Have been part of a coaching team for the final table for last couple of months, can't see who just yet, but sweating this, really enjoying the final table, very fun to watch when you've thought a lot about it.

Surprised to see how a few of them are playing.

Depends on a lot of factors. For instance, as an American there are strong tax incentives to gamble if you are having a good year. In larger field, softer tournament I feel ok having about 1% of my bankroll in play. For big tournaments I am really gearing up for, I will sometimes go up to 2, 2.5% in a 50 person tournament.. Moving down in stakes a lot, or swings in general, can be tough so being more conservative is totally fine too.

Ruzicka is my guess

Did you watch Galfonds review of the Wcoop FT you both made? Interested to see what you think of his opinions

Interested too. Coach of Nguyen obv. Can you say something about the bot situation on Party or are you restricted from talking about that?

obv coaching Hallaert together with fedor

What are your thoughts of hallaerts bet on turn with a8ss vs ruzicka? i haven't watched the run up to the FT but one of the commentators said he was aggro throughout the main event

Lets gooooooo Qui! Hopefully another long night, we got this buddy.

Part of the stable or coach for the ME fT?

Had first real sports bets this weekend in a long long time. Really felt the odds in all three of these games were wrong (posted Twitter/tft)

burnley 18/1 vs Man U
Watford 3/4 vs hull
Stoke 11/10 vs Swansea

Went big singles on the latter too, a cheeky single and treble and then an unnecessary double on wat/stoke.

In before we blow the whole roll on football betting, must remind myself I'm not a football betting expert and the bookies will likely win. Nice to best bet stars though

Got the train to Nottingham today, very fun £5300 event, made day 2 with above average, was nice to play with some people today, Sinon Higgins, Dubai and a few others. Feels like very special atmosphere this week at dtd, lots of crack and fun, not many serious players with headphone.

Day 2 tomorrow so will sleep.

Let's go Qui!!!!!

Can you give a bit more info on how you're involved with Nguyen bc it feels like a troll tbh Anyways, assuming it isn't GL to him tonight. He's got my support now that he's left with Vayo and Josephy

Thanks a lot for support! Patrick helped me a lot with constructing my 4bet range. Has been my wingman once or twice. What a great guy and poker mind.

Sincerely yours, Qui.
p.s. showed good understanding of baccarat too.

Devilfish cup was realllllllllly fun, busted 2 bullets but made money in the end due to my one swap coming third. Ariiiiiiiba.

Tournament was great fun, busted first bullet with TT vs Mizrachis AA. He was playing absolutely mental vpip, like conpletely crazy as he does and I thought tens were the true nuts sent down from heaven... Was a big pot too, no getting away from it I don't think.

Rebought and lost standard flip vs my amigo Sergi AQ v 44 btn v bb.

Really enjoyed the whole tournament, lots of interesting hands.

Skipped day 1 of the main as I was watching WSOP main till really late, I actually streamed it on twitch with Joey Ingram which was fun.

Going to write my review of the final table now..

I've been very vocal about the final table, probably seemed bitter, but I really enjoyed watching the final. I'm sure the things I said people should do this year I will think are terrible next year. I'm sure some of the stuff guys did was next level to what I can even think about, all of it is possible, but being a poker fan (and I'm a huge poker fanboy) is being able to say he should have done X/y/z. Just like in soccer (sorry dad) it's fine to say "he should have used his other foot" he should have done X y or z. The realllllllly cool thing about poker is that any of us can be there on the final table and that's way there's thousands of entrants year on year. If Ngyuen can do it then so can I, so can you and so can anybody else and that's incredibly motivating.

I'm going to give an honest assessment of each players play from my eyes, things I thought they did well, things I may have done differently etc. fwiw I missed most of day 2, but watched entire day 1/3.

9th place - Fernando Pons

Think he played perfect, there was one ATo reship spot, but completely fine folding too. Wp imo

8th place - Jerry Wong

Obviously wasn't around for long either, I would have probably folded the Ax in the sb vs Kenny with little fold equity because staying alive is cool and everybody else was playing aggressive. The thing with Icm is if people are making errors then you should play significantly tighter. Example, 600 left in main event and 595 pay. Let's say guy jams on you and you should call 77+, AQ in a spot. It's very very likely that the Icm model is incorrect here because some crazy guy called pads1161 is going to try and bluff some farmer off Aces and Ivar from Sweden is "playing for the win" and calling off 55, A9 in the exact same spot, thus we will cash than we should yada yada. I will say Jerry seemed like the most likeable guy at the table, really cool guy and took it all really well.

7th place - Griffin Benger

I was so shocked to see Griffin play so tight/poor, he spoke a lot about how it was crazy he hadn't won a hand yet, a lot of that was down to him now playing many. He was coached by Igor so really expected him to be playing loose, r/f off shallow stacks, defend correctly etc. there was a spot where Vayo opened 66 and he folded q9 in the bb. Often in poker things just "cant be right" like Vayo folding t6 and Ngyuen cbetting 42 on jt5. Folding the q9 in this spot was an error I think. There were also a couple of other spots where he took the passive route. Anyways, I gave Griffin hard time and would like to somewhat apologize for that. It must be so tough to be under so much scrutiny after his comments and whilst maybe he deserved it, I've been a bigger dick in my life and would be pretty sad to be reminded about the out of character experience every single minute in Twitter. Very poor performance and it wouldn't surprise me if he quit poker for good now.

6th place finish - Kenny Hallaet

As many of you know I was on "Team Kenny" that was Organised by Fedor, but I was pretty busy in WCOOP playing every day, Barcelona and then Malta that I didn't do that much but I was involved quite a lot in the process and knew what was happening and not.

Kenny said afterwards he was really happy with how he played and I also think he didn't do anything wrong. I can't think of a single hand off my head where I'd think "wow that was so bad" the a8ss hand got a lot of criticism but imo it was unfair. I think the turn barrel was pretty good and was just very unfortunate to get Vojtech to shove here. I think Vojtech would fast play sets on the flip quite often etc so barreling big gets a lot of one pair hands to fold and we block hands that could semi bluff shove vs us.

The one thing I would do differently would be to cover up, wear glasses/shades, usually you see in WSOP main event that people come out with no "protection on day 1" and then as the days go on they "wrap up" more and more. I think even Van Hoof was wearing shades against Jacobson on the final day. All of the players will have guys looking ONLY for live tells, I would obviously pay a specialist to be on the rail with the sole intention of finding tells, so I would make sure I was very well wrapped up and motionless when playing. I don't even think the audience mind.

Well played Kenny and very nice working with you, such an incredibly nice guy and imo one of the hardest working guys around, expect big things from him in the next 6-18 months.

5th place - Michael Ruane

Played well imo, again, a guy who seems very nice. Good manners, cool look. I think he'd have been a very good champion. Main mistake I can remember is c/f AK bvb on 942 (it was correct because Vayo had t9o) but you will see later Vayo was stabbing wide when checked to (Kto on 467 so this would likely be a big mistake when our outs are usually live and we can have the best hand and even bluff some run outs.

4th place - Vojtech

Many people's favourite player of the final. I spoke to him on day 2 and he wasn't 100% happy with how he played on day 1 which would be surprising to a lot of people, but not surprising to me because I know how hard he works. He's a huge beast and boss both online and live but is very humble and always wants to learn. I remember he bought a hand history that I played a while ago and also remember final tabling the thrill against him and he doing some very good adjustments to my strategy that people basically never do thus making me need to rethink. I think the one dubious thing I saw was the AJ 3bet from the big blind vs Kenny. I think it's just the wrong hand to choose here, however if he thinks Fedor is very sticky and would have coached Kenny to call a lot vs 3bets then it's a clear value 3bet. I know he was playing some 500z and working out ranges (he was buying in shallow) but cash/mtts is a little different.

Great composure and felt like he was really in control throughout and wasn't afraid at all to pull the trigger.

3rd place - Cliff Jospehy

I think Josephy clearly played the worst at the final table which is very surprising because his two coaches (Shaun Deeb and a Chance Kornuth) are both very very very very good players. A lot of their play is from feel and knowing when to bluff, who to bluff, how much to bluff, but they're also very experienced and good enough to prepare somebody perfectly.

His whole tournament seemed like a car crash for me.

Early on he chose to 3bet q9o very deep which was a very poor candidate to choose.

He then froze up after this early mis step and was folding hands like 95s to a single raise in the big blind when there were big antes and he was very deep. The game has changed a lot since he used to play so sure he may not be used to it, but that's what the 3 months is for.

Anyway, something he should know is shove/fold spots, early on it took him over 2 minutes to call a very simple short stack shove and that was really surprising to me, surely he's ran the numbers millions of times years ago and a lot recently too.

Later on in the tournament he chose very peculiar hand selection to bluff, 3bet jammed way too wide, and made a very bad call to end his tournament. Yes he had a set but on k324fd in a 3 way 3bet pot of the king is the flush card you basically can never call off here. He NEEDS Vayo to be committing worth KQ here and that simply would never happen. If only he could have tagged in Chance for that one.

Again another player I expect to disappear until next years main event.

2nd place - Gordon Vayo

I'll start this by saying, Vayo does seem like a nice guy, I apologize for hating on him at times but he does come across well in the interviews that I've seen and he does seem very knowledgable about poker. The 55 fold bvb vs Kenny was absolutely incredible imo. With everything considered, Kenny not winning many pots, coached by Fedor, Vayo with tight image etc folding here would be absolutely or of the question for me here, so unless he picked up on a live read I have no clue how he could fold. Fwiw I know how Kenny would have played that exact spot and 55 would not be a fold.

Early on Vayo seemed like he wanted to avoid confrontation, the ATo fold pales in significance compared to some stuff we saw later, but I think the 77 was a somewhat inexcusable fold. Overall, his strategy was to play right and adjust, I don't think he played overly poor on day 1, just played solid/tight and wasn't going to give away a lot of chips and others would still pay him off when he had it (Josephy with the set for example) so overall the game plan I think was somewhat reasonable.. However arguments that the pay out structure was incredibly flat until final 3 would merit a rather aggressive approach, but then again if everybody else is going bananas then it's correct to sit back and fold. Every time you fold you probably make something like $10,000 in ev, which is a relatively good hourly

Heads up he fell apart, you simply can't keep playing tight when heads up. The overall strategy was poor simply because Ngyuen is the guy who picks up on weakness. He knows when you're weak and will go after you, so limping and min raising etc is going to just set off the inner honey badger and he will explode. You may say this is ok, wait for him to explode, 2 problems..

1) in heads up you have to pay blinds and antes (15%!) every hand and thus you will blind or if you "wait for top 10%" and

2) when he did find the effective hits (too pair) he folded in a spot where Ngyuen was evidently massively overbluffing. Same as the A9 fold vs the flush, everybody was like OMG amazing fold, but vs Ngyuen it wasn't a particularly good fold because he will have so much **** so much of the time. I think Vayo won't regret his final table performance and maybe he shouldn't but the q9 fold will haunt him for a long time. Win that hand, Ngyuen would blow the rest in the next hour and he would be $4m richer and the world champion.

Oh well, hopefully can buy him a beer at the next live stop. He will stay around the scene imo and my prediction is he will crush for the next 6-18 months too.

Your Champion - Ngyuen!

I mean this guy really had the heart of a lion. He played awesomeness throughout and was really fun to watch. Ofc at times things didn't always work out, but if you look at the pots he lost, he more than made up for then in non showdown pots. He had great intuition for when to bluff, when to induce, how long to take to induce, how to make himself look strong etc. when he bluffed the j5 (theoretically awful bluff on turn/river) he checked his cards on the river as if to see if he had made the wheel, was genius.

Team Kenny thought we had established some really strong reads on him from back home in Europe, and it was a little frustrating to see these were stone Oreo cookie reads as he played 3-4 handed. Not much to say really, at one point though I was very suspicious that he was using some kind of cheating mechanism. 2 big blinds in a row he 1) defended 52o 2) folded 98o. Obviously he plays with his gut but some things just felt off to me, when Bax busted, he open folded 87s on the button. There was a stage of the match where he was barreling a lot. He opens button, cbets, checks, folds on qq765 with 54. Turn was a really good spot to double barrel and the opponent had QQQ.. Anyway, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and just say he has amazing reads and intuition and a really really big heart.

I love poker, I love Wsop and I love the November 9. I've been a huge fan boy for a long time of it. Next year id really like to be there haha but if not I'd love to dedicate the 3 months to helping somebody. There's so many cool ideas I have for peak performance that I think people aren't doing and most Importantly whilst I have the determination and desire to be involved I strongly believe my closest friends in poker are the best in the world and they would be great assets (everybody thinks their group of friends are the best though obviously)

Will close this chapter, have no more bitterness, apologise to those who I berated and congratulate those who I think played great.

Until next year!

^^ Very nice post. Thanks, pads.

Haha yeah I was being super harsh on everyone on Twitter throughout the FT too, just couldn't help myself because Twitter just adds so much to the experience. The above seems like a pretty solid assessment to me; I think you're being a bit too easy on Vayo (he essentially had no shot of winning HU in a tournament with first paying 2x second*). Couldn't agree more about Josephy being a total trainwreck, been hilarious to read everyone praising his performance.

Vojta_R gave a total endboss performance, he was my pick to win before the ft too. He had a super solid presence too. That AJdd hand from BB (it was suited as well) was my only criticism as well although I think I'd have just check/folded the flop in the AK vs 88 hand. Although now that we know how Vayo plays it probably prints infinite to always 3barrel, at the time I thought check-fold > 3barrels > anything else, thoughts?

As a side note, I love how everyone had these endbosses as coaches and the guy who picked some busto $200 live MTT reg completely owned them all. The aspect of being able to hire coaches is definitely interesting, but it was pretty sweet that it went this way - I don't think it's a great look on recreationals that you need a coach in the first place.

*If you include the perks of being world champ

Great post pads, was a fun read. People were saying that Qui feels that the 9 cards are unlucky related to his bacarat gambling. That makes sense why he folded 98o in and also snap folded T9s/98s from the btn twice I believe. Then he also played 99 passive pre and quickly folding it on 644r flop.

^^ Yes but he did call off a >30bb 4b jam HU with K9hh

Still can't believe Vayo folded that Q9 hand on the river wtffffffff

Yea that did seem like a fistpump hero call wtf was that headsup train wreck was super painful to watch

Day 3 of WPT UK worth 420k coming back to 6k bb on Ze bubble.

Was cool chatting with you day1 before I got moved

Seemed like a top guy who really does love the game

Am looking to improve my game and notice you have some coaches on youre books can you recomend me someone and some contact details looking to put some effort in

Kind Regards

And lets smash day 3 !!!

Thanks buddy

Which guy were you? Didn't speak to anybody about cricket I don't think

Is Vayo's call of a 3bet with 88 on button for ~8 million bad with ~53 million effective against a player as aggro as Ruzicka? Or its standard?

Wow, just finished reading this thread start to finish (shout out to me), really enjoy your writing style and thought processes, was routing for you to take something big down.

Gl gl in all future endeavours. Sad I have nothing to read now!