Better to be Lucky than Good

The 2009 World Series of Poker main event final table proved yet again that with poker it is always better to be lucky than good when you’re dealing with a small sample size. Not to say that the final table just held at the Rio was a short affair. It took 364 hands of play to decide a champion, but it just wasn’t long enough for skill to rise to the top and win the day. I don’t just mean Phil Ivey either. If the heads-up match had truly been a measure of the skill exhibited by the players at the final table then Ivey would have faced Frenchman Antoine Saout, or possibly Eric Buchman — instead the two luckiest players at the final table made it to heads-up play.

Darvin Moon made more missteps than anyone inside the Penn and Teller theater (except for the two Joseph Cada fans that were kicked out for fighting each other), but he hit the hands he needed to stay alive. Ivey had Moon dominated with A-K over A-Q, but Moon sucked out and sent the best poker player on the planet packing. It looked like Moon would have been happy limping to third-place prize money after a lucky run of cards delivered him to the final table with 30 percent of the chips in play, but fate intervened to help the everyman make it just a bit farther. Moon wasn’t even the luckiest player at the final table though, Cada claimed that honor, and he would probably be the first to admit that he was lucky. The young and talented player had the deck dropped over his head like a ton of bricks, only to have it scooped up and dropped over his head once again on Saturday.

He ran like God on a level that hasn’t been seen at a main event final table since Jamie Gold could do no wrong in 2006. The kid grew his stack from 2 million to a nine-digit chip lead by the time the heads-up match was set, winning every hand that went to a showdown during an amazing run. You can’t win a tournament of this size without getting lucky at some point, and Cada’s run just goes to prove that timing is everything when it comes to tournament poker.

The heads-up final was much more impressive than what took place on Saturday. There was a lot of post-flop play and luck resigned itself to a supporting role in the proceedings. There were also multiple lead changes, but I doubt there will be enough time in the ESPN episode to show more than 3-4 hands between the final two players.

The atmosphere created by the fans was once again the best part of the November Nine experience. The general members of the audience cheered for the player they identified with most, rooting for Mr. Moon the whole way through, but the contingent of Cada fans was fueled by a concoction of cocktails and they were a vocal force as well.

Moon eventually finished in second place ($5,182,602) and he should receive the nickname blue moon in the future, because that is probably how often we will see him at major poker tournaments moving forward. Cada won the tournament ($8,546,435) and he became the youngest main event champion in history (eight days short of his 22nd birthday). Last year, Peter Eastgate became the youngest world champion in history, breaking a 19-year old record held by Phil Hellmuth. One year later that record gets broken again. All steroid’s discussions aside, this has to remind you of when Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs in a single baseball season in 1998 to beat Roger Maris’ gold standard of 61 home runs that stood for decades, only to have Barry Bonds hit 73 homer runs three years later. Some records were made to be broken and as the youth movement continues to take over poker Cada’s record will fall at some point.

Cada won the most at the table on Monday, and he will surely profit the most off the felt as well. You can pencil him in as the next PokerStars-sponsored main event champion that receives a spot of the Team PokerStars pro roster. Cada is a solid player that will be around for a while. He embodies the new age of poker in the United States more than any world champion in history.

The final table airs just eight hours from now, which is as close as you can possibly come to same-day television coverage of poker. I was given a tour of the ESPN production area during the final table and it was impressive to say the least. A crew of 70 employees each log about 48 hours to produce the final-table episode on an insane production schedule (more on this later in the pages of Card Player Magazine). Be sure to watch the episode on ESPN tonight at 9 p.m. EST, and, if you still need more poker after that you can catch the WSOP wrap show on the Bernard Lee Poker show that airs on Rounder’s Radio Wednesday at 7 p.m. EST.