After 43 years, things still happen that nobody has seen before at the World Series of Poker (WSOP). Day 4 of the $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em Mixed Max event seemed fairly straightforward: four players remained, which meant three heads-up matches to crown a champion. No problem.
Wrong.
One of the two semi-final matches went smoothly. Joseph Cheong and Hugo Lemaire squared off across the table from one another and Cheong won it in about three hours. The other match, the one between Warwick Mirzikinian and Aubin Cazals was an entirely different animal.
The two men started their competition at 1:00pm at the Rio in Las Vegas, the same time as their counterparts. By the time the other contest was completed, Cazals and Mirzikinian were still going. Another hour passed, still going. Another hour…another hour…and another. In a scene reminiscent of the marathon 2010 Wimbledon match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, the two poker players volleyed back and forth while spectators gazed in amazement. When Mirzikinian was finally eliminated, he and Cazals had set a new record for the longest heads-up match in poker tournament history, having slugged it out for 9 hours and 25 minutes. That shattered the previous record of 7 hours and 6 minutes, set by Andy Bloch and the late David “Chip” Reese in the $50,000 Poker Player Championship back in 2006.
Interestingly, this will end up being an “unofficial” record of sorts, as while it was a heads-up match, it was not in the “heads-up” portion of the tournament, which is officially considered the final two players.
That ordeal was tiring enough for Cazals. Now that he won the semi-final, he faced a problem: he still had to the play the final, scheduled for that same day. He soon got together with Cheong and the two decided that they would like to face off on Tuesday, as Cazals was exhausted and Cheong was doing well in $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Re-entry event, from which he was taking a break to talk with Cazals. Good. Done. See you Tuesday.
Not so fast, my friend. Tournament director Dennis Jones called WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel to give him an update, but was informed that the Nevada Gaming Commission would not allow the tournament to be postponed that long. According to the Commission’s rules, the structure of the tournament cannot be changed once it is submitted to the Commission. The final match had to begin that night or no later than 1:00pm the next day. Neither Cheong nor Cazals was happy about this, but they understood and did not seem to harbor any ill will toward the tournament directors.
The two players finally settled on 9:00am Monday as the start time, which would have been the earliest start to a final table in WSOP history. Later, when Cheong was knocked out of the $1,500 No-Limit event, they pushed the start time back to noon to give themselves a little extra rest.
Also resuming Monday will be Event #9: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Re-entry and Event #10: $5,000 Seven Card Stud. Event #11: $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha is scheduled to kick off at noon in the Brasilia Room.
