Winning theTahoe Ring: Michael Binger Speaks

By Martin Derbyshire Nov 17, 2008 | 2 months ago

Michael Binger wins WSOPC Tahoe

There's little doubt Michael Binger is one of the highest-earning, best players in high-stakes tournament poker. But until this weekend, he was without a major title.

Coming into the final table of the WSOPC Tahoe main event, he was the chip leader, and although cash-game pro Ty Stewart gave him quite a run for his money, Binger can now call himself more than just the third-place finisher at the 2006 WSOP Main Event.

He's now the 2008 WSOPC Tahoe champ, and he sat down with PL.com moments after the win to tell us all about it.

Well Michael, this is your first major title. How does it feel?

It's amazing, you know, I felt really good coming out here. I was talking to a good friend of mine, my agent, right before I came out here and I said "Next time I see you I'm going to have a World Series of Poker Circuit ring." I was just so confident. I even saw last year's champion Chris Ferguson and I told him before the tournament started that I'm going to win this year. I was just feeling really good and I had to catch some lucky breaks along the way, but I felt like I played my A game and I'm happy about that.

That's the trick, you've got to visualize. Now I'm going to visualize winning every tournament and we'll see how it goes.

Let's take you back to Day 2 for a moment. From the sidelines it looked like the pot where you rivered a straight against Preston Derden's top-top was the key hand in putting you among the leaders. Can you tell us your thoughts on that one?

Bing has a ring.

That was definitely a key pot. I called a raise on the button with ten-jack suited and another gentlemen called from the blind. I flopped an open-ender, they checked, and I felt like I was going to get the raise if I tried to bet out, so I took the free card. It was a brick, there was a small bet and a call and I was priced in to try and hit my straight.

I was also secretly planning on bluffing if a diamond came, because there was a diamond draw and I didn't think anyone had it. Then actually the king of diamonds came so it made the flush and my straight and I made a value bet and got paid off.

Was there another key hand that you can pinpoint that really propelled you into the final table with the lead?

I'm not sure if it was one hand. That one, honestly, was a pretty decent-sized pot, but it wasn't that huge. I [would] still [have] had a big stack if I [had] missed my draw and folded. That definitely gave me more momentum because actually I had just been moved to a new table and that was one of the first hands.

At my old table I was stuck in a rut and couldn't win any pots. The first hand at the new table I actually won a pot against Scott Clements, and then that one. So that got things rolling and I got my confidence going good. Then we were approaching the money and I played pretty aggressively.

Ty was tough, but not enough.

That was an important one, but there wasn't really one super key hand.

When the final table started you had the lead, but it seemed like Ty Stewart was catching all the cards and going to town on everybody else. When you saw that happening, did you make a conscious decision to sit back, be patient and let him do the heavy lifting until the cards came?

He was definitely on a roll. But I had plenty of chips the whole time - except heads-up where he got me down that one time. But I felt like I had plenty of chips relative to the blinds. I had 80-90-100 big blinds, so no worries, I was just going to play my game; and if he was going to run around and bust everybody out and I was going to get heads-up and he had the chip lead, that's all right.

That's kind of what happened. I managed to win that key pot when it was three-way all-in for the third-place finisher. That gave me like $300,000 more in chips going into heads-up, making it an even match.

So you get heads-up, but then Stewart starting running away with it again. What goes through your mind when you're down to around $200k and he's got $1.7 million?

Back to the grind.

I think I play a really good short-stack game. So I wasn't worried when I got short. I knew which hands to push with and when to reraise. To be honest with you, when we started the heads-up match I wasn't catching anything; I wasn't winning many pots, and I got grinded down and grinded down. Then in the nick of time I started winning a couple of pots and I chipped up a bit and things just started going my way.

There was two or three key pots. One where I made a move on him with Q-7 and I flopped top pair. I almost bet it out and I felt like he was going to raise me all-in no matter what. The match would have been over earlier if I had bet it out. But there were a lot of key hands.

You've got to play as well as you can and count on hopefully getting some luck, and I felt like both things happened. I was happy with the way I played and I felt like I caught a little luck.

Well congratulations Michael. What's next for you?

I'm going to go home. Enjoy a week at home and then back on the road again. I'm going to play at Bellagio [WPT Five Diamond], although I think I like these circuit events ... when is the next one?

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The next WSOPC event is set for Atlantic City in mid December, and although there's no guarantee Michael Binger will be there, PL.com sure will be. You can always catch all our live coverage from that event and more in our Live Tournaments section and as for Mr. Binger, this may be his first trip to the winner's circle in a major tournament, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who will bet it's his last.