Poker After Dark Week 16 Recap

By Dennis Oehring

In what turned out to be the longest match of the first season of Poker After Dark, John Juanda emerged victorious by besting five other top players over the course of roughly seven hours. The heads-up play between Juanda and Allen Cunningham alone lasted more than two hours, with the blinds reaching $4000/$8000, unprecedented in any previous match, before Juanda finally was able to deliver the knockout blow and win the $120,000 winner-take-all prize.

The match began with an interesting mix of six players, but by the end of the second episode, only three remained. Joining Juanda and Cunningham at the table were David Benyamine, Barry Greenstein, Shawn Sheikhan, and Mike Matusow, formidable competitors all with contrasting personalities and styles of play.

The first player to exit was Greenstein, who found himself all in preflop holding an A Q against Cunningham's pocket kings. Barry did not improve, and the match quickly became five-handed.

Matusow then put all his chips in the middle after flopping top pair (jacks) against Cunningham's pocket nines. A 91% favorite to win the hand at that point, Matusow showed why he sometimes believes he's the unluckiest player in the world when a nine fell on the turn to give Cunningham a set, leaving Matusow drawing dead. Allen had now eliminated two players with the blinds still at $150/$300.

One of the match's most interesting hands occurred between Benyamine and Sheikhan. With the blinds at $200/$400, David limped in from the small blind with the 10 5 of spades, and Sheikhan checked in the big blind with an offsuit Q 2. The flop was Q 10 10, pairing Sheiky's queen but giving Benyamine trip tens. Benyamine looked to be in great shape after a round of betting and raising between the two players, but another queen on the turn gave Sheikhan queens full and David was dead to the case ten. Both players checked the turn, and unbelievably the case queen fell on the river giving Sheiky quads. David moved all in, and Sheikhan instantly called flipping over his queen to send Benyamine out in 4th place.

Sheikhan now had the chip lead, but over the course of the next two episodes, that lead would erode as both Juanda and Cunningham whittled away at Sheiky's chips and took turns having the chip advantage. Sheiky would eventually be eliminated by Juanda, leaving John and Allen to battle heads-up for the $120,000.

Juanda found himself with a commanding 5:1 chip lead over Cunningham early in their heads-up battle, only to see Allen rally back and later reclaim the lead. Momentum, however, shifted back to Juanda, and he eventually forced Cunningham to put all of his remaining chips in the middle preflop while holding a Q 4 to John's K 5. A king on the flop turned out to be all Juanda needed to seal the victory.