Jerry Yang is the new champion

Personally I'm not happy with that champion as he played bad poker for most of the time (Phil Hellmuth called it corectly "amateur poker"). I also disliked some of his habits. But ... he is the champion for the next year!

I liked the performance of the silver fox. Even with that semi-bad-beat were he lost a big pot with QQ against Tuan Lam he remained patient for most of the time. Rahme was on tilt shortly after that beat but fortunately went back on track and regained a lot of his lost chipstack. He showed that patience is a good tool as long as you have a comfortable chipstack in regards to the blinds. Unfortunately he lost that patience again at the end when he pushed his KK against a flop containing an Ace. He must have known that Jerry Yang would call this most probably with anything as low as A2. But Yang hesitatet and in my opinion was close to fold when Rahme said to him something like "it's your decision" and talked him into the call. Too bad as this sealed not only his fate but also made it almost impossible for Tuan Lam to beat Yang heads-up. Up to this point Rahme and Lam had been still in good shape to win the event. But once again Rahme showed his class a little later in the WSOP interview. He didn't blame anyone than himself because he knows that it was his own mistake. He knows that he blew a big opportunity but still is happy about the result in general and what he acomplished as being the first player from south africa to make it that far.

For the profitability of poker Yang might be the best that could have happend. Not only that he is asian but also there will be a bunch of new "any-two-can-win" players after this has aired on TV.

A long World Series is over. It started before our three week holiday. I got a part of it live during our one week stay in Vegas and it ended with the final table shortly after we were back to Munich. But there are plenty of tournaments to come and there will be another World series of Poker in 2008. Even better and bigger? Most probably, because poker is still on a hot run. The peek in Germany isn't reached yet and Asia is just starting to take off.