November Nine Errata
I'm sitting in a noodle shop in Taiwan (no, really) waiting for a flight to Manila so that I can connect with a puddle-jumper to Cebu. While I wait to play my next leg of Asian hopscotch, I'll download a few lingering thoughts from... whatever day that was that that the final table of the WSOP was played.
* WSOP and Harrah's made a *significant* improvement in stage design this year. Last year, people in the audience of the theater couldn't see the table at all. Instead they were forced to watch the action on two projection screens set up to the sides of the stage. This year it was done right -- the table was brought front and center on the stage so that everyone had a decent view of the action.
* If this were 2005, this final table would have LOL DONKAMENTS written all over it. If you were all in with the best hand, you were almost certainly doomed. I thought my proximity to the table might have something to do with it (I was sitting fifteen feet away and my cooler powers are legendary) until I remembered that no, poker is just a gross game sometimes.
* Did they or didn't they? After the elimination of Eric Buchman in fourth place, there was a very long break -- longer than typical for the usual bust-out interviews. When play resumed, all three players came back to the table together. Just saying...
* Phil Ivey is impervious to excitement or adrenalin. He was all-in with ace-king against ace-queen and didn't even flinch when Moon flopped a queen (of course he did!). In fact, Ivey reached over to a side table, picked up n apple he was eating, and took another bite out of it.
* The Handshaking Issue: You'll see on the broadcast that Darvin Moon eliminates three people: Phil Ivey, Steve Begleiter and Eric Buchman. What you won't see is Moon shake hands with Ivey or Begleiter. I have no idea why. If Phil Ivey was the picture of calm, Moon might have been asleep or dead. He beat Ivey (AQ v AK) and Begleiter (AQ v QQ) from behind, then sat stone still at the table when his miracle card hit and his opponent stood up to shakes hands and make his exit. Moon did, however, offer a handshake and a few words to Buchman.
* Despite eliminating three player, Moon finished the day with almost exactly the same number of chips that he had at the start of the day. That's because of two different mind-bogglingly bad raises: one with a total airball when Antoine Saout had already committed 60% of his chips to the pot, and the other with... ? (we'll find out tomorrow) when he check-raised Steve Begleiter from 5MM to 15MM and then folded to Begleiter's shove for 6MM more. As Joe Sebok said on the live Bluff audio commentary, Moon "could have had a Tarot card and a Snickers wrapper" and he still should have called.
That's all I've got for now. It was an honor to be that close to the action for the second year in a row. I hope everyone who followed along with the live coverage at PokerNews enjoyed my and FerricRamsium's efforts!

