’s name that got mentioned the least. Once the final table got to playing though, Yang’s became the first word in the poker world’s dictionary.
If anyone missed the first hour of play, they missed one of the greater surges in recent World Series of Poker history. Yang established himself early as the most aggressive player at a table that required four hours to reduce its numbers from ten to nine. He won the first two hands, one with a continuation bet forcing Jon Kalmar to fold, the other with a reraise scaring Alex Kravchenko away pre-flop. When he won the sixth hand, then now-famously making Lee Childs fold pocket queens on a seven-high flop, he fully established himself as the action at the table.
The hand against Childs gave Yang plenty to play with. Suddenly, he was in second place behind only Him and Tuan Lam, and with Hilm showing signs of life also, a clash seemed inevitable. Where one was expected, two came: the first giving Jerry half of Philip’s stack, the second ending Hilm’s day on just the fifteenth hand of play.
After Hilm, the others started lining up for more of the same. They’d witnessed Jerry’s aggression and refused to allow it to fester. Watkinson was the next to go, and then Childs and Rain Khan, all in the first fifty-six hands of play. Suddenly, after starting the day with north of nine million, Yang was up to over 73 million, more than half the chips in play. It was a remarkable run that continued without interruption into the night.
After Kalmar exited, Kravchenko went out in fourth place. Raymond Rahme held on desperately before being eliminated in third, with Yang again doing the dirty work. That gave Jerry a 104-23 (totals in millions) chip lead. While the number would waver, he’d never let it go.
It would all finally end on the 205th hand of the night. It started with Yang raising the button to 2.3 million only to have Lam move all in for a total of 22.2 million. Jerry paused, then finally made the call, showing 8♣-8♦ to Lam’s A♦-Q♦. The flop appeared to give Lam what he needed when it came Q♣-9♣-5♠, but the 7♦ on the turn left Jerry wanting for either an eight for trips or a six for the gutshot straight. He got the six, and after fourteen hours, the house lights came on.
It was in the post-game interview that we came to understand what will inevitably be embraced about Yang. When Norm Chad asked if this were the best day of his life, Yang told the assembled that it was a great day, but it couldn’t hold a candle to the day he and his family escaped oppression and found freedom in America. He plays poker with passion, but also with priority. It’s a lesson a few of us could stand to learn.
When that tradition of possibility began on July 16th, few people were mentioning Jerry Yang’s name. He hadn’t given them a whole lot of reason to, and what’s more, even if he’d made himself more visible, they wouldn’t have had much understanding of the kind of poker world we’d be living in under his reign. Now we know it’s one of priority over passion. What we know in the time of Yang is that sometimes, that’s enough.
Gary Wise was present for all 205 hands played at the final table. He practices both passion and priority at his usual haunt, www.wisehandpoker.com
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