WSOP Event #14: Allen Cunningham Captures Bracelet Number Four

Allen Cunningham doesn’t talk a big game, but he sure plays one. A sort of lesser known (to the casual fan) version of Phil Ivey, Cunningham is quiet and thoughtful at the table, to the point sometimes where you don’t even know he’s there. But if you forget about him for just one second, you’re toast. And now he is only one World Series bracelet behind Ivey, having nailed down his fourth, and second in two years, in the $1,000 no-limit hold’em rebuy event Monday night.

Cunningham entered the final table as the middle chip stack, more than doubled by both the formidable young pro, Tim Phan, and a member of the old guard, “Captain” Tom Franklin.

The crowd was decidedly pro-Full Tilt players, as both Cunningham and Andy Bloch represented the online poker room (Cunningham is not an official member of Team Full Tilt – he is a “friend” of the site). Both “Tilters” had large rooting concerns, particularly evident when Bloch knocked out Alex Jacob in 9th place. All-in before the flop, Jacob had 10-9, while Bloch had A-K. When two Aces hit on the flop, a significant portion of the bleachers yelled in excitement, so vigorously that many players in the $1,000 event that started that day paused from their games to see what was happening.

Unfortunately for Tilt fans, Bloch was the next to go. He was one of the shorter stacks entering final table play, and finally met his demise at the hands of none other than Allen Cunningham. He took it in stride, however, flashing his ever-present grin, and proceeding to hang out with pal Phil Gordon for a while as Gordon participated in the Bluff Radio broadcast.

In the meantime, Tom Franklin was struggling, just getting batted around. When he had a hand, someone had a better one (try A-Q versus Cunningham’s K-K), when he didn’t have a hand, he couldn’t see a flop. He didn’t get discouraged, though, and while his stack dwindled, he kept fighting back to stay right in the thick of things near the top of the leader board.

As mentioned before, Cunningham took a chunk out of Franklin’s stack with K-K and this was after Cunningham knocked out Everett Carlton in 7th place, so he was finally a force to be reckoned with.

Enter David “Chino” Rheem, the other player with a huge fan base, led by Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi. He also started play as a short stack, but had been aggressive with a few all-ins and had accumulated more than a few chips. Then, shortly before a break just after 5:00pm PST, Rheem made a huge move, doubling-up through Cunningham. While Cunningham’s J-T versus Rheem’s A-K seemed fairly hopeless, the turn gave Cunningham an open-ended straight draw, which never came to fruition. Rheem took over the chip lead by a fairly substantial margin, sending Cunningham back into a virtual tie for second with Franklin.

Then, just after the break, Rheem eliminated Tim Phan, growing his lead more.

The all-in fest continued fifteen minutes later when John Hoang, who had already made one final table in the past week, finishing second to David Williams in the stud event, pushed for the second time in just a few minutes. This time, unfortunately, his bluff with 7-6 ran into Franklin’s A-Q and Hoang was shown the rail in 5th place. Still, not a bad few days for Hoang.

Down to four players, Steve Wong made an ill-advised bluff after the flop with only A-2 of spades on a Q-J-6 board (one spade). Rheem held 6-6, for the flopped set and Wong’s night was over in 4th place. This knock out gave Rheem a huge chip lead, 1.5 million to Franklin’s 700 thousand.

Cunningham was sitting with a measly 200 thousand chips at around 6:30pm. He had them just where he wanted them.

He moved all-in three out of four hands, doubling up against Rheem on the fourth with pocket Aces. Then he took another 200 thousand from Rheem when Rheem had to fold to Cunningham’s push on the turn.

Rheem did find a way to get his chips back, though. Too bad for Tom Franklin that they came from his stack, thus putting him out of the tournament in 3rd place.

Going into heads-up play, Rheem had an overwhelming 3-1 chip advantage. Cunningham had him right where he wanted him.

Just after heads-up started around 7:00pm, Cunningham took over 200 thousand chips from Rheem when he showed Q-Q against Rheem’s weak 10-8 on a board of K-T-8-2-2.

The swing hand came just a few hands later, when both men were all-in pre-flop, Cunningham once again with Q-Q and Rheem with A-Q. Neither player improved and all of a sudden, we had a reversal, with Cunningham now with a 2-1 lead.

The two traded some chips for about thirty minutes, but then Cunningham made another power move, forcing Rheem out of a hand on the river to pick up over 300 thousand more chips. Just before dinner, Cunningham was up about 2 million to 400 thousand. It wasn’t very long ago that it looked like a foregone conclusion that Rheem would take the bracelet home.

It actually took quite a while, well over an hour, for Cunningham to sock away the victory. Chances are, with a lead so large, Cunningham just didn’t want to be too aggressive, for fear of doubling-up Rheem with a marginal hand. He had time to wait for strong cards, knowing he could lose a few blinds and antes in the process without much worry.

And strong cards he found. After seeing his limp-in raised by Cunningham, Rheem decided to take a stand and move all-in with J-9. He couldn’t have been happy when Cunningham called and must’ve been even less happy when he saw Cunningham’s A-Q. At least he had two live cards. Nothing on the board came close to helping Rheem and the river Ace just reinforced the loss. Rheem did pocket $327,981 for second place, while Cunningham got the bracelet $625,830.

Originally published July 11, 2006