Half a Player
by Jessica on 06.21.09, 6:56 pm
An interesting dynamic has been added to the $5K NLHE Shootout event, but it makes a lot of sense if you stop to think about it. Since each player is supposed to start with the same amount of chips every round, there are several unattended stacks throughout the room in order to have the same number of chips on every table. Rather than pull the stacks when registration closed, the chips will continue to be blinded off until they are no more.
We weren’t quite sure how to report the status of a shootout when dealing with these extra stacks, so we’ve settled on referring to it as half-handed. For example, Aaron Been, Steven “Zugwat” Silverman (pictured right), and Eric “EFro” Froehlich are playing at a table with five players and an unattended stack–ergo, they are 5.5 handed. Clever? Not really, but we had to figure out something.
One of the shortest-handed tables in the room is the 4.5 handed table that is currently getting run over by Ryan “youngluc” Young. He holds a commanding chip lead over his opponents with around 60K. We caught a piece of a hand in which Ryan appeared to raise under the gun with the blinds at 200/400 ante 50, the player to his left reraised him an additional 1.6K or so, and Young 4-bet it to 7.5K total. The other player called and they saw a flop of 9-7-5 with two diamonds. Young immediately moved all-in, having the other player easily covered. His opponent deliberated momentarily and folded. Before Ryan tossed his cards in the muck and scooped the pot, he flashed us his hand and we are fairly certain he held 2
5, but don’t hold us to it.
While Young is running over his table, Mike “SowersUNCC” Sowers (pictured left) hit a speed bump. With the blinds at 200/400 ante 25 he raised to 1,025 in late position and Bill Edler called from the big blind. Edler check-called Mike’s 1,425 chip bet on the T7
5
flop. The turn was the A and Edler checked again. Sowers bet 4,825, leaving around 8K behind. Edler then check-raised 5.5K on top and Sowers was forced to fold.
Here are a few other tables that have lost a chunk of players early on:
-Blair “blur5f6″ Hinkle and Justin “fluffdog” Filtz are 5-handed at their table. Hinkle has around 47K, while Filtz is still sitting on his 15K starting stack.
-Kyle “kwob20″ Bowker is 4.5 handed at his table, but the only stack smaller than his is the one getting blinded off.
-Blake “Balla-B13″ Cahail holds the chip lead with 55K at his 5.5 handed table. It also features Phil Hellmuth and November Niner Dennis Phillips.
On our latest lap around the room, we learned of the following players’ eliminations: Chad “lilholdem954″ Batista, Brent “bhanks11″ Hanks, Steve “MrSmokey1″ Billirakis, James “mig.com” Mackey, JC “PrtyPSux” Alvarado, and Luke “IWEARGOGGLES” Staudenmaier.
WSOP EVENT #40: $10K PLO
Day two of the 10K PLO World Championship event is almost two levels old in the Amazon Room. At last check there were 94 people still playing out of the original 295.
With the blinds at 800/1600 and a stack of just about 32K left after tangling with Hoyt Corkins, David “Raptor517” Benefield will have some work to do in order to be one of the 27 people to cash in the tournament.
Benefield raised to 3.5K from the cutoff and Corkins re-raised what looked to be 11K more. Benefield made the call and the flop was 95
3. Benefield moved the rest of his stack in and Corkins called all in. The hands:
Benefield: 8765
Corkins: AA2T
The turn 9 and the river K were no help to Benefield and he was left with a short stack.
Chip counts from around the room:
Barry Greenstein – 230K
Mike “SirWatts” Watson – 140K
Matt “mattg1983” Graham – 130K
Jimmy “gobboboy” Fricke – 70K
Yevgeniy “atimos” Timoshenko (pictured right)– 65K
WSOP EVENT #39: $1.5K NLHE
The money bubble has burst in the $1.5K event and Mohsin “chicagocards1” Charania is still sitting behind on of the biggest stacks in the room at last check. Justin Bonomo made it into the money but has since busted.
