888poker Hand of the Week: WSOP Main Event Final Table
The 2017 World Series of Poker Main Event concluded early Sunday morning with Scott Blumstein standing in the winner's circle with a new bracelet and more than $8 million in prize money. Blumstein dominated most of the final table, only surrendering the chip lead for a short time before punishing his opponents with his huge chip stack.
There were several memorable hands from the finale, including a successful three-barrel bluff from Blumstein with king-high against Dan Ott, but it was a three-way all-in that captivated the audience late in the evening. Had it gone another way, it would have been the first double elimination ever to decide a WSOP Main Event champion.
Here's how it played out, courtesy of the PokerNews Live Reporting team:
Blinds/antes: 1,200,000/2,400,000/400,000
Benjamin Pollak moved all in for 35.2 million on the button and Dan Ott moved all in from the small blind for 45.8 million. Scott Blumstein was in the big blind and asked for a count. After a few short seconds, he called. The crowd went wild as the chip leader held the best hand in this epic three-way all in.
Pollak: Q♣10♦
Ott: K♣9♦
Blumstein: A♥Q♠
Pollak and Ott were all in, with Pollak being the first player at risk and well behind. Ott was the second player at risk and was very live against Blumstein's ace-high.
The flop came K♦J♠3♦ and the rail erupted as Ott took the lead with a pair of kings. Pollak picked up an open-ended straight draw, and Blumstein still had outs with a gut-shot straight draw to possibly win the entire thing.
The turn was the 4♣, and the river was the 6♠, giving Ott more than a double-up and sending Pollak out in third place, collecting an impressive payout worth $3.5 million.
This hand generated a lot of discussion on social media and poker forums, mostly because of Ott's questionable re-shove with the K♣9♦.
K9o is a pretty awful shove there but wow. Been a ton of fun watching and better to be lucky than good sometimes...#WSOP #WSOPME
— Adam Steinhaus (@AdamMatthew21)
They don't get to whether K9o is a call in the small blind vs a btn 14bb shove with ICM until the advanced upswing poker course
— Christopher Kruk (@KrukPoker)
K9o... remember this hand whenever those cash game snobs say how much better they are than us MTTers
— Dawhiteninja (@whiteninjapoker)
We asked each player about their decision making in this particular spot with so much on the line.
Benjamin Pollak
"My shove was standard, I think, with my stack of 15 big blinds. Dan is pretty short, too. They can fold a lot of hands here. I was surprised that Dan decided to shove king-nine off suit. I thought that was really bad because at best he has 60 percent equity. Scott’s ace-queen he has to call. The flop was amazing as well — king-jack-three with two diamonds. The turn and river didn’t help though."
Dan Ott
"I saw [Pollak] making a few light shoves so I thought the king-nine might have been an alright hand. I guess it was a little bit too loose … it was too loose. But I went for it, and I happened to win it."
Scott Blumstein
"You'll take that spot to try and win the tournament. I had the queen blocked and all I had to fade was a king, nine or a ten. The flop was pretty unkind and left me with three outs. That was a little frustrating but I knew that my heads-up game was gonna be good enough. I was really happy to close it out eventually."
Doug Polk, who coached Ott at the final table, also discussed Ott's play in his video blog this week.
"These guys are trying their best," Polk said. "For Dan, he ran extremely card dead at the final table. And yeah, there were some hands he played badly, particularly some of the preflop calls — the king-nine especially was definitely too loose. No doubt about that.
"But some of the postflop stuff — he didn't have any good hands over like 50 hands. What are you gonna do?"
What would you have done in Ott's spot with the K♣9♦? Check out our strategy article and place your vote.
