Shock
and Awe Wilkins
This wasn’t a poker tournament,
it was a train wreck, an earthquake, a
nuclear explosion. A poker player named
Andrey Wilkins kept coming up with the
most unbelievable series of “shock
and awe” hands that totally devastated
the final table as he ran off with a one-sided
win in the 14th event of Legends of Poker
2003, $300 limit hold’em. Wilkins,
returning to tournaments after a three-year
hiatus to regain his focus, started with
a very big lead of $43,500 and went up
like a rocket from there.
With 17:46 remaining, final table starting
stakes were $1,000-$1,500 blinds and $1,500-$3,000
limits. Since this meant that six of the
10 players had only enough chips for between
three and six bet big bets, there figured
to be some early casualties.
The first was Hon Le. On the sixth hand
he had pocket kings and lost most of his
chips when Avner Levy, with A-K, flopped
an ace. As the Kamikaze Kid smacked the
table in frustration, the first (and as
it turned out, the last) of Levy’s
trademark “Send to Papa!” shrieks
split the air. Hon Le lost his remaining
chips in the big blind on the next hand
when his king-high went nowhere. Four
hands later, with limits at 2-4k, former
Vegas craps dealer Ed Sloman crapped out
when he went all in with A-Q and lost
to Minh Nguyen’s A-5 when a 5-7-3
flopped.
Wilkins was now to deliver several shocking
body blows that pretty much destroyed
both the chips and morale of the other
players. On hand 20, Minh Nguyen was ecstatic
when a river queen gave him a set. But
then, to his anguish, he discovered that
he had been virtually drawing dead after
the flop, which had given Wilkins a nut
spade flush. Minh’s cards came close
to leaving the table when he shoved them
back to the dealer.
On the very next hand, Jimmy Stewart,
a consultant, bet all in with pocket sevens
when the flop came 9-9-J. Wilkins turned
his hand up. He had flopped quad nines!
He had now run his chip count up to somewhere
in the 90k range.
(On hand 24, Sang Houangvanh finished
in seventh place when he went in with
A-7 and Eugene Tito, with A-K, flopped
trip kings. But that’s just a sideline
to the real story, so let’s get on
with it.)
On
hand 27, Levy kept betting with the best
hand, A-J and Wilkins kept calling with
Kd-2d until, to Levy’s disbelief,
Wilkins made a flush on the river.
On
hand 33, Levy three-bet the pot pre-flop,
this time confidently holding pocket aces.
The flop was Q-Q-J. Levy bet the flop,
then the turn, and then Wilkins raised
to put him in for two more chips. Wilkins
had pocket jacks. He had flopped a full
house! Five players were now left.
“Wow!
You’re amazing!” Tito raved,
echoing the sentiments of the table and
spectators. Wilkins, totally focused,
refusing to be diverted or distracted,
did not respond or move a muscle. Throughout
the final table, he had been so concentrated,
so zeroed-in, that he made a player as
remarkably focused as Phil Ivey seem like
a hyperactive child by comparison.
The
chip count now stood: Minh Nguyen, $28,000;
Tito, $22,500; Rocky Enciso, $16,000;
and Kaitlyn Nguyen, $13,500. Oh, yes,
Wilkins had $138,000.
Limits
now went to $3,000-$6,000, which gave
the four short-stacked players very little
room to maneuver. On hand 37, with a board
of K-7-4-9, Kaitlyn Nguyen, with A-9,
had second pair with an ace kicker. Enciso
bet with A-K, she raised all in and finished
fifth.
The
three trailing players now threw up a
white flag and accepted a $3,000 off-the-top
offer from Wilkins, and the one-sided
contest was officially over.
BIOGRAPHY
Wilkins, 38, has been playing poker seriously
for about eight years. He had been playing
a lot of tournaments and had a couple
of modest wins at Hollywood Park and two
more at Crystal Park in hold’em,
his exclusive game. Later, dissatisfied
with his performance, he abandoned tournaments
for three years in an effort to get his
focus back and improve his performance,
and stuck to $4-8 and $6-$12 hold’em
games. He only started playing tournaments
again three weeks ago, and this was just
his third event since returning.
In this event, determined to only play
very good starting hands, coming in with
hands such as Q-J suited at a minimum,
playing as well as he could, he managed
to build his chips gradually. Even when
he was getting hit by lightning, he refused
to change gears and play hands he knew
he shouldn’t be going with. “I
wouldn’t let those hands throw me
off,” he said.
Max Shapiro
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