“It’s weird being on the other side of this. This is not a usual occurrence, so I’ll try the best I can.”
Those were the first words of veteran tournament reporter Liam Gannon on Sunday night as he sat across the felt as the interviewee instead of the person asking the questions, as he does when he’s not playing tournaments.
Gannon is here at Council Bluffs to play the WSOP Circuit series, one he’s worked before as a reporter. But he may never work this stop again after an unforgettable and emotional night as he claimed his first WSOP Circuit ring, just two days after finishing one spot short.
Gannon’s triumph comes with a new career-high score of $28,903 and a $5,000 package to WSOP Paradise in the Bahamas this December.
He may not work that series either.
'I was getting a little misty-eyed'
After the final river card fell, giving him a tournament-winning ace-to-five straight, the gravity of the moment was unmissable across his face.
“It was really, really emotional," he said. "It’s weird because whenever I’m playing for a long chunk of time, I really don’t let myself feel too many emotions, or I try my best not to. Obviously, I’ll get frustrated if I make mistakes, which does happen, and I do go on tilt. But the river card coming on the end, I’m usually pretty stoic when I win a tournament, shake hands, move on, but I don’t know. I think just two days of emotion washed over my face, and it was just phew.
"So I was getting a little misty-eyed and stuff. It’s the ring, it’s a lot of money. It’s a lot.”
From second place days ago to champion today
The win comes just over 48 hours after a bittersweet loss heads-up versus his friend Jared Ward in the $400 NLHE Bounty event. In that match, Gannon faced an uphill climb that he wasn't able to overcome. This time around, he entered with the chip lead against Adam Bacome and didn’t relinquish it to finish that critical one spot better.
“Adam and Jared are both great players," Gannon said. "The difference was that when I got heads-up with Jared, I never really thought I had much of a chance. He had me 4:1, 3:1, for a large chunk of it. I was playing on the back foot the whole time. When I got heads-up with Adam, I had a slight chip advantage, and I just felt a lot more confident in my game."
The moment of victory wasn’t the only time that he was enveloped with emotion at the final table. Along the way, he had to deny his close friend and colleague here at PokerOrg, Hayley Hochstetler, her hopes of victory. Gannon took sizeable amounts of her stack with an ace-high flush against her king-high flush, then in a blind-versus-blind trainwreck when his ace-jack cracked her pocket kings, leaving her on fumes. Hochstetler would be eliminated shortly after in seventh place.
“Hayley’s such a close friend. It’s definitely an emotional situation," said Gannon "I think the hands we played against each other were relatively standard; it just sucks that it was against her, someone that I’m very close with. She’s a great player, and I got very lucky against her with aces with the ace-high flush draw against her king-high flush draw. I got very lucky against her with the ace-jack against the kings. That one, I think it’s a relatively normal spot.
"It just sucks that it’s against someone that’s been there for me my entire poker career, my entire working career; she’s had my back, she has been in my corner the whole time. Obviously, I would have loved for us to get heads-up, but it didn’t happen that way.”
Congratulations to a beloved member of our community, of our family here at PokerOrg, and a new member of the WSOP Circuit ring club, Liam Gannon!
