Jamie Gold and Paul Wasicka on their tense heads-up encounter in the World Series of Poker 2006 Main Event – and that notorious final hand
After ten gruelling days of play, the record 8,773-strong field of 2006’s WSOP main event had finally been reduced to two. From the outset, Jamie Gold, a 36-year-old TV producer from California, had showed an invincibility never witnessed in the long history of the WSOP.
The only thing stopping him from laying claim to the status of World Champion and the $12m mountain of $100 bills cascading over the baize was 25-year-old pro Paul Wasicka. It didn’t seem like a fair fight though – Gold had hoovered up around 78,975,000 of the total 90 million chips in play and it would take several minor miracles to wrest those chips from his grasp.
Despite his 6/1 chip deficit, however, Wasicka believed he would beat Gold. It was 3.20 in the morning and Gold was starting to flag…
PAUL WASICKA: I did say that, and I stick to it. Jamie’s style is really good against weaker players. He manipulates them into thinking what he wants them to, but I think against a couple of pros – an internet pro like me and a live pro like Allen Cunningham – he had a lot tougher time trying to manipulate us into calling or folding.
When you look at it, Allen made a lot of really good plays, folds and calls. I think had it come down to us three (Gold, Cunningham and myself), Jamie might have been able to use his chipstack, but given the tournament structure and the amount of chips we had to work with, he’d have made a mistake at the wrong spot.
JAMIE GOLD: I said to Paul, ‘This is going to be over very quickly’, but that wasn’t true. I wanted to believe it and I wanted him to believe me. I knew I couldn’t last. We’d been playing for nearly 15 hours and I was falling asleep. I could not last another ten hours, so I wanted him to think I was willing to gamble.
Gold’s wish was fulfilled just seven hands into the heads-up battle. Holding pockets tens, Paul Wasicka raised to 1.34m, called by Gold’s Q?-9?. The flop brought Q?-8?-5?, Wasicka bet 1.5m and in what had become his trademark WSOP pattern, Gold moved all-in. He also had one last inciting table- talk hurrah: ‘You don’t have a Queen, do you? I’m already all-in so you can’t change my action… No Queen, no Queen? Then I got you. Let’s do this!’
JAMIE GOLD: I wasn’t gambling then – I knew I had the best hand. Even if I lost, I was only losing a million chips. I still had 72m, what do I give a shit?! I felt like I played that one really well and I got him out in less than ten minutes. I could afford to call his bet. I didn’t put him on A-Q, Queens, Kings or Aces because I thought he would have raised more, so as long as he had maybe Jacks, nines or an eight I was okay.
I didn’t put him on tens, but I put him on something, some random hand. I felt like if I hit my Queen, I’d be okay. I also thought if I hit my 9 I might be okay, but I wouldn’t have gone all-in.
PAUL WASICKA: When I watched a replay of the action and Jamie said, ‘then I got ya’ after I said I didn’t have a Queen, right then I think I could have let it go, but there are a lot of other factors you might not catch when you’re watching at home. He was gambling a lot at that point because he was getting really tired.
He had just called an all-in with K-J, when he wasn’t committed to call, which is gambling to say the least. His gambling and the range of hands he was playing factored a lot. I felt there were very few hands I lost to, though if he did have one of those then the problem was I was drawing really slim.
But given his state of mind I think he would have done the same thing with no pair, an open-ender or flush draw. In that particular case my read was that he was on a draw, which ended up being wrong. In the end, the one hand I regret the most is not making the laydown with the tens.
Gold’s baiting remained unrelenting, eventually eliciting a reluctant, ‘All right, you talked me into it’ from Wasicka as he stood up from the table. An over- excited Jamie Gold flipped his hand over. Although it looked like he’d been called, Wasicka had not actually said, ‘call’ or revealed his hand at that point.
PAUL WASICKA: My intention was to do what Allen Cunningham had done earlier. When he and Jamie were in a similar pot, Allen said, ‘I think I’m going to have to call’ and Jamie was ‘Oh, you call?’ getting ready to show his hand. Allen firmly said, ‘No, I didn’t call yet’, then he called and Jamie was like, ‘okay, you win’.
I was trying to do a very similar thing. I wanted to see if he would hold out his hand and say ‘you call?’ and if he did that I was going to call. Instead, I said ‘you talked me into it’ and he was like, bam! He showed me his cards face up on the table, and I’m like, ‘dude, I didn’t say call’ but I just went with it because I was about 90% sure I was going to call anyway.
To have asked for a ruling probably would have caused the biggest controversy in poker so I didn’t really feel like going down that road, especially as I was really happy with how I’d played.
JAMIE GOLD: You can tell I had no idea. I thought, ‘I’ve got him! I can’t believe it.’ I was relieved it was almost over. I’d been playing for over 15 hours a day for ten days and I wanted to end it.
The board didn’t improve Wasicka’s hand and he finished second for $6.1m, making Jamie Gold the 2006 WSOP champion and with a $12m payout, the biggest ever single tournament winner in history. Although he was unknown prior to the WSOP, his fairytale success was not the overnight sensation it’s often perceived to be.
JAMIE GOLD: I didn’t go to the WSOP in my first, second or third year of playing. I went in my fourth year. I studied the game every night, so I worked hard to win that first big one. I’m not saying I deserved it, but I’m not as random a person as people think.
PAUL WASICKA: I had a good run and I don’t think I have anything to be ashamed of. A lot of people took offence to how Jamie was acting but I wasn’t one of them. Poker’s a game where you use your speech and your actions to manipulate people and I understand that he was doing that to try to get an edge on the field. I’m perfectly happy and have no regrets and Jamie and I are now pretty good friends.
JAMIE GOLD: In that tournament I was in the zone. I almost always knew where I was at. I hadn’t been that clear and focused before and I hope I can achieve it again. I also spent six months before on a perfect diet and I was really mentally healthy. I knew my dad was going to die and he really wanted me to accomplish it. It was all I would talk about. He said, ‘either go and win the WSOP or just stop!’
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