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POCKET ACES

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Maryann Guberman has been a writer and editor with many gaming publications, including Sports Form, Card Player, Poker World, Player's Panorama and Systems and Methods. She also has written and edited numerous books on gambling.

July 12, 2008

Tales from the Tournament: Aces 11 - Opponents 4

It's the twilight of the fourth day of the competitions for this year's Worlds Series of Poker and just about everybody has a story to tell. Some of the bad beats could actually be considered fair and deserved beats, judging from the cards players think will hold up. Bad play shouldn't be identified as bad beats. Other sad beats are downright frustrating and are the epitome of bad beats. Big pairs losing to bigger pairs, trips by higher trips, full houses by better full houses just prove that anything that can happen will happen, and it's usually going to hurt!

Well, everybody knows the value of the ace in tournament poker and now, through the magic of the word processor, everybody is going to know the power of two aces in tournament play. How else to use this series review than with the column's name, Pocket Aces than with a look at how those two lovely cards, the American Airlines, Pocket Rockets, Double A, treated some of the players on Day Four of the WSP.

How about starting with the aces of Stephen Kenna? Up against a suited queen-eight, he might have been nervous with a ten-nine-four flop and then a queen on the turn. Any eight or any queen would have damaged him heavily but the last card was a seven and the suited hand was history. Score one for the aces.

So how great do you feel when you have that lovely pair under your chips and your opponent holds big slick in spades? A rainbow flop of low cards gave Aussie Tony Clark some breathing room. Enough for a big exhale when the case ace showed on the river and dashed his opponent's confidence in ace-king. Clark surged ahead but his opponent was O U T. Score two for the aces.

While Clark must have been ecstatic about how his pocket rockets worked out, the same could not be said for Comuelo Navamo. A dude named Mike Blocksidge tried to bluff but Navamo called in the big blind. The four on the flop didn't scare him but when the queen came on the turn, the two pair looked strong. It was. Score one for the (expletives).

Markus Feurle upped the score on the side of aces when his pair outlasted just eliminated Bob Bright's duet of nines. Score three for the aces.

Chris Crilly had to feel good seeing the 8-9 suited against his pocket aces, but perhaps a tad nervous when two of his opponent's suit flopped. The turn and river were the wrong color though and Crilly doubled up. Score four for the aces.

When Karle Wilson's big blind aces gave him a full house, it was a sad beat for David Naimark whose full house with nines just wasn't good enough. Score five for the aces.

Down to his last $1,000 chip, Jose Baeza was sweating his top pair in three-way action. But that's all he needed because the pair of nines and a king-four suited did little more than walk away from the table. Score six for the aces.

Ditto for the lovely pair again when Brad Johnson used his two lovely alphabet starters to shoot down Gary Do and his two kings. Score seven for the aces.

And again for Noah Kawashige who took down an ace-eight suited, though a single spade could have eliminated him. Instead, he raked in the pot. Score eight for the aces.

Gus Hansen was in the aces action as well, messing with Denys Drobyna who thought his queens and sevens on the turn (with an ace kicker) could win a pot. Nope, Hansen sent Drobyna walking. Score nine for the aces.

Let's see now there were the aces against king-queen, against queens, so it looks like this is a runaway. But Thayer Rasmussen took his lovely pair up against Sylvain Coeur's tens. No help to either on the river with a jack-8-3, but things got shaky when the turn brought a 7 and the tens sucked right into a straight! Score two against.

And goodness gracious jacks proved to be a little stronger when Marco Marcon moved all in with them against Peter Biebel's rockets. It was nail-biting time right down to the river when Marcon cracked those aces with another jack. Score three for the opponents.

Flushes never happen, do they? Don't tell Jose Barbero. His ace-five suited blasted Dragoslav Timarac's shortstack when the latter had our most coveted pair. Score four for the underdogs. 9 to 4

Just when you think the favorite is going down, up jumps Joe Bishop who held two aces whiloe his opponent held just one. Bishop added to the score for aces, bringing their total to ten.

Another Do, this time Chau (not Gary of earlier) took his ace-ten into battle against Kido Pham's pair of aces. He improved to a pair of tens on the flop but nothing happened after that except no do(ugh). Aces score goes up to eleven

Let me stop here and explain. I didn't jump from table to table counting up the score for aces against every other hand. Luckily, the reporting at www.worldseriesofpoker.com did the work for me. All I had to do was start scrolling from the beginning and read all the reports. (Thanks guys and gals.)

Trouble is, there are still a lot of reports to go through and I'm within minutes of deadline so I'm going to declare the match a rousing victory for pocket aces. They don't usually hold up for me (No, it's not selective memory, wise guy.) but they sure did provide a nice feeling for at least eleven players (and a sour taste for eleven as well). And with a final score (for now) of 11-4, it looks like our hand is still the favorite.

Pocket Aces rule!