One Hand to End Them All

After watching the video a couple of different times I was led to wonder if there was a secret handshake, a glance or maybe multiple meetings in the bathroom during the improbably long 9 hour final table.

"Hey Vinny, I'm thinking that if we go over 9 hours we should try to create situations where we all just go all in and let the dealer sort it out"
"Oh George, it will look funny if not everyone has a good hand though."
"Vinny, if I raise my left eyebrow that means I have a good hand, if everyone else follows suit then we do this thing."
"Ok George, but lets hope it doesn't come to that."

And the seed was planted.

When you look at it from the Fish perspective (and I do believe that I'm pretty good with that point of view) then it's not too hard to see how this ended up happening.

First there was some fatigue happening, nine hours of final table poker is a long time.  Every thought, every decision, every mistake could lead to a lesser payout or a greater payout.  The money is in the back of your mind and you know that you are one more elimination away from being better off than you were one hand ago.  So you over think everything, you over analyze everything and next thing you know your brain goes into shut down mode.  "Oh hey look, 6 3 off, they'll never see that coming."

Second, there is a sense of maybe I can just get lucky with this hand because in the back of our mind we all know that luck is going to have to take our hand and guide us to that huge victory.  The guy with 88 knew exactly that he needed to fold but at the same time if he gets out of the way then the chips are even more stacked against him.  Does he have what it takes to play another few hours trying to pick spots to double up multiple times in order to get to even and then chip away and win the tourney or do you stick it in with 88 and hope to spike an 8 and be in position to take this down with just a few well timed hands?

It's not often that I actually even play 9 hours of poker let alone 9 hours where I have to be on my best game and behavior for the entire duration.  I've gone home mentally exhausted after several sessions with only hundreds of dollars on the line.  I'm pretty sure in the video above that I would have gotten it in quicker than most of those guy and, in fact, I would have done so with pretty much anything at this point.
You know, especially after Vinny raised his eyebrow and George followed suit.

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