St. Louis Park's Jason Senti went into the final table at last weekend's World Series of Poker Main Event with the fewest chips among the nine remaining players. He worked his way up to a seventh-place finish -- earning more than $500,000 on top of the $800,000-plus he'd already secured for making the final nine. During a stop in the Twin Cities before heading to Los Angeles for another tournament, Senti chatted with the Star Tribune's Michael Rand. Q Big picture, what are your thoughts on finishing seventh?
A I can't be too upset with the way it went down. I gave myself a shot to win it. I went in short-stacked, so my options were limited. I was probably for the first half of time I was playing easily the most active player.
Q No kidding -- you went all-in four times in the hour or so.
A With just 7.6 million chips, we're talking about being able to increase my stack by a pretty good percentage just by getting people to fold. So I started out aggressive right out of the gate and picked up the blinds and antes a couple times. ... The majority of hands I went all-in with right away were not very good. I'm pretty happy with the fact that I was able to go into a high-stress situation with four months of buildup and play what I truly believed to be the best strategy -- despite it being a little bit scary.
Q Is it tempting to try to work your way up incrementally because you know how there are hundreds of thousands of dollars' difference between even eighth and ninth place?
A Part of you looks at that and says, 'Man, that's just so much money in the real world.' But the real thing to remember in that situation is there's $9 million for first place, plus a ton of opportunities if you win the Main Event. And besides, I'm a really competitive guy, and I wanted to win. I realized very early on that I had to go for the win. And that's the way I played.
Q What's the emotion like when you actually get into a situation where you get called, and it's time to flip the cards over and see who wins?
A The first one really was very emotional for me just because it was the first time I was called. Really it was a spot where if I won it, I had a shot to move up quite a bit. It was one I was sweating pretty hard. You can see it on the ESPN broadcast, that it really mattered to me and it was a really big flip. And in terms of real dollars, that was a large amount of money. I felt really good once I won that one.
