The 2007 Wiorld Series of poker was a transformational one for Tom Schneider. Heading in, Schneider was a known entity, hosting ‘Beyond the Table’, an internet podcast, as well as authoring ‘Oops! I Won Too Much Money: Winning Wisdom from the Boardroom to the Poker Table’, book exploring his journey from businessman to poker pro. Still, that was the extent of his renown.
This summer, everything changed. Schneider, who had four cashes over his five years at the WSOP, completely exploded. Event 5 - $2,500 Omaha/7-Stud hi/lo split, would be the first of three final tables the forty-eight year old Schneider would enjoy. He’d win two of them, and despite their coming against smaller fields, they’d prove anything but easy.
Event five would start with an elite field of 327. With the online hordes having little experience with non-hold’em split games, the assembled included an astonishing number of television pros. The final table reflected as much, with Annie Duke, Jesus Ferguson, Chris Bell, David Benyamine and bon Phan making the grade after Scotty Nguyen and Josh Arieh were eliminated in tenth and ninth respectively.
Schneider entered final table play with the chip lead and never relinquished it. By the time the field was reduced to six, he had half of the chips in play. Then, he eliminated Benyamine, Bell and Ferguson in order. Unknown Ed Tonellier managed to double through Schneider, then take out Duke in third, but Schneider still had the lead going to heads up.
Once it was down to two, the tournament was all Schneider. He took a monster pot from Tenellier that left the latter with just T3,000 to Schneider’s T1,632,000. On the next hand, tenellier won ¾ of the pot (chopping half, winning the other) to move up to T5,000, but it was all a formality at that point. Tonellier won two more hands to move to T27,000, but then Schneider drove the nail into the coffin, taking his first title.
Schneider not only dominated this final table, but he played a dominant final table. Observers readily agreed that he’d played the big stack expertly, with the proof in the results. We’ll talk about the greater implications of those results in around forty days.
Gary Wise
gary@wisehandpoker.com
