Monday 23 January
Today certainly was a long one! The final table of the $100k Challenge took off at around 3pm and it didn't finish until 10 hours later. This is how the final table looked to begin with:
|
Seat |
Player |
Chips |
|
1 |
Tony G |
102,000 |
|
2 |
Gus Hansen |
567,000 |
|
3 |
Nam Le |
79,500 |
|
4 |
Sam Trickett |
73,000 |
|
5 |
Mikhail Smirnov |
265,000 |
|
6 |
Joe Hachem |
538,500 |
|
7 |
Sorel Mizzi |
228,500 |
|
8 |
Dan Smith |
346,5 |
I spoke with most of the players beforehand, and the one that was truly the most confident was Dan Smith. He was just above average in chips to start the day, and his football team had just made it to the Superbowl. This guy was smiling ear to ear when taking his seat! He was of course the champion in the end, earning just over one million dollars!! It certainly wasn't easy for him though, working his way through the most elite players in the world, and then enduring the most epic Heads-Up battles that he's probably ever had against a Russian player Mikhail Smirnov, who I think is a regular in high stakes cash games more so than the tournament circuit.
Sorel Mizzi prepared in for the final table in a unique way, spending some time in an "Isolation tank" which he described as water set to your own body temperature that you float in, inside a dark tank which is supposed to put you into a deep meditative state. He was feeling fully prepared and was letting off some serious zen vibes before he sat down. One particular player I was really cheering for was Joe Hachem. He got so close to finally winning a title in his own backyard, which I know he's wanted to do for his entire career. While taking third place is a fantastic achievement earning over $300,000, I'm sure it was more about the title for Joe.
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