Jamie Gold WSOP 2007 Champion

dingle

Board Q85A4

Gold Q9
Wasicka TT

Chucky the tree

isnt it 2006?

okidoki987

Was he a Pokerstars/PP/Party etc qualifier?

tribulus

bodog going by his cap

bill_ashmount

Fair play to him. He has been getting a lot of abuse off people on the forums the last few days. I think he's come across very well, delighted for him.

keeffor

no-one can say that he didn't get lucky with the hands he was dealt though, thats not to say he didn't play them well

ianmc38

Seemed extremely modest and gracious in the post tourney interview. Destroyed the final table. Credit where credit is due. Congratulations.

Bp!

What in the name of God was Paul Wasicka doing smooth callin the raise preflop with 10's? Trappin? Lol

Culchie

He took out 8 of the 9 other final table finalists, well deserved, seemed like a decent enough skin to me.

15 other major cashes, so not a complete fluke.

RasTa

Didnt seem that bad, but the deck was smacking him in the face throughout the hole tourney.

peeko

I think it was nice speech play to end the game in fairness

jem

fair dues to him u don't build that sort of stack without playing well, u need luck as well but good play needed.
interesting that at no stage after the first day was he all in. thats good play.
seemed a nice enough bloke on the final table and interview.

Dub13

LOL...who was it that wanted to try and get a few weeks without finding out the winner.

keeffor

what he say in the interview?

Ste05

Dub13 wrote:

LOL...who was it that wanted to try and get a few weeks without finding out the winner.

LOL - knew that was a long shot!!

I also agree that he played a great FT. I thought Gold gave a master class in Big Stack Poker. Cunningham seriously rattled him when he made that call with the A high, but he regrouped and continued on his rampage. A deserved winner.

Although with him being an Agent, I'd bet my house that he saw all the bad press he was getting on the Forums and changed his attitude for the FT, because he certainly didn't seem like a wnker watching him.

jimbling

think the guy deserved to win it alright. He obviously played very well for long periods......He sucked out on a lot of players... but that happens when you have a giant stack* and are not afraid to use it.

And any man that can take out an entire final table (bar 1) has my respect.

Pretty obvious the deck was hitting him in the face... but out of 8700 players, plenty others were getting smacked as well. What happened to them?

Think he played a lot of hands very well, and I think he used his image very well for the final 2 days.


*Not sure how he originally managed to get a big stack... perhaps complete luck... but he used it well.

so... congrats to Jamie Gold

Hitman Actual

Seemed like a terrible FT, both skill- and entertainment-wise. Nobody had the heart to really take Gold on, and when they did, he out-flopped them. Last years game was so much better, at least until Andy Black got knocked out.

Whether Gold is any good or not will be proven in the next six months or so, but the deck definately hit him in the face this week.

keeffor

here here...

entertainment wise, the final table had nothing really

delanec8

I thought it was pretty exciting actually. Better than last year imo where nearly every pot was taken down preflop. There seemed to be more play at this years FT.

As far as the deck hitting him in the face he cant do anything about that. He played the best at the final table and deserved to win it

with regards to people saying that he was getting smacke in the face with the deck all week, it doesn't mean that much.

We've all seen people get blasted away even when getting runs of great hands.

He played consistently with a big stack and kept it..

fair play to him, he's made a nice bit of money.

jem

I think what I saw of the final table it was a master class of useing a big stack. he did get lucky but u cant win without luck.
Remember if there was no luck involved PH would win every one.

shoutman

I watched 5 hours of the final table, thanks espn for letting me freeroll it

I expected it to be extremely boring but combined with the banter in the antes up chat room it was pretty entertaining, I thought there was some shocking play at times including someone calling with a6 against an opponents all in preflop!

Gold did well to hold his nerve as for short time he seemed to be losing it especially when it seemed like cunningham had figured him out with that call of gold 2m bet on the river with ace high. Amazing call.

Obviously Gold got lucky, twice getting all in preflop with qq vs jj, I think more then anything his big hands didnt run into opponents bigger hands and he didnt get sucked out on at all at all.

That said on the final table i think it is true that none of his opponents were willing to try to mess with his massive stack, he took so many pots down with betting on the turn and river,, I think a lot at the final table were just aiming for that extra 500k you get for getting a place higher, it is understandable as it is an awful lot of money but I'm sure if there was another one or two well known players at the FT Gold wouldn't of had it so easy.

Anyone know what time this finished up at?

cheers
Luke

Ste05

shoutman wrote:

Anyone know what time this finished up at?

Light weight Shoutman!!

It finished at about 11.30 so we were miles off in our predictions...

shoutman

haha jeez I wonder if any of the lads watched this till the end.

Thats a long session of poker, any idea how many breaks they had?

Ste05

I took a break from 5.30 (when they had a 90 min dinner break) til 9 - so I suppose I'm a bit light too

CharlieAsh

shoutman wrote:

That said on the final table i think it is true that none of his opponents were willing to try to mess with his massive stack, he took so many pots down with betting on the turn and river,, I think a lot at the final table were just aiming for that extra 500k you get for getting a place higher, it is understandable as it is an awful lot of money but I'm sure if there was another one or two well known players at the FT Gold wouldn't of had it so easy.

Or indeed if Cunningham had been sitting on the other side of him.

DeVore

Time will tell, but after spending all week following it, I didnt even bother to go down and watch the feed in the press room. I hate to say it but the WSOP has lost something, Gold isnt our champion player, our king-for-a-year, he's the guy who won the lotto.

This wasnt poker, it was gambling with cabaret.

DeV.

Four of a kind

DeVore wrote:

Time will tell, but after spending all week following it, I didnt even bother to go down and watch the feed in the press room. I hate to say it but the WSOP has lost something, Gold isnt our champion player, our king-for-a-year, he's the guy who won the lotto.

This wasnt poker, it was gambling with cabaret.


I disagree. I think Gold was a deserved winner. He was chip leader from day 4, and never once let his strangled hold go. With the amount of players running this year(and last 2 years for that matter), it was always going to be a lottery. But end the end, if you can hold a chip lead for 5 days in the main event...you deserve to be champ. Thats just my opinion.

jem

Four of a kind wrote:

I disagree. I think Gold was a deserved winner. He was chip leader from day 4, and never once let his strangled hold go. With the amount of players running this year(and last 2 years for that matter), it was always going to be a lottery. But end the end, if you can hold a chip lead for 5 days in the main event...you deserve to be champ. Thats just my opinion.

I agree.
never having all ur chips at stake after day 1 is good play, taking out all bar 1 of those at the final table is good play, winning 12mil is great play .

shoutman

Gold is definately not the peoples champ, but i have to agree with Four of a Kind he is a deserved champ, he is not the best player in the world but over the week with the run of cards he got he did play well.

I also agree with Dev, the WSOP in its current format is always going to be a lotto, and its only ever going to stay that way unless they change it.

I think this has shown by the amount of coverage going the way of the 25k H.O.R.S.E event. Even during the live coverage Phil Gordan was asking if the H.O.R.S.E event was in someway overshadowing the main event, I dont neccesarily agree with that statement as inevitably all the press coverage was primarily aimed at the Main event.

The WSOP ME works though, it is the one event in world sport where a newcomer has a real chance of becoming world champion, he may not be the best player in the world or even close to it but I think to beat 8k players to win you must have done something right and therefor deserve to have finished in first place.

If you were to ask any poker player in the world what their one dream was, 99% of players would be saying to win the World Series....

The WSOP is only ever going to get bigger and bigger and therefor going to become more and more of a lottery, is this such a bad thing?
I believe it has gotten to the stage where people realise that the world series champion is not the best poker player in the world but is instead just a lucky person who played well at the given time.

ionapaul

Fair play to him! Hopefully he'll be a good ambassador for the game, like Joe H seems to be.

I also hope they really up the buy-in for this event and somehow get the numbers running down, way down, so its less of a horrific slog.

jem

ionapaul wrote:

I also hope they really up the buy-in for this event and somehow get the numbers running down, way down, so its less of a horrific slog.

40K??/ 50K

Goodluck2me

how many guys from here are playing if its 40K?

slegs

goodluck2me wrote:

how many guys from here are playing if its 40K?

Im in!!



Oh sorry, thats 40k...thought u said 40$...back to the 8 o clock tourney on Paddy Power

nicnicnic

I watched the final table until the dinner break and have to say overall i was impressed with the standard of play and thought it was far superior then last years.

cunningham had a set game plan and it was great to see him changing gears after about four hours. the guy that came second played impressively and as for gold, well the guy knocked out about 30 of the last 50 runners and decimated the final table. The biggest hand i saw was the QQ JJ against Lee and while the hand itself is nothing special in the previous play gold had limped re raised lee about six times, don't know what lee was putting down but it was these plays that got him to push from second in chips with JJ

corblimey

jem wrote:

I agree.
never having all ur chips at stake after day 1 is good play, taking out all bar 1 of those at the final table is good play, winning 12mil is great play .

Looking at the hands with which Gold took out the other players, he was pretty lucky in 5 of 7 when the board hit and he was always behind, albeit not by much:

22 vs AK 2 on the flop
KJ vs 44 J on the flop
KJ vs TT K on the flop
34 (!) vs AT T56 on the flop and 7 on the turn
Q9 vs TT Q on the flop

And they're just the hands we saw. I found him a very passive player, limping on the button etc even with the huge stack, and apparently this was how he was running throughout the tourney. Dev is right, he's the guy who won the lotto.

Ste05

But you need to look at when the money went into the middle...

22 vs AK 2 on the flop - a 50:50 (I presume it went in PF - don't remember this one)
KJ vs 44 J on the flop - a 50:50
KJ vs TT K on the flop - money went in after the flop (I think - but not sure ) but either way it's a 50:50
34 (!) vs AT T56 on the flop and 7 on the turn - money in with OESD
Q9 vs TT Q on the flop - money in on flop

So if you look at it the money went in when he was ahead or an even money shot nearly always, and none of these hands (Bar the AC hand) would have damaged his tournament chances... I thought he played excellently,

cooker3

Overall I pretty much watched it all and thought it good entertainment, compare it to Irish open final table and it was far superior to watch.

Gold deserved to win it and he used his big stack well, overall play was fine although some dodgy calls most noticably an all-in been called by A9 and even Cunningham made a dodgy call with QJ against a player all in.

Also successful night for me taking down 4 man stt against others in antes up chat room, that was best part

Hectorjelly

I watched the last few hours of the final table, gold played pretty badly

Ste05

Hectorjelly wrote:

I watched the last few hours of the final table, gold played pretty badly

I watched nearly all of it, and I disagree. He didn't play anything near perfect Poker, but he was relentless, and continued hammering the table, although I was watching the last 2 hours or so in work with no sound, so he might have been getting tired, or whatever, but certainly early in the final table he played some nice stuff. One play that sticks to mind was a Squeeze play against Richard Lee and Cunningham from his BB, I'm looking forward to seeing what he had when he was making some of his moves...

Hectorjelly

205. Jamie Gold calls from under the gun, Allen Cunningham limps in from the small blind and Michael Binger raises to $1,200,000 from the big blind. Jamie Gold calls and Cunningham folds. The flop comes Qdiamond6spade5heart and both players check. The turn is the 10diamond and Binger bets $1,500,000. Gold calls and the river is the 9spade. Binger checks and Gold bets $4,000,000. Binger folds and Gold shows 6heart4spade as he rakes the pot.

208. Michael Binger raises to $1,100,000 from the cutoff, Jamie Gold calls from the button and Allen Cunningham moves all in for $6,500,000 from the big blind. Binger folds an Gold makes the call. Cunningham shows 10club10diamond and Gold turns over KdiamondJdiamond. The board comes AspadeKspade8heart7club3spade and Allen Cunningham has been eliminated in 4th place.

200. Jamie Gold calls from the button (this is 4 handed)

229. Gold limps from the button and Wasicka limps from the small blind. Michael Binger raises to $1,500,000 from the big blind. Both Gold and Wasicka call and the flop comes 10club6spade5spade. Wasicka checks, Binger bets $3,500,000 and Gold moves all in. Wasicka folds and Binger calls. Binger shows Aheart10heart and Gold turns over 4spade3club for an open ended straight draw. The turn is the 7club and Gold makes a straight. The river is the Qspade and Michael Binger is eliminated in 3rd place.

232. Wasicka gets a walk on his big blind. (heads up)

each one of these hands was played awfully. Maybe he was playing well before I got there (I doubt it). He cold called something like 1/10 of bingers stack with 34o!

NickyOD

****ing Luckbox!!!!!

staringelf

a deserved winner. played his big stack perfectly at the FT. sure he was involved in a couple of all in coin flips (the one against cunningham being the most memorable) but for the most part he was playing perfect small-ball poker and gradually adding further to his moster stack. i think johnny chan helped him a lot - i'd say he calmed him down big time after cunningham called with A high. he's not a total luckbox - you do not luckbox your way to 12 million in a field of nearly 9,000 players. you luckbox and play brilliant poker - big difference.

Hitman Actual

staringelf wrote:

you... play brilliant poker.

People are going to have to stop associating the words "brilliant poker" with Jamie Gold. It would be interesting to see how he got his monster stack in the first place, but there is nothing in that FT that indicates brilliance.

Hectorjelly

staringelf wrote:

a deserved winner. played his big stack perfectly at the FT. sure he was involved in a couple of all in coin flips (the one against cunningham being the most memorable) but for the most part he was playing perfect small-ball poker and gradually adding further to his moster stack. i think johnny chan helped him a lot - i'd say he calmed him down big time after cunningham called with A high. he's not a total luckbox - you do not luckbox your way to 12 million in a field of nearly 9,000 players. you luckbox and play brilliant poker - big difference.

have you ever played poker before?

Doc Farrell

What's with all the anger HJ? How does it benefit your life to communicate to strangers in this way. A revolution of thought fired by the only thing that matters, compassion. Give it a go.

I'm off to play chess, drink erdingers and smoke cubans paid for by taxi drivers. If you will excuse me.

Hectorjelly

Doc Farrell wrote:

What's with all the anger HJ? How does it benefit your life to communicate to strangers in this way. A revolution of thought fired by the only thing that matters, compassion. Give it a go.

I'm off to play chess, drink erdingers and smoke cubans paid for by taxi drivers. If you will excuse me.

Just an honest question, I posted several hands where gold played badly, yet he claims he played his big stack perfectly. This to me suggests that staringelf might not have ever played poker before.

If you honestly think compassion is the only thing that matters then perhaps you should give those cubans back to the taxi drivers.

staringelf

Hectorjelly wrote:

Just an honest question, I posted several hands where gold played badly, yet he claims he played his big stack perfectly. This to me suggests that staringelf might not have ever played poker before.

If you honestly think compassion is the only thing that matters then perhaps you should give those cubans back to the taxi drivers.

first of all that's a cheap insult but no more than i expected from one of the few posters on this forum who i have little respect for.
to answer your question, even though i shouldn't dignify it with a response, yes i do, and have been playing professionally and very successfully for almost 2 years now.

i watched the entire final table (bar the first hour or so) and it was all the in-between preflop and cont bet unexciting post flop hands that impressed me most about gold - that's how he kept adding to his stack and that's how he dominated the table. he knew everybody was afraid of going bust against him and he exploited that fear perfectly. i don't agree with any of the hands you posted that they were played badly - most were simply bullying moves that he would be expected to make as chip leader, and few (if any) were made with no outs or where he was more than a 60% dog.

i think he easily deserved to win and i don't know what your hostility towards him is rooted in but in any case i think its pretty sad.

Sangre

Hectorjelly wrote:

Just an honest question, I posted several hands where gold played badly, yet he claims he played his big stack perfectly. This to me suggests that staringelf might not have ever played poker before.

If you honestly think compassion is the only thing that matters then perhaps you should give those cubans back to the taxi drivers.

It wasn't an honest question. It was a snarky snipe at staringelf for disagreeing with you. Something thats becoming all too typical of you.

Hectorjelly

staringelf wrote:

i watched the entire final table (bar the first hour or so) and it was all the in-between preflop and cont bet unexciting post flop hands that impressed me most about gold - that's how he kept adding to his stack and that's how he dominated the table. he knew everybody was afraid of going bust against him and he exploited that fear perfectly. i don't agree with any of the hands you posted that they were played badly - most were simply bullying moves that he would be expected to make as chip leader, and few (if any) were made with no outs or where he was more than a 60% dog.

i think he easily deserved to win and i don't know what your hostility towards him is rooted in but in any case i think its pretty sad.

I only watched the last two or three hours of the event. During that time I saw Gold make countless beginners plays. Can you really defend calling a raise with 34o? Its not like they were deep or anything. He made other similar plays like that, I find it hard to believe that anyone would defend plays like that, I was there with several good players and they were similarly dissapointed with Gold play. No good player in the world is ever cold calling 1/10 of someones stack with 34o. Ever. It just doesnt happen.

Again I only saw the last few hours, I dont know how he was playing for the rest of the tournament, and I dont have anything against him. He is just a inexperienced player who showed his inexperience on several occasions. In fact given that he should be applauded for doing so well. But its easy to get carried away, anyone can win a single tournament. The world needs a new Hal Fowler!

staringelf

Hectorjelly wrote:

I only watched the last two or three hours of the event. During that time I saw Gold make countless beginners plays. Can you really defend calling a raise with 34o? Its not like they were deep or anything. He made other similar plays like that, I find it hard to believe that anyone would defend plays like that, I was there with several good players and they were similarly dissapointed with Gold play. No good player in the world is ever cold calling 1/10 of someones stack with 34o. Ever. It just doesnt happen.

Again I only saw the last few hours, I dont know how he was playing for the rest of the tournament, and I dont have anything against him. He is just a inexperienced player who showed his inexperience on several occasions. In fact given that he should be applauded for doing so well. But its easy to get carried away, anyone can win a single tournament. The world needs a new Hal Fowler!

the 34o hand is the only hand that is marginal for me. even so, there is method in his madness. first of all it is ONLY 1/10th of his stack - for a chance to bust him if it comes low cards i don't mind the call so much. binger can easily get away post flop if he has only invested 1/10th of his chips - and when the chip leader cold calls you oop like that and you hold AT its gonna scare the crap outta you. if no A or T hits then what do you do? a little loose perhaps but a liberty you can take to try and get it heads up when you have that many chips. the push post flop isn't so bad either for a few reasons:

1. wasicka will be very reluctant to call so there's all his dead money in there (wasicka even folded an OESFD - that's how powerful gold's play looked.

2. he still is a comfortable chip leader if binger calls and wins and can then revert back to smallball chip building with both players then relatively comfortable and unwilling to risk going out in 3rd with about a 2million difference in prize money.

3. if he calls and wins he is a HUUUGE chip leader and will probably win the whole thing unless he self destructs

4. he has 8 outs with 2 cards to come which is about 32% - that's not as bad as it first seems when you consider he will likely win at least 3 times in 10

5. there was a small chance binger would fold - probably not much granted but i'd say about a 10% chance.

all things considered the play isn't all that bad.
and that apparently was the worst of his so called "bad plays"?