I think Carlos Mortensen just won the Tertiary Hammer Challenge by raising with the Hammer at the WPT event at the Borgata and getting the table to fold!
Wait. It was a tournament, not a cash game. And he didn’t show his cards to the table. Plus he doesn’t have a poker blog. And has probably never heard of the Hammer. Nevermind. I guess he doesn’t get the Fat Guy’s classic Faro decks after all.
In any event, it’s great to see good players firing with The Hammer in early position.
UPDATE A second Hammer makes the TV! David Oppenheim reraised Carlos’ A3o only to lay down when Carlos reraised him back. How many Hammers are we going to see?
UPDATE 2 Noli Francisco just killed the table to win this tournament. He could read players amazingly well when he had the short stack and played extremely well with the big chip lead. He was willing to endure coin flips because he knew he had the chips to take a loss.
Also interesting to watch was Randy Burger, an amateur player who, like WSOP champ Chris Moneymaker, won his seat in an online tournament. I admire him for making it to the final table at a WPT event with only six months of poker under his belt. His inexperience showed, though, as his tells were fantastically obvious. (He always checked his cards when he had a monster.) That said, he has a great bad beat story to tell. Holding AJ against Mortensen’s AT with a board of A-x-x-x, Burger went all-in and got Mortensen to call - only to have a T hit on the river and knock him out of the tournament. If you are going to tell a bad beat story, you might as well tell one that starts with “So I was heads-up in a pot with the 2002 WSOP champion...” And his $12 online buy-in became $41,000 when he finished in 6th place. Not bad at all.
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