0 for 47: Dream Final Table Turns to Nightmare for Lynskey
For tournament poker players, making the World Series of Poker Main Event final table is the pinnacle of the profession. Playing on the biggest stage in the game for life-changing money and the chance to etch their names in poker history, the players who make it there are fulfilling years-long dreams.
But what if that dream turned into a nightmare? What if, instead of trading pots under the bright lights with all of the poker world watching, a player endures hours of frustration with nary a single small victory?
Racener: "It's really disappointing to get that far and then run ice cold."
That's exactly what happened to Alex Lynskey on Thursday evening.
An experienced pro with over $1.7 million in cashes, the Aussie found himself at a final table relatively bereft of high-level tournament experience. Only Joe Cada and Artem Metalidi had more live earnings. Furthermore, Lynskey had a solid stack with 43 big blinds, putting him in fifth place. With the ultra-slow structure of the Main Event, Lynskey was widely considered a strong contender for poker's biggest prize.
Yet, over the course of about three hours, he didn't drag a single pot.
It's not unprecedented. Patrick Chan won zero hands back in 2015, but he came in with under 20 big blinds and likely was ready to get stacks in early, which he did on the second hand when he called Joe McKeehen's shove with king-queen and lost to ace-hour. Fernando Pons didn't do much better in 2016, only getting a single preflop shove through en route to busting out 12 hands in.
Still, Lynskey's situation going in, called for a bit more optimism. Every poker player with more than an ounce of experience knows it can all go awry in a single hand at any time, but crushing disappointment would seem to be the natural reaction to having high hopes dashed so completely.
"I can't imagine how frustrating that must be for him," said fellow pro Kristen Bicknell when asked about Lynskey's unfortunate Day 8. "I'm sure that he was in a spot that he felt really good about. It must just be so disappointing.
"That's the unfortunate part of poker that there is that variance and luck that is involved. It's such a huge spot to not get a hand or to keep getting setups."
John Racener can relate, albeit on a much smaller scale. He was fortunate enough to have some positive variance on his side when he advanced to his own WSOP Main Event final table and managed to finish second for over $5.5 million.
However, more recently, he made this year's Colossus final table.
"I didn't win one hand at the final table," Racener said. "In the Colossus, there were 13,000 entries and I ran hot the entire time and then on the biggest day of the entire tournament, where first is a million dollars, I busted eighth. I can't win one hand.
"It's really disappointing to get that far and then run ice cold."
Racener only had to endure 20 hands of misery, though. Lynskey had more than double that: 47 hands played, 47 times Lynskey's hand went into the muck and the pot went to another player.
"I don't think I could play 47 hands straight and not win a pot," Racener said. "I would just start playing hands literally blind and try to create a win some way, somehow."
Ausmus: "At the end of the day, you have to look at you got seventh in the Main Event. Just to get there is a great payday."
Like Racener, Jeremy Ausmus made the final table of the Main Event once upon a time. Ausmus finished fifth in 2012 for over $2.1 million. He knows a little something about laddering for big paydays, and he pointed out the bright side of surviving 47 hands without winning a pot: two other players went bust before Lynskey, earning him $500,000 in extra prize money.
"If you ladder up two spots, that's very significant," he said. "I'd rather win zero pots and ladder up two spots than win 10 pots and ladder up zero spots. That's possible too.
"At the end of the day, you have to look at you got seventh in the Main Event. That day, maybe you didn't win any pots, but throughout the tournament, you won lots of pots. You're there so you're luckier than 7,500 or 8,000 other people who played the tournament. Just to get there is a great payday."
Racener concurred.
"I mean, $1.5 million in 7 days is pretty strong," he said.
While it's not the result Lynskey likely hoped for when he sat down for poker's most-watched final table, poker players who have achieved his level of success these days have by and large learned to avoid results-oriented thinking.
If you played well, you live with it an move on. Variance has to take care of the rest, and someday, poker players have to believe that variance will shine on them in a key spot.
In that vein, Bicknell pointed out that Lynskey's 0-for-47 is nothing about which he should feel shame or regret so long as he feels he made profitable decisions.
Bicknell: "I think that everyone knows he's a great player and was a favorite to win,"
"I saw he made a great fold with ace-queen to a three-bet," she said, referencing a hand where he ran into ace-king and folded despite being on a short stack. "I'm sure he'll look over the hands and feel really good about it. He's a really good player. From what I saw, he played really well."
"I think that on the one hand running bad in that spot is unfortunate but on the other hand, he made the final table of the Main Event. So, he must feel pretty excited and happy about that. He had a huge rail and a ton of support and I'm sure that it's bittersweet."
Bittersweet. It's a word Ausmus also used. The bitterness presumably comes from the fact that a player making it into Lynskey's spot got agonizingly close to a life-defining payday. The sweetness, though, runs $1.5 million deep.
And who knows what could happen down the road. While the odds of Lynskey making it this far again have to be pretty solidly against, Cada, Michael Ruane and Mark Newhouse demonstrated that it's certainly not impossible.
"I think that everyone knows he's a great player and was a favorite to win," Bicknell said. "I wouldn't [be surprised] to see him there again."
