Poker Superstars Invitational

It's Superbowl Sunday, and since I cancelled my Comcast promo I'm stuck with three channels again, none of which are Fox. Fortunately, instead of annoying pregame conjecture on Fox, I was able to tune into NBC and was pleased to recall that they were showing the final round of the Poker Superstars Invite, previously covered on Fox Sports Net (seems like a conflict of interest to me, but whatever). The preceding rounds determined the chip positions for the 8 players going into the final round shown today. Howard Lederer came in at the top, trailed by Gus Hansen and the rest of the field, and on the short stack the aging Doyle Brunson.

Well let me tell you something, I am a Gus Hansen fan. Most young poker players are, he represents the changing tide in who plays and how the game is played. However, I was so stunned to watch him apply beat after beat to these guys that I felf my respect for the man waning. Granted, he came out with the money, $1,000,000 for first, and he did play some good poker, but damn! He was able to turn so many 60-40 and 70-30 dogs into winners it was scary.

Then I started thinking about the way Gus was playing and some previous thoughts I've had about my own game. After witnessing "bad" players spike huge wins on any given night, I came to a simple conclusion. Their bad play is the only thing that allowed them to win that much money. If a good player had held the cards they did, that player would not have won half as much most of the time. This is due to the fact that good players would not be drawing incorrectly, chasing bad odds, etc. The "bad" player gives themselves a chance to get lucky by calling three bets cold with 74 os before the flop and flopping trips. Good players are only left to lament tossing the 7 that would have given them trips, but realizing that in the long run that move will get them broke.

Indeed, in that elusive "long run" the bad players do go broke, but in that time period certain stretches of poor play allow them to get very lucky and roll up a huge score. Of course I am not insinuating that Gus is a bad player, he is one of the top game theory experts and poker mathemeticians of our time. Furthermore, had he been playing in a similar reckless manner in an ongoing high-stakes cash game, he almost certainly would have had different results. What Hansen did was find spots to gamble and allow himself to get lucky within the single table tournament setting and make a big score. Kudos, Gus, for winning the million, and for being such a lucky son of a bitch.

P.S. - The players whom Gus had to best were the following:

Doyle Brunson
Johnny Chan
T.J. Cloutier
Phil Ivey
Howard Lederer
Barry Greenstein
Chip Reese

What a bunch of no-names! No wonder some 30 year old punk from Denmark was able to take down the field.