Tournament poker in 2006 was summed up by the breakout performance of the world series. A young kid named Jeff Madsen won two tournaments and finished third in two others. Madsen had the world at his feet. The film student didn’t mind acting or fake agonizing over big decisions time and time again, and he drew his opponents into pot after pot. Neophyte Madsen represented the incredible change that had taken over poker.
He and his wet behind the ears ilk were gobbling up bracelets and cashes, the old men of poker for the first year were definitely elbowed out of final tables. Fast aggression chewed up ABC players and nobody rode the accelerator that year like Jeff Madsen. Madsen’s first tournament victory was in the $2,000 No Limit Texas Hold’Em event where he pocketed $660k. Paul Sheng was his final victim.
The last guy standing in Madsen’s second bracelet winning run was Erick Lindgren. The two played heads up in the $5,000 No Limit Hold’em Short Handed 6/Table where Madsen won a little over $640k. Madsen’s twofer was the cherry on top for the new generation of players.
Early on it got started with Brandon Cantu winning event two. The youngest earned $757k as he prevailed in the $1,500 No Limit Hold’em event. In Event Five a made for TV final table pitted young gun Dutch Boyd vs. Joe Hachem (the Main Event winner from the previous year). Dutch Boyd outlasted Hachem, finally felting the man his mother had a crush on, and winning $475k. The next event had youngsters Mark Vos vs. Nam Le two guys that were new to the scene but haven’t left it yet.
David Williams won a bracelet in Event 10 $1,500 Seven Card Stud event. The runner up to Greg Raymer two years ago, like Hachem earlier and more immediately, proved his deep main event run was hardly a fluke. Seven card stud is supposed to be an old man’s game, an Atlantic City game, but Williams credentials didn’t include age or an East Coast origin. No his background like many of his young peers was in the card game Magic: The Gathering.
As good as the youngsters were the old men hadn’t quite left the building. Phil Hellmuth caught up to Chan and Brunson by winning a bracelet in the $1,000 No Limit Hold’Em with multiple rebuys. Jason Lester, David Pham, Ralph Perry, Sam Farha, and Allen Cunningham all took bracelets down too.
Madsen wasn’t the only two time bracelet winner. David Wiliams almost joined him wihen he lost to Daniel Alaei in heads up play in the $5,00 No Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball w/rebuys. The one guy that did it was the older Bill Chen. Chen took down a $2,500 No Limit Hold’Em Short Handed 6/Table event and that was a follow up to his win in the $3,000 Limit Hold ‘em tournament. Still, the complete move to the Rio away from Binions was mirrored by the success of the new players in the new venue.
The one vestige the old guys kept a hold of was the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. tournament which featured a final table of pre-poker boom legends. Brunson, Cloutier, Tomko and others butted heads to win the newest event, and the most prestigious. The winner was a guy many revered as the best all around player in the world, a guy who barely had an interest in the tournaments as it took too much time from his lucrative cash games, and a man with one of the best names in poker: Chip Reese. Chip won two bracelets at the World Series before that in 1978 for 19k, and in 1982 for 92k.
Reese’s experience in the big game, with many of the regulars like Phil Ivey at the H.O.R.S.E. final table gave him an edge on all the young newbies rocking out to their iPods. However, the private country club at the top of the mixed games table would be broken into sooner rather then later, and Chip’s victory while sweet was in an event that was the last island to be swallowed up by the new blood.