He spent some time as the chip leader and there were multiple opportunities for Praz Bansi to make it to heads up play with Daniel Negreanu but a hot run of cards for Barry Shulman ultimately left Bansi (pictured right)as the 3rd place finisher for £360,887. His elimination came at the hands of Negreanu, but most of his chips went to Shulman a few hands before.

To get to the point of taking most of Bansi’s chips Shulman had to get lucky a couple of times, enough to prompt a nearby video commentator to say as he was narrating a hand “Barry has caught the cards all evening.” That has been the truth of it with Shulman streating to a large stack after getting as low as 1 million chips after the dinner break when he had about half his stack in the middle and folded to a shove over the top from Bansi. The blinds then jumped to 30k / 60k with a 10k ante and it wasn’t long until Shulman was all in against Negreanu with his JT versus Daniel’s AQ but the board ran out T-6-4-T-J and Barry doubled back to over 2 million taking a decent chunk from Daniel.

Next up Shulman was again all in preflop, this time his AJ dominated by the AQ of Bansi but the board double paired and both players played only their ace for a split pot keeping Shulman alive in the tournament. After a lull in the all in action Praz raised to 150k and Shulman called from the big blind. On the K94 flop Shulman check raised over the top of Bansi’s 200k bet and Bansi called the all in for a total of around 1.7 million. Both had flopped top pair with a king in their hand but the KJ of Shulman had the K8 of Bansi outkicked. There was no come behind to help Bansi and he saw his stack drop to a dismal 800k while Shulman jumped up to 3.8 million.

A few hands later Bansi moved all in and was called by Negreanu. When the cards were face up Daniel had Praz locked up with his AQ dominating the Q2 of Bansi. All the shouting in the world for a deuce was no help (from the crowd, Bansi was silent) and the board came 8-4-4-J-6 and British poker pro and class act Praz Bansi, much to the dismay of 90% of the crowd, was out of the tournament.

The elimination leaves Daniel Negreanu and Barry Shulman heads up for the title of the 2009 World Series of Poker Europe presented by Betfair with Daniel taking a nearly 2 to 1 chiplead into the final stage of play.

Heads Up Chip Counts:

• October 1, 2009 -- The Mighty Has Fallen: Mercier 4th
• October 1, 2009 -- Dinner and a Double
• October 1, 2009 -- Table For Four: Ristola Out 5th
• October 2, 2009 -- “This Is Going To Have To Be It”