blonde poker

 

It's been a turbulent few months in République française, first the popular EPT event in Deauville was cancelled, and around a month before this event, it was announced that the Grand Prix de Paris tournament would not be filmed by the WPT cameras, due to the French authorities stance on gaming.

 

This effectively removed the WPT Paris name from the event, and with it, many people simply decided that it wouldn't be worthwhile playing. This left the total field at around 120, meaning that an event scheduled to go from Sunday to Friday with two starting days was starting to look optimistic to say the least. Day 3 bizarrely lasted just two hours as they decided to play down from 26 players to er... 18 whilst Day 4 fared little better with another mini-session, though this time a whole five hours of poker was managed.

 

Despite all this, many of the big Scandies still appeared as did a couple of the big name Americans including Steve Zolotow and Freddy Deeb - the latter bubbling the final table in 10th place. The upside of the lack of coverage was a full final table and a distinct lack of blind tamperage from certain people who may or may not be related to the TV industry.

 

Although the majority of the players were French, most would not make it that far, some of their play was certainly as colourful as their personalities. However, many Europeans did run well, and when the dust settled on the final day, the nine, no doubt by now, exhausted players were as follows:

(1) Paul Gourlay -- 122,000
(2) Jeff Wallace -- 103,000
(3) Will Ma -- 610,000
(4) Yuri Kerzhapkin -- 111,500
(5) Tor Gammelgard -- 255,000
(6) Runar Runarsson -- 309,000
(7) Ram Vaswani -- 413,000
(8) Jeff Lisandro -- 490,500
(9) David Redlin -- 370,500

Geordie Paul 'Rocket Man' Gourlay (left) departed first, having stomped and grinded his way to the final table, with Yuri Kerzhapkin and Tor Gammelgard in 8th and 7th respectively. Aussie Jeff Lisandro was out in 6th when his Ace King in the small-blind was cruelly outdrawn by David Redlin's Ace Queen after a lady came on the turn, Jeff Wallace's laddering up could not continue after this and he left in 5th place soon after.

 

At this point, Ram Vaswani (below) was starting to dominate the table and looking the favourite, when a huge pot would change the outcome. Will Ma re-raised Ram's initial bet of 75k to 200k before Ram pushed all-in, covering the young Canadian by a good half a million (and more). Ma went into the tank before announcing, "I know this is going to look like a crazy move, but I think there's a wide range of hands you could be making that bet with." He then proceeded to call with A-9 which looked in poor shape when Ram showed A-Q, but the first card out was a Nine and Ram was left very short, exiting shortly afterwards, though remaining as dignified as he always is.

Icelandic player (great, just what the world needs, another Scandinavian country with good poker players), Runar Runarsson, would then dispatch Redlin to leave him heads-up against Ma. After a period of sparring, Ma managed a crucial double up, his Aces holding up against Runarsson's K-Q on a Queen high board. But then Runar's A-5 hit a runner runner flush (Yes, Runar Runarsson hit a Runner-Runner, stop sniggering) against A-J, but this was only temporary respite for Runar...

 

The blinds eventually caught up with the Icelander and he was forced to call with T-8 of clubs against Ma's J-4 and though the flop hit both Ten and Jack with two clubs, neither would improve after this giving the affable young Canadian the title and the €422,560 1st place prize money.

It'll be interesting to see if the WPT is able to return next year, I guess it all depends on the authorities (funnily enough, the French elections were going on at the same time as the tournament - hence the huge 2.5 hr dinner break on Day 1), though this reporter is remaining sceptical for the moment. Indeed, perhaps we should just be enjoying a TV producer-free final table, after the WPT Grand Final, I'm guessing it was like a breath of fresh air...