It was a bit more than 13 hours from start to finish, but a relative newcomer to the game, Chris Potter, took down his first ring at his first WSOP-C event in just his fourth recorded live cash. And he looked a bit like a freight train doing it.
There was no stopping the Die Hard Poker League member tonight. While I didn’t catch much of the early action, pretty much whenever I looked at chips, Potter’s name was on top. The action I did see at the final table was hand after hand of either pushing the much shorter stacks off their hands, or just having it when he needed to, it was pretty clear he was going to be around at the end.
His opponent head-up was certainly motivated to take this one down. This was Caldwell’s fourth final table here at WSOP-C in Calgary, and his second time heads up. Earlier in the day, he’d busted just before the final table in the TORSE game, and he jumped into this one. While he didn’t ride the big stack all day, needing doubles to stay alive earlier in the, he found a way to get to the final table, a few hours after his TORSE cash.
From the beginning of the FT, it seemed like they were destined to be heads up. Potter was miles ahead of the field, but Caldwell had no competition for second through most of the FT, either. The rest of the table was pretty short, and the FT played out pretty quickly once they got there.
The action had stalled for more than an hour 14-handed, but once that logjam was cleared, the game finished in barely an hour. And it was Potter doing most of the damage. He took out 7 of the final eight players tonight, though to be fair, he had a lot of help from Caldwell on one of those when Caldwell doubled through Nicola Tassone to leave Tassone on fumes.
Caldwell was the one who got them heads up, though. He found a heart flush on the river against Deb “Queen Bee” Vanneste, and sent her out in 3rd place.
That set up the two-way game, with Potter still in a commanding lead. Caldwell was about 3:! down in heads up, so he needed at least a couple of doubles to get to a lead. The two-way play was surprisingly passive, especially after the wrecking ball performance from both against the shorter stacks leading up to the end.
They folded six hands successively, walking the big blind each time, before they finally played a flop. It would be the only flop they saw. Caldwell opened the button to 240k, and Potter called to see 4♣Q♥2♣ on the flop.
He checked, Caldwell shoved for about 1.5 million, and Potter called with way more. “Queen is good,” Caldwell sighed as the call went in, but he was ahead with pocket tens when the money went in.
“I’m drawing,” Potter said, showing 6♥5♥ for the gutshot and backdoor heart draws. A♥9♥ on the runout was the death knell for Caldwell’s ring hopes in this one.
While Potter’s Hendon Mob profile might seem short, the DHPL hat shows he plays with some tough competition at home. Members of BC’s Die Hard Poker League are fairly frequent visitors to the Sundance room late at night for WSOP-C winners’ photos here at Deerfoot, including founder Darren Kennedy’s ring from January of this year. I’m not exactly sure how many rings DHPL members have won here, but they might need a small closet to store them all now.
