Two Plus Two Older Archives - Best $100/200 stars player

i'll bite a little bit more

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Binion's Horseshoe
World Series of Poker
Event #6
Pot-limit Hold'em
$1,500 buy-in
212 Entrants
$295,740 Prize Pool

"It was a roller-coaster," was how Prahlad Friedman described the sixth event of WSOP 2003, pot-limit hold'em. Indeed it was. He started as final-table chip leader with $85,000. With four players left, he had amassed some $190,000 of the $327,000 of chips in play with relentless raising, blind-stealing and bluffing, sometimes showing his successful bluffs, hoping to get an opponent steaming. But some 30 hands later he had managed to lose the lead to Hov Ung. Then, with two players left, he had his final opponent out-chipped at one point by 327k-45k, and managed to lose that lead as well. But after that he surged ahead to take down first place and $109,400 along with not only his first bracelet, but his first WSOP money finish as well.

He declined to make a deal when he was heads-up with Bernig "Bernie" Rygol of Munich, Germany. "He wasn't gambling enough where I felt it was necessary to chop," Friedman explained. If he was gambling and raising and re-raising, then it would be a crap shoot with those blinds. But he was playing too passive."

Friedman (no relation to Perry Friedman, who won a $1,500 Omaha hi-lo event here last year) is a 24-year-old ethnic studies student at UC Berkeley who plays side games in the northern California area at limits up to $400-$800. Last year he chopped a $3,000 no-limit tournament at the Bellagio, taking home 150k. A social activist who's considering law school to practice civil rights or environmental law, he took advantage of his moment in the spotlight following his victory to take the microphone and make a brief anti-war statement and plea for peace ala Michael Moore at this year's Academy Awards.