Thoughts on Tonight's WPT Event

First off, I got the privilege of seeing myself on TV a few times on last night's broadcast so wahoo!!

I was a little stunned on the editing of the show. First off, that Jonas Normmas played very weak throughout most of the broadcast and the only time they showed his lack of skills was when he did a string bet, in which he did multiple times throughout the broadcast (hint to why Jason was throwing a fit the only time they showed him doing this). Jonas, besides Tom, was probably the tightest player at the table and many times when he raised, he would get re-popped and then fold (also known as my man "Phil Hellmuth-poker" as he quoted during a PokerSuperstars tourny). They said that Normmas was the $6 man, for winning multiple satellites and reaching this event and saying this was his 2nd live tourny. The build him up as a Cinderella but he was more like Humpty-Dumpty ready to fall off the wall.

They called Tom "TheDonkey" because last year's champion Arnold Spee dawned the nickname to him. However, I thought Tom's play was fairly well and that the name should have been given to one Michael Simon. Did you see this guy's $600K with KQo raise with the blinds being 40K and 80K and Greg "FBT" Mueller picked him off with A8 and got rewarded with a first-class ticket to the rail?! There was a hand I recall that happened earlier that wasn't broadcasted on TV between Simon and Mueller when the blinds where very small (30K and 60K I believe) where Simon raises allin UTG PF for a little over a million total. Only Stern has him covered and he folds and so does everyone else. Mueller is in the BB w/AK and has about 700TC and calls and surprisingly Mueller doubles up b/c Simon was known for winning when only having 3 outs. This put Simon on the short-stack but then he'd win literally every all-in he'd play from there.

How about Jason Stern?! When I first saw him before the tourny and his chip stack, I didn't think he could pull this out. And how about all the times he kept on getting pocket Kings?! Wowzers! When I saw him play so aggressive after all these raises in person, I thought that this guy had some big cajones. I couldn't believe when seeing the broadcast on The Travel Channel that he had Kings all these times. Well, this still made me think he was playing extremely well. When it got to headsup between him and Simon, Jason definitely had this won. Jason won so many little pots with 5-high, 8-high, and so on. Despite his 2-7o debacle, Jason gets Simon in a dream position where Stern has about a 4-1 chip lead and gets the AKs of hearts vs. Simon's K6o. Flop came 4-5-7 all spades and now I get to see Stern's priceless emotions close-up. River a useless 10 but the river was a 6 to pair "The Donkey" Simon.

Here a HUUUGGGEEE headsup hand that was NOT on TV where Jason is probably ahead of Simon by a million chips. I am shocked this one wasn't on TV but if you listen to Mike Sexton's postgame interview with Simon, he says something in the likes of "those were probably the most back-to-back beats he had witnessed on the WPT", this was the other hand he meant. Simon is on the button with J-10o and raises. Stern re-raises all-in with a Q-J and Simon calls. Again, Stern has Simon in a dream position (or should I say Simon has him in a dream position being a huge dog) and the 10 flops and there's no help for Stern and now Simon is the 4.5-1 favorite in chips.

Was happy to be apart of the final tapping and enjoyed seeing these guy's cards. From watching the broadcast on TV, I picked up a tell on Stern. Did you guy's notice that whenever he went for the sip of water, he was weak...? Use this tip; if you're playin against him one day (I'm sure we'll see his face again, lots of skill), it could have you thousands of chippies.

Hope you enjoyed reading/skimming through my post.