Day 2A of the World Series is a welcome change from the craziness of the Day Ones. Those four days added up to the longest day of my life. There is actually room to breathe inside the Amazon Room, and it’s getting more spacious with the passing of each minute. Everywhere I walked during the first level today I heard the heart-pounding cry of “All in and a call!” One of the quietest tables I came across was table number 65. The fact that Berry Johnston, the 1985 world champion and a man known for not wasting words, was sitting there did nothing to change the table’s tranquility.
Johnston provided an interesting contrast to the amateur sitting on his right who was loud in every way. While Johnston wore a white golf shirt under a gray jacket adorned with nothing other than a Full Tilt Poker patch, the amateur sported a multi-colored t-shirt with Bob Marley on it and a camouflage New York Yankees hat worn at a slight angle. I had played against this in a cash game several nights ago and wasn’t impressed by his game. He shoved all in twice in fifteen minutes with nothing more than top pair and lost both times, once to an overpair and later against two pair. After tossing away two buy-ins, he bolted from the game. I am amazed that he survived the first day of this tournament and will be even more shocked if he lasts this one.
The kid does have one amazing skill, and that is his ability to get Johnston talking. At one point the two had a discussion about the money bubble. If the field gets whittled down to 300 today, a possibility considering the many eliminations so far, and the same thing happens tomorrow, how will they determine who gets in the money? 621 players are to get paid. The dealer Lu interjected her opinion but neither player was very interested in it. She tried to make up for this slight by telling a story about how she had dealt quads over quads the previous day. One player had pocket sevens, another pocket threes, and the flop came 7-3-3. They got all their money in and the player with sevens caught a fourth one to win the hand.
Known as much for his conservative play as his taciturnity, Johnston showed a willingness to go against type during a hand just prior to the first break when he played J
4 from the button. The flop came A
K3. It got checked around and another heart fell on the turn. A woman bet 2k and Johnston and one other player called. The river was the J
. It got checked around again and Johnston won the hand with his pair of jacks.
Right now Johnston has 145k, putting him close to the top of the leader board. Jeff Banghart has 267k. The kid sitting on Johnston’s right has, at best, 30k. I think we all know how this story is going to end, but the kid seems determined to last the day. “I got kids to feed, man,” he told a friend visiting his table.
