Ronnie Bardah's Record Streak Of World Series Of Poker Main Event Cashes Comes To An EndBardah Gone On Day 2c, Ending Five Consecutive Cashes Record |
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By making it so that 1,000 people make the money in this year’s main event, the WSOP was in a way doing poker pro Ronnie Bardah a huge favor. Bardah had cashed in the $10,000 buy-in tournament five years in a row, and he was still alive early on day 2c on Thursday.
“In the mix for six,” as he put it.
Though the confident poker pro said he would trade all these cashes for just one final table and considers Mark Newhouse’s feat of back-to-back final tables more impressive, he still finds his streak pretty special. That’s why he’s not the biggest fan of paying out 1,000 people.
“I really wanted them to keep the payout structure the same,” Bardah said during the break in play shortly before his elimination. “I’ve done well with it before. I like that they are paying the final nine at least $1 million. But, in a sense, the only reason the change makes me slightly happy is that if anyone in the future pulls off five or six cashes in a row they are going to have an asterisk next to their name, because of the new payout structure. So, I have five with the old payout structure, the 10 percent [of the field] like it had always been. Now they want to pay out more, which I’m not against because it does spread the money out a little more. I think it’s good for poker. Obviously cashing in a tournament that pays 15-18 percent [of the field] is still pretty damn good, but it’s going to be easier.”
There is a player still left in the field, Frenchman Giuseppe Zarbo, who has four cashes in a row and is looking for his fifth. Zarbo has a decent chance of tying Bardah because he had a healthy stack during the first break of day 2c. Bardah was grinding a stack of under 20 big blinds during the first two levels of play on Thursday and just couldn’t get anything going.
Here’s how his tournament came to an end:
Open 1400 from 9700 from cut with AA,Old man calls from Big with 17k,Flop K-10-7ss,he c/c 2k ,turn 6h, he checks I shove 6k,he calls Q-7 off
— Ronnie Bardah (@RonnieBardah) July 9, 2015
7 river and we are out for 22k pot .So this is how it feels ? Guy literally didn't play a hand worse then Ak high and they spazz vs me :)
— Ronnie Bardah (@RonnieBardah) July 9, 2015
“If [Giuseppe] gets past 10 percent of the field, he should be acknowledged for cashing in five in a row,” Bardah said of his European rival. “If he reaches the 600s, he should tie me and it should be noted the same. That’s how I view it. It’s a pretty cool record.”
Bardah said that in his more than 15 hours of main event poker this year he hadn’t gotten aces or kings a single time until hitting the rail with aces. He had queens once on day 1, was three-bet, and then ended up folding after a king-high flop. He was planning on check-raising a safe flop. One of his opponents had the ace-king, so his read was right.
He probably would have been out of the tournament much earlier had he not run some bluffs that he believes only worked because of his image. “I can’t hide it anymore, everyone knows I cash this thing every year,” he said. “I used that to my advantage.”
It’s Bardah’s patience that has helped keep him in the tournament over the years. He said that he saw someone at his table begin the day with a big stack and then lose about half of it, eventually electing to move all-in from under-the-gun for more than 70 big blinds with A-K. “He was just letting people freeroll him there with kings or aces,” Bardah said of the strange play.
“People get frustrated when they lose the majority of their stack, meanwhile if I had [about the average stack] I’d be loving life and doing the Running Man in my head, like partying, you know?” Bardah said. “Guys are losing half their stack and then just go off. They only worry about what they started with. They don’t pay attention to how important it is to stay in this thing because you can have a good run of cards at some point or just find a really good spot. This is the main event, and people just don’t understand what they are playing for sometimes.”
Bardah’s style isn’t something he has always had. He said when he first came into poker he was a “gunner” and played too loose-aggressively. Bardah said he would have returned to his old style if he had a lot of chips and needed to start punishing people who aren’t playing aggressively enough late in the event. Being able to change gears is the sign of a great poker player.
Going deep in the event five years in a row has given Bardah a first-hand glimpse into how the average skill level of the competition has changed over time. Obviously Bardah still sees the tournament as great value and people still “go off” in spots where they clearly shouldn’t, but scenarios where people more or less donate their chips to another player are rarer than in the past.
“There are a lot of good players left in the field, people aren’t giving it away as much, but you know, you still have people in the main event who spaz,” Bardah said. “In other WSOP tournaments, like a 1,000-player field, you don’t get many people who spaz. It’s really hard. But you know, the great players figure out a way to come out on top. It’s just not what it used to be. I had my streak from 2010-2015, when poker has gotten much harder, so I think it’s pretty cool. There are some people who say I played to cash; they’re funny, they don’t play enough to know what’s going on.”
For more coverage from the summer series, visit the 2015 WSOP landing page, complete with a full schedule, news, player interviews and event recaps.
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