WPT Celebrity Invitation, Matt Glantz Slow Rolls Tiffany Michelle

The WPT Celebrity invitational where 560 players began in a charity event with a chance to play a WPT TV final table and share in a $200,000 free-roll prize pool. There where lots of the well-known Hollywood crowd, although I’m terrible at recognizing anyone, I even still saw many familiar faces. I of course drew the tough table in the room with Matt Glantz, Brian Townsend, Jonathan Little, Tiffany Michelle, and Philippe. Our table played really tight and while players were busting out in droves all around us we only lost one in the first 5 levels, and it was Townsend. I took all his chips when he bluffed them off in position against me when I flopped an ace with A9 in the big blind on a board of A57 and he had 46. King on the turn and a 9 on the river made it an easy call, but we both had the same size stack so I was still concerned. He is a great player and very dangerous, but I was on the right side of this meeting.

The most peculiar hand of the night happened between Matt Glantz, who I consider one of the best high stakes cash players in the world and is a strong tournament player as well. Tiffany Michelle seemed to play a fair number of pots with him throughout the night and was trash talking him pretty aggressively. Trying to outplay Matt would put just about any player in a poor EV situation so I was surprised by her play, but hey it was a celebrity invitational and I guess a girl has got to have fun.

So in a pre-flop limped pot with about 5 runners, the flop came 446. Tiffany bets about a pot sized bet on the button after it is checked around to her and Matt is the only caller from the big blind. At this point there is about 6k in the pot and Matt has roughly 2,900 behind so when a 2 peels off on the turn he checks to Tiffany who gives a long speech about how she has to bet the right amount so that Matt will have to call and that he is way behind. She bets 3,000 and Matt hesitates a second and throws all his chips in. Tiffany looks surprised by what she thinks is a raise and doesn’t realize that with his chip stack size she actually has to take chips out of the pot. Clearly she didn’t expect a call and turns her cards over to show only ace high with the other card hidden behind the ace. After a good 30 seconds of nodding Matt slow rolls her, with 84 off-suit. Tiffany then takes her cards and throws them in the muck before the river is dealt. Now she did have A3 and with a 5 on the river she would have made a wheel for the win, so mucking a live hand there isn’t a move I would recommend. Philippe hunts through the deck to see what the river was and said it was indeed a five, although I’m not convinced, I still laughed myself silly. Matt said he never likes to slow roll but after the speech he felt it indicated.

I made it deep the second day to 18th, but it was a tough structure and with average chips you only had about 15 big blind’s so there wasn’t a lot of play. I am excited about the main event which will begin Friday.