My friend Mike Paulle has given me permission to post his daily reports for each event of the World Series of Poker this year to the ChipBoard! Below is his report on Event #25. Andy - Las Vegas

WORLD SERIES OF POKER 2002

EVENT #25 LIMIT HOLD'EM SHOOTOUT
Sunday, May 12, 2002
$1,500 BUY-IN
$1,500 in chips

BEWARE A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING

What better training ground for poker than a career in the make-believe world
of television.

There were 193 entrants in the $1,500 Limit Hold'em Shootout for a total prize
pool of $272,130. Two tables were paid, a total of 20 players.

To get into the money in this Shootout, you had to beat everyone at your
original table. There were 20 original tables.

If you did win your table, you were then on a freeroll for the $96,400 first
prize. The 20 original table winners drew for seats at one of two 'second'
tables and they started over again with $1,500 in chips.

Five survivors out of those ten at each of the second tables then became the
10-handed Final Table carrying their second table chip counts with them. Clear?
Ya had to be there.

Below are listed the twenty names of winners of their original tables and some
of the 'names' they had to beat to get into the money.

The first five names at each table were the survivors that made the Final
Table. The second five names at each table failed to move on.

Table 70
Melissa Hayden: Casey Kastle, Harry Thomas, Tommy Grimes, Lonnie Heimowitz
John Juanda: J J Bortner, Terry Fleischer, Barry Greenstein, Paul Kroh
Daniel Negreanu: Sam Arzoin, Ivo Donev, Alan Goehring, David Plastik, Skip
Wilson
Joel Chaseman: John Bonetti, Steve Kaufman, Kathy Liebert, Ram Vaswani
Rocco DiPomazio: Mickey Appleman, Layne Flack, Chris Grigorian, David Pham

Chris Johansson: Mike Laing, Eric Holum, Noli Franciso, Paul McKinney
David Enoch: Perry Friedman, Phil Hellmuth, Phyllis Meyers, Eric Shapiro
Dino Fazlibegu: Peter Costa, Jeff Shulman, Richard Tatalovich, Simon Trumper
Mickey Seagal: TJ Cloutier, Gus Escheverri, Bob Feduniak, Bill Gazes, Pete
Kaufman
Tito Leonidas: Thor Hansen, Mike Matasow, Minh Nguyen

Table 75
Matt Lefkowitz: Sirous B. Mike Majerus, Mike Marzouq
Marcel Luske: Jim Meehan, Arturo Diaz, Michael Ross
Chris Pikula: James Hoeppner, David Levi, Rafael Perry, Stan Schrier, Erik
Seidel
Gene Timberlake: Andre Boyer, Antonio Turrisi, Amir Vahedi, Bruce Yamron
Scotty Nguyen: John Biebel, Randy Holland, Steve Meyerson, Pascal Perrault

Jesse Jones: Phil Ivey, Bert Boutin, Men Nguyen, Diego Cordovez, Paul Darden
Jac Arama: Carlos Mortonsen, Mohamed Ibraham, Russ Salzer, Ben Tang, An Tran
Harry Demetriou: Dan Alspach, Alex Brenes, Jim Bucci, Howard Lederer, John
Pires
Joseph Grew: Jim Allen, John Cernuto, Mel Judah, Iain Patterson, Syracuse Chris
Don Moseley: Chris Ferguson, Hassen Kamoei, Paul Ladanyi, Tom McEvoy

To setup the Final Table Sunday night, Gene Timberlake took all but a few of
Jesse Jones' chips with a flush on the river. On the other table, Mickey Seagle
flopped a pair of Aces. Daniel Negreanu took the chip lead when he flopped a
set with a pocket pair of 8's.

THE FINAL TABLE 60 mins left of 60. The blinds were $75/$150

Player Hometown Chip Count

Seat 1 Chris Pikula New York NY $ 525
Seat 2 Daniel Negreanu Las Vegas NV $5,625
Seat 3 Melissa Hayden Las Vegas NV $1,650
Seat 4 Joel Chaseman Potomac MD $2,225
Seat 5 Gene Timberlake Houston TX $5,000
Seat 6 John Juanda Alhambra CA $2,800
Seat 7 Scotty Nguyen Las Vegas NV $5,100
Seat 8 Marcel Luske Almere, Holland $3,100
Seat 9 Matt Lefkowitz Inverness CA $3,925
Seat 10 Rocco DiPomazio Gallup NM $2,775

If it's true, this is a great story. Chris Pikula claims that this is his first
poker tournament ever. Imagine making a WSOP Final Table in your first
tournament? Chris mucked his hand for 10th when Rocco DiPomazio showed him a
runner runner flush. Now if Chris never makes another WSOP Final Table, he'll
always wonder how he made the first one.

Marcel Luske is a dominating player on the European tour. At this table, they
didn't know his reputation and treated him like he was a local yokel. Unable to
win a hand with all his foreign moves, Luske had to go all-in short stacked
with K 10. Gene Timberlake flopped trip 9's to send the European hotshot out on
his European reputation in 9th.

Unable to win a hand of any kind, the starting chip leader tanked into 8th.
Daniel Negreanu had the worst Final Table of his brief but spectacular career.
Stunned and in shock, Daniel couldn't believe what was happening to him. He
must have missed on a couple hundred outs in the hands he played. All-in with
yet another A K, Daniel was called by John Juanda with K 10. No worries. The 10
ripped right off the deck and held up. Daniel is now learning how the rest of
us live in poker.

It was surprising how many quality players bummed out today. Another top player
who had a horrible time was Matt Lefkowitz. With 13 big bets at the start, Matt
had time to do something but he didn't get any cards. Besides, Scotty Nguyen
was on fire at the time and Scotty was putting the table on tilt with his
arrogant attitude toward his opponents. Matt went all-in drawing dead to John
Juanda's flopped two pair.

If Melissa Hayden didn’t have pocket Aces, she didn’t win the hand. She
didn’t draw bullets often enough to get higher than 6th. All-in from the big
blind, her friend and spanking buddy Scotty Nguyen spanked Melissa with trip
Kings.

The John Juanda Fan Club is still waiting for John to get his first bracelet.
It didn't come today as Juanda was especially perplexed by Scotty Nguyen. With
the board Q 2 3 4, John check raised and was reraised by Nguyen. Juanda then
folded. Not long after, John went all-in on the button with the K 2 of
Diamonds. It was Scotty who disappointed the Fan Club with Q 10 and a 10 on the
flop.

How do you explain the complete and total collapse by a former World Champion?
Overconfidence probably describes it most politely. Arrogance is probably a
more accurate word. With four players left Scotty Nguyen had half the chips on
the table and finished 4th. How? He never changed gears when the three rocks he
was playing with changed theirs. In the opinion of a hack poker writer who
couldn't carry Scotty's seat card as a player, I think he continued to try to
run over the three rocks even after they started standing up to him. It was
obvious to everyone that Nguyen was bluffing most of the time, but nobody would
call him down. When Joel Chaseman showed Scotty a bluff with the worthless 3 2
of Diamonds on a huge pot, the invincibility Nguyen had so successfully
portrayed for so long was shattered. There were $30,000 in chips on the table.
Prior to that hand, Scotty had $15,000 of them. In an hour he was gone. Scotty
walked on $79,100 he should have had.

The three remaining players made a save that guaranteed them their respective
spots and played on. And on, and on, and on. At 7 am the next morning, Joel
Chaseman finally hit the card on the river that allowed several insanely groggy
people to go home. The only thing that made this marathon worth watching was
the finesse with which Joel Chaseman bamboozled all of us. At 3 am when the
money deal was made, Joel Chaseman, a career television producer, said all he
wanted to do was go home. This was going to be a laydown for Gene Timberlake.
Gene had made good money, now all he had to do was pick up the bracelet. Right!
Funny how Joel, who acted so tired and bored, would never actually give up.
Didn't he want to go home? Didn't Chaseman profess to have no interest in the
title?

Beware a wolf in sheep's clothing. Gene Timberlake didn't and it cost him a
bracelet.

Official Money Winners
1. Joel Chaseman $96,400
2. Gene Timberlake $55,600
3. Rocco DiPomazio $29,650
4. Scotty Nguyen $17,300
5. John Juanda $13,600
6. Melissa Hayden $11,120
7. Matt Lefkowitz $ 8,640
8. Daniel Negreanu $ 6,180
9. Marcel Luske $ 4.940
10. Chris Pikula $ 3,700

11th-20th received $2,500
Mickey Seagle, Jesse Jones, Don Moseley, David Enoch, Christer Johansson, Dino
Fazlibegu, Joe Grew, Harry Demetriou, Toto Leonidas, Jac Arama