John Phan wins the $3k No Limit

Some of the events, make that most of the events are not recorded or televised by ESPN. The grandstand area is not used and the final table is one of the many tables used in the sea of poker in the Amazon Room in the Rio's Convention Center. One of the few cameras around for this final table was my cell phone (which I am not supposed to use while in uniform).

I finished my tour about 1:30 AM and noticed a crowd around the Green table section. It was the final of the $3000 No Limit Hold'em event. The final two players, John Phan and Jonny Neckar had been playing heads up for over six hours. This is very unusual. Yes, heads up for the title takes much longer than it seems on TV, but six hours is a very long heads up battle. The players were getting a little punchy. John Phan had convinced Johnny Neckar to play the next hand "All in blind" and Neckar agreed. Phan had more chips and therefore less to lose because if Neckar loses, he is busted, loses the title and takes second place money. Neckar wins and takes over the chip lead. Again they play a hand betting all the chips without looking at their cards. All the chips go in the middle, the cards are turned face up, then the dealer puts out the Flop, Turn and River cards to decide the winner. Phan wins and regains the chip lead. The third time they decide to play "No Peek" and go All In, see the Flop, Turn and River, then look at their cards, squeezing them out and turning them up one at a time. Neckar wins and the chip count is back to nearly exactly what it was three hands ago.

At this point I am standing on a chair trying to get a view of the table to see these guys apparently tossing a coin for the $160,000 difference between first and second place. That's when I got this picture, just about when I heard the announcer say that the players were going to go back to playing poker. Two hands later, all the money went in and John Phan came out the winner with a World Series of Poker Bracelet and $434,789. Johnny Neckar won $277, 452. You will never see this one on ESPN.