BEST PLAY: Also the luckest...lol Ken's hitting of his hard 19 on hand #29. Most players thought he was jacking around with them, but if you look at were he was and what he had, he could have moved up to 5th place with a win and Micky's push or loss. Even at the bottom Ken was trying to move up. Hand #29 Micky had $5,000 and $2,000 bet, He caught a 20. Ken had $1,000 and was all in. Ken had 19. If Ken stayed, Micky has him by either $7,000 to $2,000 (if they both win) or $3,000 to $0 if they both lose. But if Ken win's and Micky pushed, it would be Ken betting $2,000 and Micky with $5,000 left desiding to go after Regina and risking losing 5th place or only betting $1,000 and hoping Ken didn't BJ on the last hand. WORST PLAY: That should be play's! Four way tie. Show #1: James Grojean not betting hand #30 and giving away the table. Cost him $10,000 at that table and a chance at $100,000 Show #2: Bradley Peterson commiting the ultimate sin, give another player a chance when he had them locked out. Cost himself at least $2,500 and chance at the $100,000. Finals: Regina betting $2,500 on hand #30 behind Micky betting $2,500. At the time Micky only had $7,000 and with his $2,500 bet could only win $9,500 without a DD or Split. Regina had $10,500 and could have force Micky into DD or Split by only betting $1,000. If Micky stood on his 20 Regina could have surrendered for 4th place and an extra $5,000. Finals: Jimmy Pine the entire round, for not playing to win. I talked to several players at the final table who told me he was happy just to get 3rd place.
She's a very pretty girl My situation was actually pretty simple. I expect that at least a dozen of the 25 players in this event would have come to the same conclusion about this hand. Of course, nobody except me noticed the play. When you're in last place, people tend to not pay much attention to your situation! There was actually some pretty entertaining banter going on at the table about my bottom-feeding. The funniest was after I surrendered my all-in $2000 bet. Jimmy Pine had already been giving me a hard time about hanging around the table, and I had earlier made a comment about "not being ready to talk to Melana", referring to Scantlin's interviews with players who bust out. When I surrendered the $2000 on hand 28, Jimmy really let me have it. Jimmy: "He really doesn't want to go see Melana. Kenny, she's a very pretty girl. Why don't you want to go talk to her?" Though I'm sure Micky was well aware why I wasn't leaving the table yet, I figured it was counterproductive for me to respond, so all I could do was shrug my shoulders and grin. So, the lopsided battle for fifth place continued.
His max bet was a little too much, but it is still better than betting small to lock out Bobby. If he choose to lock out Bobby, then Micky will match him, which highly reduces Bradley's chance of finishing a solo first. If they go into play off, Micky will still bet after Bradley. By convicing Micky not to match him, Bradley greatly increases his chance of finishing 1st. It's hard for me to judge his betting strategy overall, but his last round betting was really bad. If he doesn't want to drop below a 3rd place, he can still bet 37500 to lock out Regina (even if Regina get a BJ) and shot for the 2nd place, hoping Dave to lose a max bet.
What do you guys think about my comments concerning bottom-feeding. It seems to me that no only does it hurt your chances of winning, in this tournament, once someone started the trend, the rest of the losers seemed to play to make sure the bottom feeder didn't catch them. So not only did it eliminate last's chance to win, but it didn't give them a much better shot at 5th, while it truly hurt 5th, as 5th wasn't willing to try for first, lest they get past by 6th. Certainly, if everyone agreed to play this way, game theory would say that the person in last should play to win or bust, but does it make sense to play this way without unilateral agreement?
