WSOP Final table (loads of spoilers!)

Hectorjelly

So Jamie gold is the new world champion of poker. I was down in the rio for the last two hours or so of the final table, and I thought he played pretty badly. He was constantly calling raises and playing passively. Several times he limped utg 4 handed with hands like 46o or J9. He won a huge pot after calling a raise with 23o (possibly 34o) flopping a straight draw and getting all in against top pair. Had he lost that hand the other guy would of had 30 million chips to his 40 odd, so it wasnt like he could really afford to lose it. He knocked out Cunningham after calling his reraise all in with KJo. Not the worst play in the world but hardly awe inspiring. He won the final hand by calling a raise with Q9o and hitting top pair against TT. If he had of hit a 9 he was doubling his opponent up.

Afterwards whilst talking to Norman Chad he said he had played perfect poker for 9 days! He didnt play perfect poker for 1 hand from what I could see.

I thought the other two players of the last 4 (bar cunningham and gold) were pretty mediocre as well.

kevthecelt

I think everyone is sick and tired of hearing how 'bad' gold is, so give it a rest eh. He won the WSOP and fair play to him, do you not remember what hand hachem had on the final play last year, and how lucky he got with the flop?? Gold is quoted as saying “I’m playing against the other players, while they’re trying to play their cards.” That says it all really

Daithio

I didn't watch much of it but I was pretty disappointed that Cunningham didn't win it. I think most people were. I thought Wasicka's comment at the end was priceless, something along the lines of 'your game has improved a hundred fold since yesterday'. In other words you're **** but you played OK today to luckbox 12 million.

bill_ashmount

He seemed to love limping into pots, although so did a few of the others.
Might have been nerves with the occasion and all that?

I really thought Cunningham would go on to win it especially when he took $2 million of Gold on the river with the Ace high call, that seemed to rattle Gold, but it wasn't to be..

Hitman Actual

Any chance we could avoid the subject of whether people like Jamie Gold or not, and respond to the OP? The Cardplayer live updates are still up, so it's easy to see all the hands (not all hole cards shown obviously). And from a quick read-through, Golds play is mediocre at best. He limps from UTG/EP way more than normal, and calls a lot of raises pre-flop, either in position or oop. I think he only re-raised five times pre-flop: He had QQ twice to knock out a JJ holder, and another time he split the pot all-in with KK. People will be crediting him with a "great squeeze play" around half way through with another pf re-raise, but I reckon that was a big hand as well.

Fair enough, he sometimes was aggressive pre-flop when first in, and he did seem to float a lot on the flop/turn (but would fold almost everytime to peoples bets when he did this, so if someone picked up on that they could have taken a lot of pots off him). He took a lot of pots down with bets in position, but it's so easy to do that with a huge stack, and a table of players afraid to tangle with you (that's one thing that annoys me about the FT: no-one really seemed to have the heart to take Gold on).

People are saying he played a great FT, but the fact is he got there with a monster stack and was running hot, so he didn't have to play an outstanding game to win it. I would have loved to see Alan Cunningham get level with him to see how he'd cope with it, but there's no way of knowing from that FT if Gold is a decent player at all. That river call by Cunningham with Ace high, for example: Does anyone here really think Gold would have been good enough to do that if pressed?

Hectorjelly

kevthecelt wrote:

I think everyone is sick and tired of hearing how 'bad' gold is, so give it a rest eh. He won the WSOP and fair play to him, do you not remember what hand hachem had on the final play last year, and how lucky he got with the flop?? Gold is quoted as saying “I’m playing against the other players, while they’re trying to play their cards.” That says it all really

Im sick and tired of hearing lazy analysis, but what can you do. Hachem flopped a straight in the last hand of the WSOP and played it well, getting a beginner to commit all of his chips drawing totally dead. He called a small (almost min raise I think) and then put the rest of the chips on the flop and turn when he was a big favourite. Gold won the biggest pot of the final table (that I saw) by calling a raise with 23o and getting all in with a draw against top pair. He played that hand pretty badly, the call preflop was bad, and then when the other guy bet the flop he should of realised that he had no folding equity since he had been playing pretty aggressively, the stacks were quite shallow and it was a draw heavy board.

Gold consistantly played technically bad poker. What moronic ill informed comments he came out with afterwards are neither here nor there.

I dont have anything against Gold, he seemed like a nice enough chap at the time.