Unlucky Opening Hand - A Pair of Aces

Author: Simon Dexter

Spare a thought for Luke Staudenmaier who became the first player to be knocked out of the World Series of Poker main event - his demise came in the cruellest of fashions.

Holding pocket aces in the very first hand to be played at the event, the 21-year-old could not believe his luck when an opponent called an all-in before the flop. Doing what any sane poker player would do, he called the bet and saw his rival’s cards of Ac-Kc.

Staudenmaier was to be bitterly disappointed as he was beaten on the river with a flush draw.

“I’m sure I’ll never live it down although I couldn’t do anything to change it,” said Staudenmaier.

“I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.”

A pretty commendable attitude considering his bad luck meant that his ten-minute appearance at the tournament (buy-in ,000) had cost him a cool ,000 per minute.

There has been much talk about the numbers entering the main event this year being down on last year’s record total of over 8,000 contestants, but there a couple of reasons why this was the case.

First, the US legislation which bars players based in America from playing online poker for money has obviously had a huge effect- considering where the tournament is held.

However, most importantly it is because players who won through to the series by playing in satellite tournaments have been keeping the cash rather than using it to buy into the competition.

This is due to the organisers banning online sites from directly entering players who had won tournaments on their sites.

The numbers are still up on the 2005 figure and the supporting games have attracted huge numbers.

The tournament has come on in leaps and bounds since its inaugural event in 1991 when just 215 hungry poker players turned up for the event.

The prize money this year goes down to 621st place with the player in that position able to double his buy-in fee with the player finishing one place behind getting free entry into next season’s tournament.

One player who was not too happy at this year’s event was Tommy Giampialo who fell foul of the long established rule about not revealing your hand during play. Asked by an opponent, who was thinking of calling him, whether he held a king, Tommy replied that he had and his opponent folded.

Like a schoolboy snitch, the opponent went to get a ruling and Tommy was penalised with a nine-hand penalty. “Had you lied about the hand,” the official told Giampialo “that would have been okay.”

And I thought honesty was always the best poker policy.