The Scoop -- Darvin Moon

Darvin Moon burst onto the poker scene last year when he made the final table of the World Series of Poker main event as the overwhelming chip leader. He eventually finished second, but the mild-mannered resident of Oakland, Maryland, has maintained a low profile. He stopped by The Scoop studio to discuss his experience at the final table.

Diego Cordovez: Finishing second is obviously a huge accomplishment that anyone would love. Now that you’ve watched the final table on TV, and seen a lot of the hands and thought them through, do you have any regrets about your final-table or heads-up play?

Darvin Moon: No, I never regretted anything. Everything right down to heads up, I wanted to do. I wanted to double up one of the short stacks early to make them all think I was playing loose.

DC: Right.

DM: Unfortunately, I doubled up Saout, and he was the most solid player at that table the whole day.

DC: That was a critical hand at that time. You tried a very ambitious bluff, where you bet and reraised, and he had two pair already, so you were drawing very slim. And he used his chips pretty effectively after that.

DM: He raised preflop with J-2.

DC: He was on the button, so he could have anything.

DM: Right. And he just outplayed me. I thought I at least had a chance, but I didn’t have a shot here. I think I could have hit a 5 on the river …

DC: You picked up an inside-straight draw on the turn, but on the flop you had no pair against two pair.

DM: Yeah, I was in bad shape.

DC: There was an interesting hand in which you tried a big bluff on Steve Begleiter, and then you laid down. I found two things interesting about that; first, that you committed a lot of your chips and then got away from it, which is a very strong play, to at least save the remainder.

DM: Yeah. Why give him 6 million more?

DC: Then, on TV, you walked over to your family and told them that you had a different hand. So, was that part of the psychology of knowing that the cameras were on, that the information might leak over? I have never seen anything like that.

DM: Well, I was miked, and thought that somebody in the back might be able to send a message to a coach, and Mike Matusow was sitting right behind my family at the time. I didn’t know if he’d send messages down about what I had. My wife knew that I was going to do it. We had discussed what I was going to do, that I was not going to tell her what I had.

DC: I like the fact that you really were taking it to another level. That’s beyond just the game at the table, sending this information. I think that in the atmosphere there at the final table, it’s very likely that information circulates around. I know on the first break that people were talking about what hand Phil Ivey had when Joe Cada laid down against him. So, your wife knew that you’d be playing games along the way?

DM: Yeah. ESPN didn’t take it very well. They said that I tried to start a controversy in poker, because I said that I thought what was said would come back out online — which I know it did. There was a guy who had a Blackberry. I had told my family the truth a little while earlier, and in about 10 minutes, it was out on the Blackberry.

DC: Of course. In this age of the Internet, it’s being twittered or otherwise put up right away. Now, you are playing here at the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, which is a lot of fun. Is it your intention now to be playing more tournaments, to be more visible? It seemed like you were pretty satisfied with what you were doing in your life, and that it wasn’t your goal to all of a sudden be a highly visible poker player. Has that changed?

DM: No. I’m still not going to be out a lot. I want to play some fun tournaments. I mean, now I can do it.

DC: [Laughing] I would think so.