Phil the Groundhog? WSOP 2006 in Review, part 1

The final table for the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event is set, and I think it's fair to say everyone in the free world is rooting for Allen Cunningham to win. I don't have anything against Jamie Gold, the chip leader, although I understand why some people do, and I'm sort of pulling for Doug Kim too, since he's from Yonkers. Paul Wasicka is supposed to be a very good player, who made a strong run at the 25K WPT championship at the Bellagio, so bully for him as well. I'm unfamiliar with the rest of the players.

Allen would make a great champion, and his understated, nearly shy presence would supply the perfect antidote for the presently overhyped poker mainstream. He's always pleasant to play with and has a slight, dry wit that usually goes unnoticed. For some reason, he's always reminded me of Peter Fonda, circa Easy Rider.












My own demise in the Main Event came at the hands (er, hand) of a player named Eric Molina, who embodies the exact opposite of everything that makes Allen enjoyable to play with. Based on the way he behaved at the table, it was clear that 21 year-old Molina came to the WSOP with the intention of making as much noise as he could and using an ultra-obnoxious table image to get under his opponents' skin. It was like he arrived fresh from Central Casting for "Super-bratty poker kid."

Problematically for me, this type of behavior actually succeeds in pissing me off and throwing me off my game. Most players don't find these tactics necessary (I have to, like, work with these people, so I try to be polite at a minimum), but Phil Hellmuth has turned this schtick into a science, and actually made himself likeable in spite of it. Hellmuth, too, managed to get in my head when I played with him for the first time, with three tables left in the $1,000 rebuy event, and his table presence definitely played a role in my busting out of that tournament in 17th place.

Molina's act was for less polished than Hellmuth's, and far more grating and ugly. It was sometime in the first half of day two, during the 300/600 level, when I got moved to my third table of the day, starring Eric Molina in the three seat. I was pretty short on chips, around 10,000 and didn't get involved in any significant hands at the outset, so I sat back and watched as Eric ran his chips and his mouth, He had a decent stack and was clearly playing a lot of hands, narrating each one with some kind of provocation, or saying things like "I'm just gonna limp this time, let's see what happens." At first, it just seemed minorly annoying, a variation on the type of player I commonly encounter, who has nothing to say but never shuts up.

Then, this hand comes up (action reproduced as accurately as I can remember it): The player in the one seat raises on the button and Eric re-raises out of the blind, super-confidently and talkatively. Before the action can even get back to the button (there was at least one limper), Eric starts talking shit: "Come on, you wanna push, I want you to push, you gotta push" or something. The button verifies with the dealer that there has been a re-raise and, without any hesitation, says "Ok, I am allin" and shoves in like 15-18K more chips. Oops. Eric gets a little quieter. He starts shifting around in his seat, and it becomes clear that he did not, in fact, want the button to push allin.

So it's on him to act, and he takes out the Commemorative (Beer Company I refuse to plug) Allin Button that were provided to players on day-one as both a) a souvenir and b) a way of ensuring confusion at one crucial point or another during the tournament. Eric says "I'm gonna take this coin and flip it and if it lands on the 'allin' side, I'm allin." Um, lol bro? Then, he takes out the button and tosses it up in the middle of the table, on the felt in front of him. LOL bro! Of course, this action is already a binding allin, and the dealer and others at the table inform him of this. The button asks if the floor should be consulted, but the dealer says it's not even close, the kid is allin. With A2, against QQ. Queens hold up, and the kid loses a significant amount of chips.

That debacle didn't slow him down though, and the kid kept talking. He boasted that he hadn't received the notorious penalty for saying "Fuck" (the term "F-bomb" makes me cringe, by the way) despite having dropped it numerous times, and a few hands later he recouped some of his stack when he flopped the nut flush against a jack-high flush. As he tabled his hand, he snottishly declared "I have the second nuts," because there was a potential 2-card straight-flush out there, and despite it being quite clear that his opponent--who labored over the decision to call allin--could not beat the "second nuts."










My 2006 WSOP ME nemesis, Eric Molina.
Isn't he adorable?

Then, this hand comes up: My stack had beefed up a little to 12 or 13K and I raise A6s in MP to 1700 and it gets to him in the BB. The dealer pulls in the 600, leaving the 1100 raise in front of me, for him to call. He asks what the raise is, the dealer says "1100" and then Eric says "I call your allin." Those exact words. Huh? What's the kid trying to do? I had a feeling he was trying to say "I put you allin" (which is also not a proper or binding bet as far as I know) but, in his efforts to be cute, had fucked himself over again. After establishing that his intention was to go allin, or to put me allin, I insisted on a floor ruling, quite sure that the floor would rule that his action was "a call" since the first two words out his mouth were "I call."

The floorman (the very gray-haired-one--the shortish one with a well-trimmed mustache) comes over, listens to whatever (increasingly irate) blather comes out my mouth, hears an account from the dealer that was accurate and to my satisfaction ("action gets to him, he says 'I call your allin.'" etc.), ponders the situation for three entire seconds and then declares the ruling: "I'm gonna have to say that's an allin."

I guess it's at that point I lost my shit, visibly and vocally. The ESPN cameras might have caught a piece of it, too. I mucked my hand, and, in my ire, I accidentally threw one of the pink-colored 500 chips off Molina's end of the table while tossing him my part of the pot.

I was furious, and I still think it's a terrible ruling. "That makes it like a string bet," I told the floorman. "No," was his reply, "a string bet has to involve chips." So, I suppose it is okay to say something like, "I call...and bet your Mercedes." Wild West, baby.

I get over it, and a few hands later stack some guy with AA vs KK which puts me up to 17K in chips or so. During that hand, when the action got to Molina, I say to him "'I call your allin....' That's what I'll be saying when u push allin right now." I say it in a clearly light manner, and most of the table laughs, but Molina insists on keeping the puerile tone: "You're still crying about that hand? You're just upset that you don't have as many chips as me. I can't wait to bust you..." etc., ad nauseam. I try to explain that I'm not upset, that I was just trying to make a joke, but he stuck to his guns.

And then he busts me. The blinds jump to 400/800 with 100 antes, and half the room goes on break while the rest of us start to stack up our green chips in preparation to "race." Molina, babbling something, makes it 4K to go, as he seemed likely to do with a lot of hands, and I push allin with A6o from the big blind.

I said to him "here's your chance to bust me" as I pushed the additional 13K that he was going to have to call. He said something to the effect of "I'd sure love to bust you" and didn't waste too much time calling me with a pair of sevens. I flopped an ace, he turned a flush and that was that.

Anyway, Molina rode his cocky attitude and loose swagger to an impressive 32nd place finish and $329K payday in what was apparently his first tournament. I assume he'll be around a bit (there was at least one other documented confrontation between Molina and Jamie Gold, in which Molina finally did receive an F-word penalty), and ultimately I hope he comes to realize that it's not absolutely necessary to be an asshole in order to do well in poker. But then again I guess it does help.

***

In part 2, everything that happened--or didn't happen--up to the main event, including commentary on Phil Hellmuth, Phil Gordon and accounts of menacing and inhospitable behavior from Harrah's employees.