The online poker community is united in its support for Niklas Astedt, who made it to the finals with the third stack. However, he wasn't burnt out by the performance, despite the prestige of this event.
"Piece of cake compared to SCOOP – 40 days of 20 tables, I have to say. People say this is a marathon – They should try 20 tables for 40 days during SCOOP, that's what I say."
Regulars lined up to show their support for Astedt.
“Lena is the best online player ever,” Chris Hunichen says without question.
"One of the guys I have the most respect for of all time," agreed Connor Drinan. "A true grinder. Loves the game. Plays hard all the time, never tilts or punts. Dunno if you have Twitter but good luck Lena, rooting for you."
"Lena's a great poker player, but to me, his best skill is his stamina," Sam Greenwood said as he joined the army of fans. "Everyone else I know loses the ability to 6-table once they turn 30. He's been grinding 12+ tables, NL and PLO, basically every day for over a decade."
In 2021, Niklas sent Patrick Leonard a link to a 10-hour video.
"When Lena sends you this at 5pm on Sunday you know it's going to be a great day," Pads wrote at the time.
Today Patrick recalled that incident and confirmed that he will be rooting for “the GOAT” in the final.
"The best player around. The nicest guy around. The most humble. He shows up every week, every year and battles. He embodies everything that I could imagine the dream champion having. We almost don’t deserve him. 10 hours of Gandalf tomorrow! 🎷"
"Can you break down for us mere mortals what makes him so good?" Someone asked in the comments.
Success in poker isn’t winning an event here or an event there it’s about being around for a sustained period of time at the top. LONGEVITY. To show up at the stakes he plays takes an incredible toll on your mental health. Most people who have been in the top 10 in pocket fives stop grinding for one reason or another. He has played through many eras, without time off. Such grind can put you into dodgy ways sometimes, holes you get deeper into even if you didn’t intend to. There’s not a single person who can speak a single bad word about his actions. He is pure class.
Mario Mosböck wrote, "While some might not be familiar with Niklas yet. For online players sweating Lena900 deep in the Main Event is like watching Messi win the World Cup. 🐐"
One of the most talked about events of the last few days of the World Series was the exit of Kristen Foxen from the main tournament in 13th place.
Most professionals and amateurs condemned this prank, but Doug Polk did a detailed analysis on his channel, which we will translate in the next few days.
"I have been making youtube videos for 8 years," Doug wrote a couple of hours after the release. "The video we posted today is the #1 hottest viewed video in the history of my channel. People really, really care about the main event."
Ben Rolle unexpectedly came to Kristen's defense :
All the people saying Kristen Foxen's turn shove is a punt, probably never nodelocked a sim.
She gets , to fold.
Even lots of / type of hands bet/fold.Yes those hands make sense to barrel turn.
You get / type of hands to fold, even some splits like weak and value from pair and flushdraw you are ahead against.You cant expect type of hands x/shoving turn.
So I expect lots of thin value bets on the turn to xback River.
This can easily be a money printing turn shove with all the hands that bet/fold.
Yeah sometimes you will run into top range. That's poker.
Thats why she is one of the best for many years.I can imagine we get the fold 70-80% of the time and she gets a good price on shoving the Turn.
Sure you could argue that with her Edge she could wait. But if this one goes through she is in a good position to bully the entire FT.
So massive Future Game too.I can also imagine that this spot can be extremely profitable considering the unbalanced turn betting range (also easy to barrel all the lower pocket pairs we get villain to fold)
I have a lot of respect for players like her to run these huge bluffs in such a Tournament.
WP Kristen.
Another finalist Jonathan Tamayo (7th in the final table) in the top 10 with a 20BB stack folded pocket queens after a min-raise from chip leader Joe Sirok.
"So we're just gonna breeze right past this Tamaya QQ fold?" Matt Berkey was s shocked. "Cool. Moving on..."
"Pretty logical QQ fold by Tamayo," Max Silver wrote, "Ladies don’t make the final table."
"Standard fold," Vanessa Selbst wrote sarcastically. "Now he gets 500k for wearing a Full Tilt patch."
“500k? You mean 25k?,” 2009 champion Joe Cada recalled the prices from those years.
“Lol, it was clearly a graphical error 😂,” Chance Kornuth confidently stated.
“I did, graphics are correct,” Tamayo confirmed.
“Apparently not. I’m going to bed 💀,” Chance said, taking in this information.
"The only person more mad about your fold is Brian Rast," Shaun Deeb responded to Tamayo's tweet.
Rast was eliminated from the Main Event in 24th place. In his final hand, he 3-bet UTG+1 with AQ and Tamayo in the SB with 24BB cold-shoved. Rast had 22 big blinds and called, but couldn't beat the kings.
Commentors wondered if it was a punt, so Brian responded:
"I don’t disagree it was a bad play. But why does anyone need to be called out? That’s the exact opposite of what should happen.
I was exhausted and fading. In future MEs I have to get more sleep day 4 and on. But that’s a me problem.
I just saw him 4b shove 8s in a different spot, but not irrelevant, and we had never played yet beyond those 40min, so in the moment, I gave him more hands than I probably should have and figured it was BE cEV. In hindsight and more well rested, I think even with those hands in at BE cEV it’s a fold. Bc I shouldn’t call off for stacks BE when I have a skill advantage. I can grind 16bb at that point and do better.
I regret my play, but I want to be clear that I didn’t care about ICM at this point, and wanted to build a stack here going to FT. Obviously winning this pot as opposed to folding makes that much more likely and I talked myself in to a bad call being very exhausted. I learned a lesson from this about how to manage my brain when exhausted (go with my instinct first and don’t trust super tired brain logic)
Don’t need anyone to “call me out”. I already realize I made an error. That type of attitude is bad for poker and will only make people feel bad when they make bad plays. Which is the opposite of what should happen. It was just my 3rd time all-in at risk in 7 days, btw, and the only time as a dog. I played a lot of great poker in this but messed up my last hand, and didn’t get there. So it goes.
Justin Bonomo analyzed Tamayo and Foxen's hands using poker software:
I played with the KQ and QQ hands in HRC and PioSolver
Disclaimer: Kristen is a BEAST of a player with 4 bracelets (more than me!) and a zillion other accomplishments
And I'm a big Tamayo fan. Successful poker player who's been around for two decades, extremely nice dude, always pleasant to play with, and I love it when he shares his interesting golf stories
Poker is crazy hard, and days 8+ of the main event are arguably the most difficult situations in all of poker to navigate
With that out of the way...
Both were pretty egregious missteps
Tamayo's was a mid 6 figure mistake
Kristen's was a mid 5 figure mistake
Tony Dunst chimed in, "The QQ fold was especially surprising after Tamayo reshoved A6o BBvCO against a guy opening off 12ish bigs (with 15 or so left). Maybe I’m missing pay jump/ICM info but the queens seem like a slam dunk next to that."
"Absurd fold with QQ," agreed Joseph Cheong, "but love that he snap folded and just owns it and dgaf what ppl say haha."
"My favorite part of watching day 7 is rooting for the best hand to win," Matt Affleck admitted. "No shenanigans. I just want to retain my title of worst bad beats In poker."
Jeremy Ausmus and Scott Seiver were in contention for the Player of the Year title until recent tournaments.
In that tournament, Jeremy stayed in until 7th place and even reached the first line for a while. However, on the same day, Scott took 3rd place in an online tournament for $10k and guaranteed himself a victory by 99%.
Patrik Antonius was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.
In honor of this event, he even played his first and only tournament of the series – the Poker Hall of Fame Bounty with a buy-in of $1,979.
After a short ceremony, Patrick announced "Shuffle Up and Deal" and took his place at the table. However, he did not make it through on the second day.
Phil Galfond endorsed the committee's choice:
"When you see the inductee and your first thought is, “Wait, he wasn’t already in?” you know it was a good choice."
On the second day of the main tournament, the TV table dealt , and . The players with kings and queens folded preflop.
“20 years ago these three would be allin and the full clip would be 12 seconds long,” Josh Arieh reminisces. "Poker is evolving!”
Mike McDonald stopped going to the World Series after 2019, but even he was interested in watching the main event.
“TIL there are over 80 wsop events,” he said, a little surprised when he saw that the Main Event was number 81.
"Its slightly misleading," Siever hastened to reassure him. "They basically added literal 25 $600 events that all get 20,000 people. there are basically the exact same number of plausible event as there have been for a while. they just keep bloating the bottom."
