2004 Borgata Poker Open - Part III

by Daniel Negreanu | Published: Feb 11, 2005

Let me begin this column by saying, "Oops!" I recently ran into David Williams in the Bahamas at a World Poker Tour event when he said, "Hey, whatever happened to the 'Borgata Poker Open – Part III'?"

"Huh?"

"I was looking forward to reading about the final table at the Borgata," he said, "and picked up Card Player and saw your column 'Asian Poker Players.' What happened?"

Well, David, I don't have a good excuse, but in my defense, that's the first time I've ever done that. After the event, I was really swamped with several projects and must have forgotten that I didn't finish the story.

So, my columns dedicated to Bellagio's Five-Diamond World Poker Classic championship event, scheduled to begin in this issue, will follow this column on the conclusion of the Borgata event.

I was extremely excited about this final table. Up until this point on the World Poker Tour, I'd had second-, third-, and seventh-place finishes. I wasn't too disappointed about those stats, but I really wanted to get a win under my belt.

That's not all that excited me about the event: It had about as tough a final-table lineup as you'll ever see. I sometimes have issues with staying motivated, but up against top competition for millions of dollars, let's just say that I didn't need a pep talk to get psyched up about this one! The table lineup looked like this:

David Williams – $2,039,000

Joshua Arieh – $1,390,000

Daniel Negreanu – $950,000

Chris Tsiprailidis – $784,000

Phil Ivey – $466,000

Brandon Moran – $449,000

My chip position was decent, but I could easily finish anywhere from sixth to first.

David was doing his job, chopping away with small raises and continuing to apply pressure while slowly and carefully building his stack. I stayed out of his way for the most part, hoping I'd get a chance to take him on heads up.

Well, while staying out of David's way, I went on quite the rush myself. Once I eliminated Josh in third place, I actually had a 2-1 chip lead over David. I had about $4 million in chips to his $2 million.

I wasn't counting the money just yet, but I thought I could slowly grind David down with little risk; so much for that plan! David kept throwing jab after jab, and before I knew it, he had me all but dead; he had almost $5 million and I had a little more than $1 million.

My plan was to wait him out, hoping that he would make a big mistake in a key pot. In the meantime, though, I didn't find any good situations to set a trap, and I was being grinded down.

David was really playing great poker. He went out of his way to stay unpredictable, and I was having a tough time gaining any momentum at all. The blinds were $30,000-$60,000 when David raised from the button to $170,000.

I looked down to see K-K and was hoping that this might be the hand that would get me back into the match. I decided to reraise $250,000, making it a total of $420,000. David called the bet and there was now almost a million dollars in the pot.

The flop came J-5-2 with two diamonds, and it was up to me. At that point, I counted my chips, roughly $1.1 million. Moving all in would have been a fine play, and, frankly, a check wouldn't have been so bad, either. After thinking about it for a few seconds, though, I found what I thought was a better play.

I bet out just $400,000, giving David the illusion that he might be able to move me off the hand with a raise. He instantly said, "I'm all in." All I could think of at that point was that I hoped he had a hand like 9-9 or A-J. My biggest worry was a flush draw. When it was time to turn our cards over, David didn't look too happy about it, as he had the Q 7. He was drawing dead to two perfect cards.

By the turn, he was drawing dead, and the momentum did a full 180. I hit a few more hands and we later got it all in on a flop of K-J-8. I had A-A and David had K-6. Before the hand started, the chip counts were so close that we didn't know if it was over when I won the hand. I thought David had me covered, but I had $100,000 more than he had, so that was it. I'd finally won my first WPT event and more than one million dollars!

Now, I'd like to go back to the key hand against David when I had K-K. Before you scoff at his "poor play" on the hand, it's important that you know that David's strategy up until that hand was working perfectly. My plan to "outplay" him in the small pots seemed to backfire, as he won virtually all of them.

If he had stuck to his plan – "jab, jab, jab" – it would have been very difficult for me to recover. I was genuinely surprised and taken aback at the fact that this "kid" was pushing me around.

I felt like Dewey Tomko against a young Carlos Mortensen at the World Series of Poker in 2001. Carlos was the young, aggressive upstart and Dewey the seasoned veteran. Unlike Dewey, though, my aces in the final hand held up and my plan to wait David out worked out in the end.

Clearly, David made some mistakes on this hand, but his decision to stay unpredictable is what got him there in the first place. The kid is 24 years old and he won more than $4 million in tournament poker in 2004. I repeat, 24 years old – $4 million!

The scariest aspect of that fact is that he will get better – much better. He seems to be very levelheaded about his early successes and is always looking for ways to improve his game.

As for me, I don't think I would have won this event when I was younger. When David was pounding me like an anvil, it would have been easy for me to give up and take a shot at playing a marginal hand in a big pot.

I turned 30 years old in 2004, and I think I'm finally understanding what the old-timers meant when they used to tell me I was a little raw. "You have lots of potential, kid, but you're a little raw. A little more experience in pressure situations and you'll get the hang of it, kid."

Well, I wouldn't exactly call David raw, but I do know that his thirst for knowledge and his humble nature will help him reach lofty heights in the poker world. So, there you are, David, I finally got around to writing the final chapter of the Borgata story. Happy now?