All Hail King Thor
by Brett on 05.29.09, 5:11 am
With just 10 hands left of play for the night in the $40,000 event, Steve “thorladen” Weinstein and Steve Zolotow got it all in on a flop of A
4
3. Weinstein’s AA
had Zolotow’s A
Q nearly dead, and the 5 on the turn and 9 on the river sealed the deal for King Thor, who finished Day 1 with 246K.
Just minutes later at the same table, Vanessa Rousso raised to 10K from early position and Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi reraised to 27K. Rousso moved in for 83.7K total and Mizzi snap called with 66. Rousso was shocked to see that her 88 was ahead and her hand was able to hold up when the board ran out KQ2KJ. Mizzi, unsurprisingly one of the more active players we saw during Day 1, still finished the day with 431K.
There was some P5s cannibalism going on during the last level in the Amazon Room. First Lex “Raszi” Veldhuis knocked out Luke “IWEARGOGGLES” Staudenmaier (pictured left) and then Marco “CrazyMarco” Johnson busted Vivek “psyduck” Rajkumar when they got it all-in preflop with Rajkumar holding A-Q to Johnson’s pocket kings. The kings held, Rajkumar was eliminated, and Johnson’s chip stack jumped up to 360K. David “Bakes” Baker didn’t knock out any fellow internet pros, but he did win a big coin flip early in Level 10 against Phil Laak to eliminate the Unabomber from the tournament and increase his chip stack to 410K.
Before he eliminated Rajkumar, Johnson got involved in yet another big pot. With the blinds at 2K/4K ante 500 Andrew “good2cu” Robl raised to 12K and the player in the cutoff reraised to 30K total. Johnson thought for a minute or two before moving all-in for 273K total out of the small blind. Robl, who had around 375K at the start of the hand, thought for nearly five minutes before folding and the cutoff folded right after Robl’s cards hit the muck to give the pot to Johnson.
Over at our PocketFivesLive feature table, Veldhuis was jokingly trying to convince fellow big stack Justin Bonomo to put their stacks in and flip for a million chip plus pot that would give one of them the tournament chiplead. Bonomo was fine with 738K though and Veldhuis is in more than good shape with 642K. Their tablemates, Mike “SirWatts” Watson and Chad “lilholdem954″ Batista are a little worse off, holding 93K and 140K respectively.
When we chatted with Batista (pictured right) he seemed content with his chip stack, but told us about a hand that occurred shortly after he moved to his new table that put a dent in his stack. He didn’t specify what the blind level was, but he said that he opened in middle position to 5.6K and an unknown player moved all-in for around 70K chips total. Batista explained to us that he had a funny feeling about the hand and decided to call with A-J, which turned out to be way ahead of his opponent’s J-9. Unfortunately for Batista, the J-9 won and he spent the rest of the night grinding a stack that was essentially equivalent to what he started with.
Steve “MrSmokey1″ Billirakis quadroupled his stack during the last level. His first double up came by way of Scott “gunning4you” Seiver. With blinds at 2K/4K ante 500, David Pham raised to 11K in middle position and Billirakis moved all in for 81K total. Scott Seiver called out of the blinds and Pham folded. The A-K of Billirakis held up against Seiver’s A-Q to keep him alive, and he was able to chip up to 353K as play ended.
The average stack going into Day 2 is 271,011 and several P5ers are in exellent shape heading into the second day of play. Here’s a look at some of the 89 players still vying for the gold bracelet and $1.8 million prize:
Justin Bonomo - 738K
Lex “RasZi” Veldhuis - 646K
David “Bakes” Baker - 446K
Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi - 431K
Steve “MrSmokey1″ Billirakis - 353K
James “mig.com” Macket - 205.5K
Scott “gunning4u” Seiver - 124.5K
Amit “amak316″ Makhija - 88.5K
David “raptor” Benefield - 75.5K
WSOP Event #1: PaulPete Takes 2nd!
The first WSOP 2009 event is in the books and Paul “PaulPete” Peterson took down 2nd place for $51,787 in prize money — an especially impressive amount considering Peterson won his way into the $500 casino employees event via a $65 satellite. Peterson doubled up a few times over the course of the final table to make it down to the final two, but his opponent Andrew Cohen held a commanding chip lead that Peterson was unable to overcome. On the last hand of play the two players got it all-in preflop with Peterson holding AQ to Cohen’s pocket sixes. The board ran out JT4T7 and the sixes held to give Cohen the bracelet and Peterson second place. Congrats Paul! Way to get P5s off on the right foot for this year’s WSOP.Play kicks off tomorrow at noon PST with the $1,500 Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better event. Then at 2:00 the $40,000 No Limit Hold ‘em special event resumes. Be sure to check in to pocketfiveslive.com for all of the updates!
