WSOP 2008
Crowe’s Chips Riding a Roller Coaster
by Crystal on 07.10.08, 10:32 pm
733 players are now on their 90 minute dinner break and the tension in the air has been continuously rising as we get closer and closer to the money bubble of 666 players. The staff here at the Rio is somewhat going to be restricting media access to the tables as hand for hand play approaches so we’ll do our best after the break to catch as much as we can.
Owen “ocrowe” Crowe (pictured right) started the day with a healthy 220k in chips but during the level before the dinner break he was caught up in a couple crazy hands. After building his stack up to nearly 350k, Crowe and two other players saw a flop of Q
43
. The big blind bet out 17.9k and the player in the middle and Crowe made the call. The K
fell on the turn and both the other players checked to Crowe who pushed a large stack of orange 5k chips into the middle, 80k total. The big blind folded and after a lot of thought the other player made the call. The 7 fell on the river and both players checked. Crowe’s opponent flipped over the K9 for the 2nd nut flush and Crowe was livid. He couldn’t believe that the other player had made his flush and checked it. The other player requested to see Crowe’s cards and so the dealer flipped over his KQ
. The ESPN cameras caught all the action but Crowe was visibly not enjoying being filmed and was steaming after the hand.
It didn’t take too long to get a few of his chips back. We caught up with the action with the board reading 8639J and Crowe bet 23k which another player called. Crowe tabled the T7 for a turned straight that only improved on the river and scooped up to pot. A little later Crowe got into a hand with Leo “Superfluous Man” Wolpert but they weren’t too eager to create much action. They both checked the KT5 flop, the K on the turn, and the 3 on the river. Crowe showed the J5 for kings and fives which was the best hand as Leo mucked and Crowe climbed back up to around 320k.
We caught up with David “Bakes” Baker (pictured left) as he and another opponent were heads up in a raised pot on a flop of QJ8. Baker’s opponent bet 15K and David thought briefly before raising enough to put him all-in. The other player tanked for some time and tried to pry information from David asking him questions and announcing, “I know you’re only on a draw.” He eventually made the call for his remaining 38.7K with AQ. David turned over the KK and the turn came the 3, leaving the other player with one less out since David picked up the flush draw. The Q fell on the river and the other player doubled through Baker leaving him with right around 150K going into dinner break.
Today, Table 12 in the Blue section of the Amazon room may qualify as one of the sickest lineups we’ve seen so far in the entire 2008 World Series. Tim “tmay420″ West, Garrett “GBecks” Beckman, Darren “DABADESTCHIC” Nelson, Cort “thecortster” Kibler-Melby and Allen Cunningham are lined up in a row. When we last caught up to their table, Darren gave us -the look-; he was feeling frustrated as his stack dropped from 190K earlier today to a much less comfortable 85K. When we asked what happened, Tim chuckled and Garrett groaned.
Darren reported that he picked up aces two levels ago. On a flop of Q-7-8 with an already-sizeable pot in the middle, Darren put his one remaining opponent all-in. Darren’s pocket aces dominated… that is, until a 3 on the turn and a jack spiked on the river gave his opponent’s Q-J two pair. Darren quartered his stack, falling below 50K in chips. However, Garrett chimed in at this point in the story, noting that he’d later doubled Darren up when his J-T connected to a jack-high flop with all clubs on the board. Darren’s pocket aces held and he edged his stack upwards. He left for dinner break with a stack of 85K to Garrett’s 150K. Tim reported that he was trying to stay out of it; he said, “It sucks when I have no other choice but to bust my close friends!” He guarded a 97K stack while Cort had 200K.
Josh “Squintngo” Goldstein, however, didn’t have such an exciting table draw. He lamented to PocketFives that he’s been bored the last few levels. Regardless, he was taking the opportunity to rake in a few small preflop pots; he increased his stack to 127K before the break.
On a side note, Mike Matusow was just spotted running “laps” outside near the poker kitchen during the break. By laps, we actually mean 20 ft smallish circles… perhaps trying to work off nervous energy? Maybe he just didn’t get all his running in today and is trying to make up for it. Regardless, it gave us here at P5s a chuckle.
In case you’re hungry, here’s a heaping pile of chip counts for you to munch on during the break! (The average stack based on the tournament clock is currently almost 187k)
Matthew “Burton1080″ Jensen - 580K (pictured right)
Jamie “TheCronic420″ Rosen - 430K
Adam “Roothlus” Levy - 400K
Paul “comeonphish” Lieu - 390K
David “DavidP18″ Peters - 340K
Jonathan “therookieqq9″ Plens - 310K
Owen “ocrowe” Crowe - 290K
Aaron “NDGrinder59″ Steury - 285K
Jon “Pearljammer” Turner - 280K
Jeremy “thechemist83″ Gaubert - 276K
Jeff “YoungSupremacy” Hakim - 270K
Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier - 265K
Allen “abari” Bari - 255K
Peter “number1pen” Neff - 205K
Cort “thecortster” Kibler-Melby - 200K
Joe “LatestLines2″ Ward- 190k
Ryan “Daut44″ Daut - 185K
Aditya “intervention” Argawal - 182K
Hunter “THE_HUNT_D” Frey - 180K
Thayer Rasmussen - 170K
Clayton “clayton27″ Newman - 165K
Jason Gray - 155K
Frank “Round42″ Rusnak - 150K
David “Bakes” Baker - 150K
Chris “SLOPPYKLOD” Klodnicki - 140K
Brent “Astrolux85″ Roberts - 130K
Josh “squintngo” Goldstein - 127K
Garrett “GBecks” Beckman - 120K
Chris “cmoney3″ Kline - 120K
Kush Patel - 115K
Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy - 110K
Leo “SuperfluousMan” Wolpert - 109K
Tim “tmay420″ West - 100K
Jan “Erdnase” Heitmann - 97K
Brian “Like7″ Lamanna - 95K
Michael “DblupM0j” Johnson - 85K
Jeff Papola - 75K
Doug “resilient” Smith - 70K
“Bodog” Ari Engel - 70K
Justin “truesyalose” Truesdell - 68K
Darren “DABADESTCHIC” Nelson - 50K
Recent eliminations include Mike “SirWatts” Watson, Matt “mattg1983″ Graham, Jason “strassa2″ Strasser, Cody “shankingyou” Shedd, Jonathan “HoosierAlum” Depa, and Brandon Shaefer.