Locals cash at WSOP Main Event
By Arnold Warner

Something about walking into the Rio’s huge room that plays host to the World Series of Poker and seeing the action going on at all those tables makes you want to stick both arms straight up in the air and yell: “This is the greatest tournament in the world!”

Once again, the Main Event championship was claimed by an unknown. This year it was Jerry Yang of Temecula, California who claimed first place and the $8.25 million that went with it. But Northern California made its share of noise too. While we weren’t able to claim anyone at the final table (although sixth place finisher Hevad “Rain” Khan did live in Walnut Creek for all of four months), four NorCal residents did place in the top 100 out of 6,358 entries.

Lamar Wilkinson of Pacheco came in 51st place ($190,053), Matt Keikoan from San Rafael took 63rd place ($154,194), Palo Alto’s Diego Cordovez placed 67th ($130,288), and David Names of San Ramon claimed the 78th spot ($106,382). We caught up with two of them—Keikoan and Names—after the dust had settled, and asked them to tell us about themselves and their experiences at the World Series.

Matt Keikoan has been playing poker full time for about 15 years now. His roots go deep in the NorCal poker community, having worked as a prop at the California Grand Casino (Pacheco), Diamond Syl’s (Pacheco—closed), the Oaks Card Club (Emeryville), and as a host at San Pablo Lytton Casino.

During those early years he made friends with some other up-and-coming players who have since made quite a mark on the poker world, including Erick Lindgren, Phil Laak, Antonio Esfandiari, Bill Edler, Gabe Thaler, and Bill Gazes. “I knew Bill Gazes when he was riding a moped around Berkeley and coming to San Pablo,” Keikoan said. He added that the Bay Area is, “a breeding ground for a lot of the top poker players.”

While he mostly plays cash games at Lucky Chances Casino (Colma) and Bay 101 Casino (San Jose), Keikoan started playing more tournaments when they became big on television a few years ago. Over the last three years he has been playing most of the $10,000 tournaments in California and Nevada as well as some on the East Coast, but found his results somewhat discouraging.

“Before the Main Event I was seriously considering semi-retiring from tournaments, simply because it takes up so much of my time and I haven’t had any success,” he said, having entered 12 other WSOP events in 2007 and only cashing in one. But he had a good feeling this year about the Main Event, a premonition which held up.

“It started off great. I was a big stack from the very beginning. I ended the first day with 182,000 and probably the top 20 in chips and had a big stack pretty much the whole tournament until the fifth day. It was one of those tournaments where I got chips early and I just managed to build the entire tournament and was never in any real danger, which is the ultimate,” he said. “It’s the ideal way to go through a tournament as opposed to struggling and constantly being a short stack. It was nice to have a big stack, especially in that tournament because there are so many amateur players, so many people who really don’t have any idea what they’re doing.”

One opponent he came upon early in the tournament who did seem to know what he was doing was Hank Azaria (“The Simpsons”). “I saw him last year fold KK preflop and he was right it turned out, because the other guy had aces, so I knew he could fold a hand obviously. He was pretty tight, too, and he had come in for a raise and I had called him with a suited connector, 7-8. I like to play those hands in position against players that are somewhat predictable.

“I called his raise and the flop came A-7-2 and he checked to me and I thought if he’s got a big pair maybe I can get him off his hand so I made a bet and he check-raised me. So I was pretty certain he had A-K, maybe A-Q, but I had a three flush and if I hit a 7 or an 8 I could get a lot of his chips, so I had to call.

“There was a two-flush on the board, so I thought if the flush card comes I might be able to bluff him, so I called and the turn came the flush. So there’s three of a suit on the board, and now he checked to me. There was 5,000, maybe 6,000 in the pot, which at that stage was pretty key.

“So I made a big bet and he thought for what seemed like forever, probably three or four minutes, then finally folded. He told me he had a big hand, but sometimes those pots early in a tournament … picking up that pot was the difference between having 18,000 and 12,000 which was pretty significant at that point.”

When Day 5 started Keikoan had a little more than 1.5 million in chips, but, despite not playing any big pots, saw his stack getting eaten away by the blinds and antes. When he was knocked out the blinds were up to 15,000/30,000 with 5,000 antes. “If you come in for a raise or call a raise it’s like 90,000. If you bet the flop or call the flop its like 150,000. If you just play a few of those hands, next thing you know 1.5 million is 700,000, which is basically what happened to me. A few hands here and there ….”

Philosophically speaking, Keikoan says, “Everyone has their weaknesses. Even the very best players in the world have weaknesses. So I think your job is to try to figure out what those are and exploit them. You know, I have weaknesses. If people can figure out what they are—then that’s what poker’s about. Figuring out what people are doing and what kind of cards they’re playing and what kind of moves they’re making and trying to counter it.”

As for being eliminated, his reaction was not surprising: “Needless to say I wanted to win the tournament. The deeper you get, the more you can see the finish line. I was definitely disappointed, but at the same time it was a good experience for me. I didn’t make any big mistakes, so I was happy with the way I played. I hope I go deep again next year.”

David Names of San Ramon is an experienced amateur who’s been playing poker since 1999 when not working as a production manager for a precision sheet metal and machine shop. He’s been playing tournaments at places like Lucky Chances as well as home games, but lately has been a semi-regular at The Palace Club in Hayward.

He won a satellite into the Main Event at a home game in which he and 23 other players put up $700 each with first place getting the WSOP buy-in plus $1,000 in expense money. The good news for the other 23 players at that home game was the agreement that they would each have a one percent stake of whatever their champion brought home from Las Vegas. Names excellent play therefore got each of them their original buy-in back, plus a little juice to go with it.

The spectacle of seeing that room with all those tables hit him when he first walked in. “It was amazing, coming into the room,” he said. “The magnitude of everything. All those people in one room playing. It was just unbelievable. But I wanted to stay focused and not think about that. Just not get too overwhelmed by everything. It’s hard not to.”

But it didn’t take him long to feel like he could do just fine, even against the seasoned pros. “I believe that a lot of the top players have a lot of leaks in their game that you can see when you play with them,” he said.

He started off well, winning small pots and building his stack. He says he went card dead after the dinner break that first day, so things started to look a little grim. That turned around, however. “Early in level six I was all-in for one of the few times in the whole tournament with A-Q against two jacks and I hit an ace on the turn to double up to about 38,000, and then I was able to finish the day with over 80,000.”

It wasn’t until Day 4 that he was all in again. “I got it in with two aces against a guy with two queens. That was in the first 30 minutes of Day 4, and then on Day 5 I did the same thing with two aces against the guy’s two queens in about the first 15 minutes after I sat down. I was very fortunate that I was able to double up early on Day 4 and early on Day 5.”

When asked if he had any run ins with the big names of poker, he shared the classic bad beat story that ended his tournament. “I actually got eliminated by Scotty Nguyen. He sucked out on me. He hit a five card out to eliminate me. It was sickening.

“A guy opened for a raise (the blinds were 12,000/24,000) and the guy immediately to his left called. Scotty Nguyen called. I was in the big blind and already 24,000 in there and he only raised to 70,000 so I called. I had J-9 of diamonds and the flop came J-9-7. I flopped top two.

“I checked to the original raiser. I wanted to check-raise him. I was thinking there was a lot of money out there and nobody showed too much strength. He checked and the guy behind him checked too. Scotty bet out 120,000 and I shoved in for 530,000 more. Then the original raiser folded two aces—he checked his aces on the flop, I don’t know why—then the guy to his left who had called and checked folded two eights and Scotty called with J-10. So he had top pair with a gutshot, but two of his eights had been folded by the other guy. So he had two chances at five outs and he hit a 10 on the turn.”

He’s looking forward to next year, though. “As sickening as getting eliminated was, it was the best poker experience of my life so far. To do that well on my first time I was pretty proud and my friends were very supportive and very proud too.”

In addition to the four who made the top 100 of the Main Event, there were many other NorCal residents who cashed in the tournament. They are: Andrew Barnes, Saratoga, 124th; Phi Tran, Stockton, 202nd; Kenneth Lawrence, Santa Rosa, 204th; Jason Heidema, Sunnyvale, 226th; Theodore Park, San Francisco, 232nd; Takashi Takii, Sacramento, 245th; Daniel Smith, Folsom, 286th; Mark Sanchez, Walnut Creek, 288th; Sverre Sundro, San Francisco, 316th; Steven Miranda, Burlingame, 320th; Kevin Chan, San Jose, 351st; Brian Darmanin, Redwood City, 372nd; Dennis Lane, Corte Madera, 386th; Michael Cooper, San Francisco, 388th; Edward Anselmo, San Jose, 401st; Gregory Liang, Sunnyvale, 409th; Hien Tran, Sacramento, 444th; Wade Chow, San Francisco, 451st; Jason Tikijian, Fowler, 473rd; William Stocker, Los Altos, 482nd; Justin (J.C.) Tran, Sacramento, 493rd; Jason Stern, San Jose, 567th; Kevin Lake, Fresno, 576th; and Frank Holloway, Antelope, 596th.

Congratulations go out to all of these players. Twenty-eight out of 621 players who cashed hailed from Northern California—that’s nearly five percent. Not bad at all when you’re competing against the whole world!