WSOP first-timer collects gold bracelet and $480,564 in Mixed Max event
5 Jun 2012
Cazals, a 21-year-old online poker pro currently residing on the island-nation of Malta, collected $480,564 in prize money. He was also presented with his first WSOP gold bracelet. However, this tournament is more likely to be remembered for its historic ramifications and even some controversy that impacted play on what was expected to be the final day.
“Mixed Max” made its Las Vegas debut, following a highly-successful inaugural showing at the 2011 WSOP Europe held last October in (Cannes) France -- ironically the birthplace of the winner. Also known as “No-Limit Hold’em (Split-Format)", the tournament requires participants to play three distinct configurations of no-limit spread over (what was to be) four consecutive days and nights.
First day matches were played nine-handed. Second day matches were played six-handed. Third and fourth day matches – and alas, what bled into an unscheduled fifth day -- were played heads-up. The final 32 players were seeded according to brackets and ultimately played down to a winner.
The inaugural gold bracelet event attracted a higher than expected turnout. The tourney drew 409 entrants, more than three times the number who participated in the similar version spread last year at WSOP Europe. However, just when things were sailing along smoothly, an unforeseen series of developments sidetracked what was to be the fourth and final day.
It began on Sunday afternoon when Cazals sat down to face Warwick Mirzikinian in the heads-up semifinal. Across the room, the other semifinal match – between Joseph Cheong and Hugo Lemaire -- played out in the relatively brisk time of a couple of hours. Meanwhile, Cazals had absolutely no idea he was entering the first stage of what would turn out to be a record-breaking test of endurance.
One hour passed. Then, two, three, four. By sundown -- seven hours into the duel -- players and spectators began inquiring about the longest heads-up match in tournament poker history. The answer was -- 7 hours and 6 minutes. That’s the precise amount of time it took David “Chip” Reese to defeat Andy Bloch in the final stage of the $50,000 buy-in H.O.R.S.E. event held six years ago.
By 10 p.m., everyone inside the tournament arena -- and a worldwide audience following the action online -- knew they were witnessing something that had never happened before. As things turned out, the old record of seven hours was a mere sprint compared to the brain-mashing 9-hour and 25-minute marathon death match that took place in the Amazon Room at the Rio in Las Vegas on Sunday. By the time Cazals finally extinguished the fire that was Mirzikinian’s spirit – absolutely refusing to surrender his chips no matter what the disadvantage -- players, spectators, and even staff, were camped around the final table like a late-night marshmallow roast.
In the end, Mirzikinian ended up as the toasted marshmallow. All those grueling decisions, all that thinking and rethinking, all that careful planning and contemplation wiped out in a futile session that would have had the exact same financial consequences had he busted out on the first hand, instead of the 300th — some nine hours earlier. Poor Mirzikinian could have had lunch, watched a movie, had a five-course dinner, and then seen a Vegas show for the amount of time he invested in what turned out to be wasted, albeit gallant, effort.
Worse, Mirzikinian won’t actually get any “official” credit for being fodder on the sacrificial altar of poker history. Since the semifinal was not actually the “heads-up” stage of the tournament (which means between the last two players competing for a gold bracelet), the quasi-record setting match will carry an asterisk. In reality, the semifinal was most certainly the longest heads-up match of any poker tournament in history. Never have two competitors sat face to face for so long at a tournament table.
"At the beginning I had a good feeling because I won a couple of pots," said Cazals. "Then I started running bad and missing flops. It was a very tough match, knowing when to pick the aggressiveness pre- and post-flop. At the end, I was very tired, but he was, too. His tiredness caused some mistakes in the end. I think my youth and endurance prevailed in the end. I used to run long distance races and that helped me well with my endurance at the table."
But the story wasn’t quite finished yet. Due to the literal “midnight hour,” the two actual finalists – Cazals and Cheong – found themselves face to face with tournament staff, contemplating options. The natural decision was to go ahead and play out the match, no matter how late it went. Trouble was, Cheong had been sidelined for so long in a waiting game, never anticipating the other match would drag out more than nine hours. He therefore played in another tournament and had accumulated a healthy stack of chips, leaving him with the quandary of potentially playing an all-nighter and then bunny-hopping into the second day of the other gold bracelet tournament, no matter what the hour or how severe his fatigue.
Things were a mess. The cliff notes of the late-night discussion were that everyone eventually agreed to return for what would be an unscheduled fifth day, which began on ESPN’s main stage on Monday at noon.
Like two gunfighters walking into the Rio corral at high noon, Cheong and Cazals returned for the ultimate showdown, which was anticipated to retest the endurance of both players and especially Cazals -- not to mention the few in attendance who could stomach watching what amounted to the proverbial equivalent of poker's drying paint.
All one had to do to know they were in for another killer was to consider the starting blinds/antes in relation to the chip stacks. The level called for play to start at 4,000-8,000 with a 1,000 ante. So, the cost to play a round was 14,000. Sounds high, until one considers the stacks of the two players -- about 3,000,000 each. That's right -- three million.
Indeed, never before in any tournament in history had the average stack represents 375 big blinds. Moreover, anyone who suggests the WSOP shortchanges players with structures might want to look close at this one, for fear of turning into a laughingstock.
As things turned out, the heads-up match went "only" five hours -- a walk in the park -- and ended when Cazals made trip kings versus Cheong's pocket fours on the final hand. Cheong, who is best known for his third-place finish in the 2010 WSOP Main Event, later admitted he misread a false tell on his opponent, never guessing that Cazals was so strong with the kings in a pre-flop re-raising war. Cheong's consolation prize amounted to a less-than-satisfying payout. The reported figure Cheong "won" was $296,956 for second place. But
in the runner up's mind, he "lost" nearly two-hundred grand – the difference in prize money between 1st and 2nd.
So, while Cazals goes down in the history books as the sixth winner of a gold bracelet at this year’s WSOP, the final outcome could be somewhat of a sidebar to the reality that nothing at the WSOP ever goes quite as predicted. A first-time gold bracelet event, a record-setting heads-up match, and even some controversy about how the tournament was managed shall ultimately be the remembrances associated with what was a memorable five-day marathon.
The top 44 finishers collected prize money. Mirzikinian and Hugo Lemaire won $162,443 for advancing to the semifinals. Six former WSOP gold bracelet winners cashed in this event, including Brock Parker, who made the round of 16, and round of 32 players John “World” Hennigan, Brian Rast, Konstantin Puchkov an Eric Froehlich. Gavin Smith, who finished 38th, was also in the money.
Modified from tournament notes provided by WSOP Media Director Nolan Dalla.