WPT Foxwoods

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Seeing The Forest Through The Trees: WPT Foxwoods Day 3

A thick New England fog rolled into Mashantucket, CT last night, but it did not prevent the 91 players left in the WPT Foxwoods World Poker Finals from seeing the truth.

The truth was that when they started Day 3 just after 12 p.m. EST Saturday, the money bubble was well within reach and chip leader Jonathan Jaffe was not.

Jaffe, who took fourth at the 2008 WSOP Heads-Up World Championship, started the day with better than $500k and his nearest competitor more than $150k behind.

Then by the time the day's third level rolled around, things cleared up even more as they reached the 50 player cash bubble and Jaffe was the first past $1 million in chips, increasing his lead to close to $250,000.

While big time pros like Erik Seidel, Toto Leonidas, Ryan Young, Victor Ramdin and inevitably Allen Kessler hit the rail before the bubble burst, Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu was among those who made the money but will go no further.

Cash money brother.

What makes that significant is that it's Kid Poker's 17th WPT cash, tying him with Seidel, Barry Greenstein and Lee Markholt for the most all-time.

Unfortunately the $21k and change won't do much to his already-more-than $5 million WPT tournament earnings, which is already a record.

Especially considering the kid left unhappy when the Foxwoods staff insisted on keeping 30 per cent withholding tax because he's still, kind of, Canadian.

As the day wore on Arthur Azen looked to be Jaffe's toughest competition and even got it up close to $1 million before running into the day's hottest player in its final stanza.

Mike Matusow started the day at Foxwoods with a little over $75k and very little chance. But before it was through, he'd taught us all that playing good is good, but running good is even better.

He caught big pair after big pair to collect chips all day long even convincing those around the table the "the new Mike Matusow" only plays the premiums.

Mouth wide open.

Then in the last level of the day, Mike flatted an Azen pre-flop raise with pocket tens. The Mouth flopped top set, bet out and when Azen shoved, he made the easy call. Azen had aces, but they got cracked when the turn and river bricked and a $990k pot was shipped to Matusow putting him right next to Jaffe on the top of the leader board.

When the day was finally done just before 9 p.m. EST, Matusow and Jaffe were in a dead heat for the lead on $1.1 million a piece.

Kevin "BeLOWaBOVe" Saul came in to the day in decent shape, but bluffed and blundered his way down to just $14,000 in chips before going on a sick run to make a miraculous comeback.

Saul got it in behind no less than three times sucking out huge until he'd gotten it back over $200,000. Then he doubled again getting himself all in and in dominating position against back-to-back EPT final tablist Christian Harder.

BeLOWaBOVe UpANDdowN.

When the comeback was complete, Saul had over $500k, but he did not stop gambling, losing pot after pot and paying off Will Failla's quads in the final level to end with $93,000.

With just two of the final 32 Day 3 survivors below him, we'd say Saul's out of contention for the World Poker Finals crown. But having defied the laws of probability once already, nobody is counting him out.

Team Full Tilt's Phil Ivey led this tournament after the two day ones and was lurking dangerously near the top of the leader board when Day 3 kicked off.

His stock rose quickly throughout the day, peaking at over $600k when he knocked out fellow Full Tilt Pro Chris Ferguson and 2008 WSOP Ladies champ Svetlana Gromenkova in successive hands. But late in the day, Phil got himself in a $760,000 pot with a player by the name of Carl Restifo and although he was just a coin flip away from the chip lead with queens against Restifo's big slick, it was not to be.

Restifo rivered an ace to knock Ivey back down to $350,000 and jumped into a spot amongst the leaders himself.

Slightly less scary.

Ivey ended on $225,500 in chips and will need more than just intimidation to go much deeper here while Restifo's $720,000 end-of-day chip count puts him in the group just behind Matusow and Jaffe including relative unknowns Tom Nguyen ($870k), Ron Kirsh ($681,000) and Charlie Marchese ($626K).

Larry Greenberg grabbed the lead from Jaffe for a short period in the first level of the day, but failed to capitalize, ending the day in the group in the bottom half of the top ten joined by the ever present Jonathan Little, who sucked out a flush on the final hand of the day to get his stack up in the $470,000 range.

Jon Friedberg made quad kings to crack Dimitri Haskaris' aces in the late stages to get within spitting distance of the top ten and Alex Bolotin, Gavin Smith and a host of lesser knows are there as well.

With 32 left, Foxwoods plans to play down to nine players or a full five levels on Day 4 tomorrow, whichever comes first.

It'll all get going sometime around 12 p.m. EST Sunday from the Foxwoods Sunset Ballroom and PL.com plans to cover it all.

A $1.1 million first place prize and WPT glory hangs in the balance so not even the softest 1-3 Stud games this side of the Mississippi could keep us from it.