Glass ceiling
“Aim for the sky and you’ll reach the ceiling. Aim for the ceiling and you’ll stay on the floor.”
Legendary football manager Bill Shankly had a way with words and those particular words rang loudly in my head today as I watched Leo Margets break a glass ceiling that has seen a few dings down the years but no meaningful cracks. No woman this century has made the Main Event final table of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) – a statistical quirk which is the product of the law of small numbers rather than any reflection on talent.
Women in poker punch at their weight and now they have a representative on the biggest stage
Nonetheless, it has been a data-point that has mired the perception of women in our great game in some quarters, giving ammunition to the standpat chauvinists and misogynists who would cling to bogus information if it supported their mossbacked world view. Women in poker punch at their weight and now they have a representative on the biggest stage.
Joining her is an eclectic mix of poker talent, a smorgasbord of rounders, all with their sights on $10,000,000 and a place in the history books. Headlining alongside Margets is the four-time Poker Player’s Championship (PPC) victor Michael ‘The Grinder’ Mizrachi, 6-time PokerGo Tour champion Adam Hendrix, and 2016 November Niner Kenny Hallaert.
Margets
Tiffany Michelle came 17th in the Main Event in 2008. Tiffany Williamson was 15th in 2005. Kristen Foxen bust in 13th place last year. Marsha Wagoner was 12th in 1997. Elizabeth Hille and Gaelle Baumann were eleventh and tenth respectively in 2012. In fact, that bubble position has loomed large in the annals with Barbara Samuelson (1994), Susie Isaacs (1998), and Annie Duke (2000). You have to go back to 1995 to find the last female finalist when Barbara Enright came 5th.
With the weight of history on her shoulders, Margets came into Day 8 mid-pack, 15th out of 24 remaining players, grinding her stack up to the 35 million mark before a key hand versus Sergio Veloso when her jacks dramatically held against his big slick for a monster pot.
The rail erupted after this hand but after enjoying the moment, Margets calmly retook her seat and got back to the job at hand. A veteran of the felt, she proceeded to play aces very cutely blind versus blind, limping versus then chipleader Braxton Dunaway, a lightly treaded line that ultimately saved her tournament life when he flopped top pair and rivered trips.
Margets found a deft 3-bet with an offsuit wheel ace late in the day to pinch one and keep herself nestled into the chasing pack, just shy of the average stack and 5th place of the final 9. She came 27th in the Main Event in 2009. She defeated Alex Kulev to win her bracelet in the Closer in 2021. Those ones were sweet but this one would be a lot sweeter.
Mizrachi
Benny Glaser has three bracelets. Blaz Zerjav had two. Shaun Deeb is leading the Player Of The Year. Yet this has somehow become The Year Of The Grinder. I guess a fourth PPC title was not enough for Mizrachi who is now on the cusp of a truly singular feat, a feat which seemed unlikely when he punted his Ace Jack right out of the gate on Day 8.
You are in the hands of the Poker Gods when you get that low but they smiled on Mizrachi
Running into Ace-Queen in a genuinely reckless spot, he was left with little more than three big blinds. You are in the hands of the Poker Gods when you get that low but they smiled on Mizrachi and the comeback was muscled into existence. He opened Queen-Jack offsuit and 4-bet shoved over what he correctly determined was a light Tony Gregg 3-bet off a stack of sub-20bbs. Then he cold-4-bet ripped 33 big blinds with Ace-Queen over a Margets open and Hallaert 3-bet.
As gears were shifted, loose opens manifested, as did spicy positional flat-call. In one memorable hand, he called a Dunaway open with the K♠️4♠️ on the button. He flatted a c-bet on A♦️Q♠️3♠️. The turn 4♣️ elicited a couple of checks and on the river 7♥️, Dunaway fired half-pot. Mizrachi found the call and was shown K♥️4♥️ for a chop.
Mizrachi then eliminated the supremely talented Gregg in 11th, a real danger-man in the field. It felt like a foregone conclusion that the A♠️J♠️ would hold versus A♦️4♦️because when The Grinder takes a tournament by the scruff of the neck, he doesn’t let go. Gregg was drawing dead on the turn and the unofficial final table was set.
Hallaert
One man who has been there and done it before is Kenny Hallaert, an optimised get-it-quietly live and online pro who contributes to all facets of the game as a tournament director, consultant, ambassador and spreadsheet wizard. In 2016, Hallaert took sixth in the Big Dance and he has several other deep Main Event runs on his resume. He won the Irish Open Highroller earlier this year and has been feeling the wind at his back throughout this tournament, bagging double average each and every day.
Day 8 was a bit more of a rollercoaster for the Belgian who lost, retook and again lost the chiplead, relying on a key pot late in the day versus Dunaway to clamber into fourth in chips. Hallaert opened Q♥️T♥️ and checked back middle pair and a flush draw on the flop. Dunaway led out on the A♥️ turn, a card which delivered him top two-pair but also brought Hallaert the second nuts. Hallaert took it upstairs, bloating the pot for a chunky river barrel which Dunaway stationed off.
he found a two-street hero-call with just second pair multi-way
Nothing is ever easy in the Main Event and shortly after that hand, Hallaert was sending chips to Jarod Minghini who, to his credit, earned every one of them when he found a two-street hero-call with just second pair multi-way. It was a tidy bluff from Hallaert whose flush draw had missed but tidier still was the deployment of blockers which contributed to Minghini hero-call.
Hendrix
Hendrix was in the ascendancy on Day 7, climbing to the upper echelons of the leaderboard with 24 players left. He told sideline reporters that it had been a “pretty smooth day” and it is clear that smoothness is his jam as he navigated his way through Day 8 in unspectacular fashion, positioning himself into a cluster of chasers who are hovering around the very playable 30 big blind mark.
The tournament veteran has $8.4m in lifetime results and, like all the combatants, is jostling for a new career-high water mark. Aside from his dominance in the PokerGo Studio, he has two World Poker Tour final tables. On Tuesday, he will play his 13th WSOP final table, alongside eight other hopefuls all dreaming of poker immortality.
There is something truly special about The Main Event, which always seems to deliver as a spectacle. With the unceremonious Day 7 departure of he who shall not be named, poker was allowed to become the storyline again and the real poker players were allowed to take centre-stage again. This is what the game we love is all about; nine players all looking to the sky so one of them can reach the ceiling.