What happens if both players are using the positive energy trick? Will their energies cancel each other out? Will the universe collapse upon itself? Perhaps the future of poker tournaments:

to be honest, i think Ott played way more optimally than anyone in this thread wants to admit. sure it looks weak as **** to fold a bunch and play so passively on the biggest stage in the sport...but I think actually he had the right idea.

HU is all about adjusting to your opponent. IF your opponent is better than you postflop and has a lot of heart, its dumb to continue putting yourself in spots to get pushed off hands. especially if your opponent is prone to making big mistakes

sure it wasnt glamorous and he got steam rolled...but if u really watch and look at the ebb and flow of the game, he didnt really get many spots to even play back at Blum.

the only thing that gives me pause is how long he took to call it off in a few spots, like with A8s at the end. that made me wonder if it was really a strategy move or if he was just getting punked

The FT this year was fun to watch. I'm glad the guy who maintained the largest stack ended up winning it all. Ott was impressive as well. GG

Then you sir aren't a big enough sarcastic *******. It's not a first thought, it's a gut reaction where you just say the first dumb/funny thing that pops in to your head. He's probably going trough an adrenaline dump

Did Ott have a coach/friend who's big in to that focusing crap? I mean it's easily just his own view, I was just pointing out it also works as a good jab if he wanted to point out he somehow binked a 2 without picturing it.

He didn't need to picture the deuce coming , I did it for him , which just shows how powerful the technique is because i was watching on a 30 minute delay and it still worked.

pretty sure the cards will self-combust

If Haitians and Syrians would just send out more positive vibes maybe they wouldn't be in such a mess. Makes you think.

What if other countries with larger populations are sending out their own counter positive vibes? Somebody better warn Pakistan

lol, I thought the same thing

I agree 100%. However, he does seem like a genuinely nice person.

Hesp is awesome, he and his personality are great for the game, the robotic hoodie/sunglasses anti-social players are on the verge of ruining the game, Hesp types are the antidote.

That said, his antics the moment after Blumstein won were pretty LOL.

The WSOP should make a rule against using your sweatshirt to cover your face. All the robotic players would **** their pants when they can't cover their face and put their arm up in their left shoulder lol. (no disrespect to Ott cause he was doing the sweatshirt thing)

Is this really as big of a deal as people are saying? Antonio repeatedly brought it up. From the coverage I saw from this years WSOP I did not see a real issue as far as too many anti social sweatshirt players. False fear I think

Sorry if this was discussed, but does anyone know if there was any mention of how Blumstein bought in(%, satellite, 10k)?

Are you saying this just from what you saw on TV, or did you attend WSOP and play several events?

If you played several events, you can see that this type of player pool still exists, however I will say it's not as bad as in years past.

And yea from TV coverage it didn't appear too bad, maybe ESPN producers have wised up and realize this type of player is horrible for TV so they choose their feature tables accordingly.

No mention of it but here is some relevant information:

Last year this time, he won almost $200k at Borgata so he wasn't in Las Vegas. Looks like he was a northeast grinder until then. Since the $200k win he continued to grind locally and online and was doing well ($33.5k so far in 2017) but not killing it. Another thread discusses taxes and I don't want to open that can of worms here but the $200k win would net him in the neighborhood of $140-150k, assuming it's all his.

A complete guess is that he went to the WSOP this year for the Main but not too much before, given that he cashed an event in Philadelphia on June 21. So it seems that he was there just for the Main. Seems somewhat unlikely he would be playing a $250 in Philadelphia if he was in the Milly Maker the week before and intended to go back out for the Main.

If that's right, he probably played in one or more of the satellites, which are super soft, and may have satellited in. But one would think that would have been mentioned in the coverage (they like to mention that sort of thing because it promotes the idea that anyone can take a seat ...). So a guess is that he bought in.

Is he staked? Only he and any supposed backer(s) know that. He does seem to have a bunch of friends who play and it's not beyond the realm of possibilities that he had some swaps. If he has a backer, it seems more likely that it's a local thing and not hooked up to the Main.

Fun to speculate on this stuff but it doesn't really matter. Guy had a great run and couldn't be happier for him. I hope he had 100% of himself!

Was posted back in the thread somewhere that last month he was looking for backers for the main on twitter, and some other rumors that for that borgata event he also was backed/sold pieces. No idea if/or how much he sold.

https://youtu.be/RaAwVJ_xKTI?t=2m50s

Didn't Lon mention something about Mrs. Blumstein 'backing' him for 3k?

Maybe in her eyes she was just giving him 'mom money' though?

Crazy that Ott thought for only about 90 seconds before mucking 88 early on to Scott's huge bluff

Here you go Mom, here's your $3k loan back. But that's not all - we're going to Red Lobster!

Oh Scott - you're the best son...

That was his moment to take control of the final table. Same as Scott's moment vs. Sinclair big bluff earlier. One failed, one had the balls.

But you have to wonder if Scott calls if Sinclair had the chips to put him all in. That was Sinclair's big mistake, getting frisky with someone who had him out-chipped.

Every year it feels like the best poker is 27-handed down to maybe 4-handed. Then it just sucks from there on out. With exceptions of course.

The TT call vs. Sinclair is exponentially easier (and more correct) than Ott calling w/ 88 vs Blumstein. If Ott's calling 88 there, I don't really know what hands he is folding. Generally not advisable to call 100% on the river facing a near pot sized shove based upon a turn calling range against a turn 1/3rd pot bet. Blumstein basically had his best bluffing combo (KcXx, which will probably be restricted to KcQx,KcJx,KcTx) to get to this river, and Ott had one of his worst combos to get to the river. Props to Blumstein for still pulling the trigger in such an intense spot, but if you look at the hand and remove the WSOP ME moment from it, Blumstein had a trivially easy 3-barrel bluff and Ott has a pretty easy river fold.