[PokerPaul]

I just finished reading his new book detailing his background and his adventure to the wsop championship.

I was always a bit skeptical of his performance, based on limited TV clips, and general gossip being passed around. He has often been berated among poker circles as "lucky" and other negative things.

Well, after reading the book, which i thought was great,
i must say that i have changed my opinion somewhat.

First off, give credit to MM for portraying himself as the degenerate gambler he is (or was before WSOP), and not using the book to give himself a better image given his now celebrity status.

I kept hearing how he was "lucky" and his performance was of the weakest WSOP winning performances when compared to all the great champions prior to internet age.

Well, not only do i think his performance was at least as good as other memorable champions, i think it may be the best ever.

When you take into account that he had to win a $40 sattelite with 25 people in it, followed by winning another sattelite with close to 2000 people in it, and then follow it up by winning the 876 person wsop tourney all in a row, i find it very hard to chalk it all up to luck.

You gotta play well to make it throug that many people and stages and win all of them outright.

Yes he was probably not the best player in the world when the WSOP started, but he learned quickly as the tournament progressed and adjusted his strategy.

The funny thing is, for all the "luck" people claim he had, every champion must get lucky a few times and draw the card they need to get through. However, when you look at it he was almost never in a position where he was allin and needed to draw from behind to stay alive.

Many of the big hands when he was trailing to 2 or 3 outs (brenes, ivey) surely would have cut his chances down significantly, but he wasnt allin and still would have been around.

I only recall 1 or 2 spots where he was allin and trailing and get the draw.

And those hands were more than offset by some of the great reads he made on people to take down huge pots.

For instance, taking on the only other stack bigger than his at table Dutch Boyd, hes sitting with small PP on something like T25 board and dutch pushes.

He had both the proper read, and the guts to take him on and risk losing 5 days worth of work and a multimillion dollar payout on that weak hand, but one he knew he was ahead regardless.

See for me, even if i had the proper read, i still don't think i would have the guts to follow it up in that situation with calling him down, which is probably why MM turned into the champion, and i likely would just make it far but not top spot.

For all us WSOP champion wannabes or WSOP virgins, i thought it was a great read on what goes on in the head of a newbie WSOP player, and how it feels to build a stack and survive from day to day.

I'm seriously thinking of buying into main event after that....