Meet the November Nine Part II

The time is nigh. Four months have passed, and a new king will soon reign, taking over for the poker champion of the world, the great Dane, Peter Eastgate. Last month we took a look at November Niners Steven Begleiter, James Akenhead, Phil Ivey, and Darvin Moon. This issue is Kevin Schaffel, Eric Buchman, Antoine Saout, Jeff Shulman, and Joseph Cada’s time to shine. All of these men are now millionaires and are truly living every poker player and fanatic’s dream, but only one can be crowned king, and only one will go home $8,546,435 richer.

Seat 1 Darvin Moon 58,930,000
Seat 2 James Akenhead 6,800,000
Seat 3 Phil Ivey 9,765,000
Seat 4 Kevin Schaffel 12,390,000
Seat 5 Steven Begleiter 29,885,000
Seat 6 Eric Buchman 34,800,000
Seat 7 Joseph Cada 13,215,000
Seat 8 Antoine Saout 9,500,000
Seat 9 Jeff Shulman 19,580,000

Kevin Schaffel
After 30 years in the family business, Kevin Schaffel was ready to move on. The 51-year-old ran his family’s direct mailing and printing business for 30 years before closing it down last February. Recently divorced at the time, with two children now in college, Schaffel was grateful for the financial support his business gave his family, but he was ready for a new adventure, and decided that new adventure should be poker.

“For the last year and a half, I’ve been playing poker,” said Schaffel. “I had been successful over the years playing cash games, typically $10-$20 no-limit.” But his past success didn’t immediately translate over to his new career.

“I found out that [playing for a living] wasn’t so easy,” said Schaffel. “I started running really bad at the beginning of the year, and I had never experienced running bad for such a long period of time. I needed to show so much patience just to limit the losses when I was running bad.”

With poker no longer being as profitable as it once was, Schaffel was at a loss as to the direction he wanted to take his life. Still, even with all of the luck in the world seemingly against him, he decided to enter the 2009 WSOP main event. Schaffel was no stranger to big buy-in events, having played in approximately 14 $10,000 buy-in poker tournaments in his life and, impressively, cashing in about half of them.

He had run pretty well in the WSOP main event, specifically, finishing in 42nd in his first try in 2004 out of a field of 2,576, and coming in 324th last year out of 6,844 competitors — two cashes in his four attempts in the world championship.

This year, with a newfound patience, his magical ride has landed him in the final nine with a reservation for November. Now, entering the table sixth in chips, he has a chance to become the world champion. No matter what, the $1.26 million Schaffel has already secured for making the final table will go a long way in solidifying his decision to pursue poker.

“Obviously, this is life-changing right now, and I just can’t believe it,” Schaffel said. Not much of a spender, he says he’s only looking to get his own place and perhaps “upgrade” his car with his winnings.

Coming up to the event, Schaffel was also asked how he was preparing for the final table. He said, “I’m reading a little bit more. I’m playing some more sit-and-gos. Six-handed games mainly, because I have a pretty fair amount of experience playing at full tables. Short-handed tables are as close as you can get to tournament play when you get down deep into an event and the blinds are going up. There’s no way to recreate the final table experience; it’s impossible to do. I’ve been talking about it with people, and there is just no way to do it. Somebody has 58 million, and someone else has 7 million, and you can’t recreate that no matter what game you’re playing. I’m just going to keep playing the way I’ve been playing and adjust to how everybody is playing at the final table, and hopefully I’ll get some good cards and some good things will happen.”

Eric Buchman
Sitting second in chips, with just under 35 million, Eric Buchman enters the final table of the WSOP main event with confidence and experience. The cash-game pro from New York has made the money in the World Series nine times, with results that include a second-place finish in a 2006 limit hold’em event and a final table finish in the Omaha/seven-card stud eight-or-better event this year, which fellow November Niner Phil Ivey won.

While he’s confident in his abilities, the 29-year-old pro isn’t taking anything for granted. “I could see myself winning, but I don’t expect to win,” said Buchman. “How can you expect it? How can you take something like that for granted?”

Still, the Long Island native believes in his ability to consistently make the right moves, even under the spotlights of the final table. “I’m confident I’m going to go out there and make the right decisions. I can’t say for sure if I’m going to win, but I definitely have a good chance.”

A modest kid from New York, Buchman first got attracted to poker through his older brother. The two of them would go to a local Indian casino where the minimum age to play was only 18, or to underground poker rooms in New York City.

For the past 10 years, he has been gradually and consistently working his way up in stakes, starting out at $1-$5 stud and eventually playing in the $600-$1,200 mixed games. “If you have a little natural ability, are willing to work hard, and have some money to work with, you should be OK,” says Buchman. “Those are three things that you need to be successful in playing cash games for a living.”

He thinks his high-stakes cash-game experience prepares him well for November. “You’re just used to dealing with pressure more when you play high-stakes cash games,” said Buchman. “It helps when you’re deep in high-stakes tournaments.”

However, Buchman has always played the occasional tournament, even from the beginning. He spreads out his poker time with 75 percent devoted to cash games and the other 25 percent dedicated to tournaments. In the course of a year, he might spend around $50,000 in tournament entries — but that would vary year-to-year, depending how much he wanted to put into tourneys.

“I’ll go to Vegas at least once a year for the World Series of Poker, maybe twice a year, but not that much, and I never go to California,” says Buchman.

“I’ll play most of the East Coast tournaments, because they’re right here. It’s only a two or two-and-a-half-hour drive.”

But if he outlasted his eight final table opponents in November, he says he’d be willing to travel a little bit more. “I’d try to be a good ambassador. I’d definitely travel more. I wouldn’t play too much, but I’d play all of the major tournaments,” said Buchman. “They’ve got a lot of tournaments nowadays, but I’m sure I could play at least a tournament a month.”

Many people are quick to name him as one of the favourites. Second in chips, with only the amateur Darvin Moon ahead of him, Buchman is in great position to become the 2009 main event champion.

“I’m probably about 4/1 or 5/1 (to win it), something like that,” said Buchman. “I really want first, because I’m not going to have too many opportunities left to win the main event. This is my opportunity, right now. I want to take advantage of my opportunity.”

Antoine Saout
This 25-year-old Frenchman has quietly stormed his way to the WSOP main event final table. Not too much has been written about the former engineering student, since he doesn’t speak too much English, but Saout took time out of his schedule to answer a few questions from Card Player via a translator, shedding light on how he got his start in poker and how he feels about the final table.

“The first time I really played poker was two years ago on the Web, after seeing my sister playing from time to time on Everest Poker, where she had an account. I did the same and created an account on it, after learning the rules, and little by little discovered how to play true poker,” he said.

Saout won his seat in the main event through a $50 online satellite on Everest Poker, a site he recently signed with for the final table. Saout wasn’t the only Everest Poker player psyched that he made the final table. The site had a promotion that divvied up $1 million to all of its qualifiers if one of them made it to November. Now, 51 players will collect nearly $20,000 apiece, courtesy of Saout and Everest Poker.

With just two years of playing under his belt, Saout’s meteoric rise to the November Nine has been particularly impressive. But while he now has a seven-figure score to his name, he admits that it hasn’t always been easy to convince friends and family to support his decision to focus full-time on poker. “At first, indeed my family wasn’t happy about it, seeing me spending my time on the computer the whole day. They tried to convince me to find a ‘real’ job and put poker aside, which I did for a while in 2008 for four months during the summer.”

But the poker itch soon returned, and after a few months of solid results and one very significant performance in the main event, Saout’s family has become more accepting of his new profession. “I went back to poker, and since the beginning of this year, my mother is truly being supportive after seeing my good results,” said Saout. “Now, she’s very proud of me, of course.”

Entering the final table eighth in chips, the French pro realises the odds are against him. Still, he knows he has a shot. “I might need a little bit of luck in the beginning to have a more comfortable stack,” said Saout. “But I see myself more or less at the same level [as the other players].”

An improbable comeback win out of Saout could start a poker explosion in France in a year that its competitors have excelled. “This year has been a great year for French poker, with almost all the well-known professional players from France in the last 200 players in the main event with three in the final 27,” said Saout. Fellow countrymen Ludovic Lacay and Francois Balmigere finished in 16th place and 25th place for $500,557 and $352,832, respectively.

It has also been a great year for France’s Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier, who had four six-figure scores in 2009 — including a third-place finish in April’s Five-Star World Poker Classic for $776,245 — to follow up his $1.4 million win at the WPT’s Festa Al Lago Classic in October 2008. Grospellier finished in 122nd place in this year’s main event.

“I think it could help the image of poker, which is not always well regarded,” Antoine Saout said about the potential effects his WSOP final table appearance might have in his native country. “There has always been passion for the game in France. This brings hope to lots of players who wish to follow in my wake.”

While French pros continue to rack up impressive results, they still haven’t gotten over that proverbial WSOP hump. According to the WSOP archives, the last French player to make the main event final table was Marc Brochard, who finished in eighth place in 1998. No one from France has ever won the main event.

Jeff Shulman
In a time before Jesus was Jesus, Jeff Shulman was poised to become the world champion of poker. But one two-outer and a brutal cooler later, that dream was dashed. Now, nine years later, he has been granted another chance.

At 25 years of age, Shulman entered the final nine of the 2000 main event as the overall chip leader. Aggressive and relentless, he controlled the action. With just seven players remaining and the TV bubble in full effect — that year, only the final six were televised — Shulman was taking over the final table, reportedly winning seven of the previous nine pots before someone finally decided to take a stand.

That someone was the full-bearded and long-haired Chris Ferguson, who would soon be known by the entire poker community as “Jesus.”

After Shulman raised preflop to start the action, Ferguson looked down at pocket sixes and decided to push all in. After looking him up, Shulman made the call and turned over pocket sevens. He was a 4-to-1 favorite to eliminate one of his most dangerous opponents and put a virtual stranglehold on the main event title. Instead, a 6 fell on the flop, and Shulman’s big stack took a serious hit. Soon after, he was eliminated in seventh place when his pocket kings ran into Ferguson’s aces.

With those precious chips from Shulman, Ferguson went on to win the 2000 main event and $1.5 million. Since then, as a beneficiary of the poker boom, he is now considered one of the most famous poker players on the planet.

For his part, Shulman has recovered from that heartbreaking loss nicely. He has accumulated approximately $1.3 million in tournament winnings and has put up consistent results in several of the most respected events on the poker circuit, despite rarely playing, including cashing four times in the prestigious $25,000 Five-Star World Poker Classic (WPT Championship) in ’03, ’04, ’05, and ’08.

He has contributed to the poker world off the green felt as well. Along with his father Barry Shulman, who bought Card Player magazine in the late ‘90s, Jeff has been a major catalyst behind the revamped magazine and website since becoming the company’s president and chief operating officer, while also serving as the magazine’s publisher with his father.

Entering the final table fourth in chips, things could go either way for “Happy”. Leading up to the event, Shulman said, “I’m going to continue what I’m doing and try to play my cards, and if it ever gets to the point that I’m not catching good cards, then I’ll start playing differently. I certainly won’t study my opponents because I’ve a feeling everyone’s going to get coaching, and if I was going to study them, they’d be different by then. I’ll probably play a couple of sit-and-gos online and work on some short-handed play with a couple of friends who are better than I am.”

Joe Cada
Just a year removed from his historic win — where he edged past Phil Hellmuth to become the youngest player to ever win poker’s most prestigious title — Peter Eastgate was making an incredible run to contend for what could have been his second consecutive world championship. With less than a hundred players remaining from an original field of 6,494 at the WSOP, Eastgate was poised to do the unthinkable. In his journey deep into the 2009 main event, the reigning world champ played several hours with another talented young pro, Joe Cada, who didn’t shy away from engaging in a little playful trash talk with the champ.

“I happened to be at his table on day 4 and day 5, and I was joking around with him about it — how I have a shot at breaking his record,” said Cada, who at 21 could supplant Eastgate of his record just a year after he established his mark. “It would be pretty amazing if I did.”

While Eastgate’s 2009 main event performance fell shy of a return trip to the November Nine as he got knocked out in 78th place, Cada’s magical run has yet to conclude. With just over 13 million in chips, he enters November’s final table in fifth place.

Cada’s startling and rapid ascension to the top of the poker world is nothing short of remarkable. Although he’s only been legally allowed to play in poker rooms in Las Vegas for a few months now, Cada’s game and his attitude exude both confidence and experience.

“When I was younger, I played a lot of poker and grinded a lot,” said Cada. “I haven’t played as much this year.” The more lenient schedule doesn’t seem to have hurt his results. While he wasn’t too well known in the poker community before his main event run, Cada has collected a number of impressive scores online while playing under the name “jcada99”.

Cada won Full Tilt’s $750,000 guaranteed tournament in January 2008 for $147,488, and followed it up with a win in the Sunday Mulligan for $49,590 last October. He has seven tournament cashes of at least five figures online in his career.

The young pro first started playing the game in high school, while he juggled two different jobs. He admits school never quite held his attention. Having already established himself as a full-time online poker player, Cada eventually decided to “put school on hold for a while.”

“I discussed it with my parents. They understand. They know I’m smart, and they let me learn from my own mistakes,” said Cada.

Of course, few people would consider Cada’s decision a mistake now. Now sitting on at least $1,263,602, he, like all the others, has a great shot at taking down the 2009 main event.

So there it is. Nine men, one dream, and more than $27 million dollars in total up for grabs. All eyes will be on these players as they take centre stage in the biggest, most prestigious, and most exciting poker event on the planet. There’s only one thing left to say — Shuffle up and deal.