WSOP 2008
Schultz Surges, Negreanu Dominates
by Jill on 06.16.08, 5:48 am
Event #27’s $1.5K No-Limit Hold’em race for the bracelet has concluded for the evening with 18 players remaining in the field. Barry “BarryGS” Schultz sits near the top of the chip count with over 850K, now representing PocketFives in his logo t-shirt.
We caught up with Barry as he was raising preflop from the hijack to 48K with the blinds at 10K/20K. He took down the pot uncontested and did the same thing for the next two consecutive hands. He recounted a story from earlier in the tournament about a hand he played with Scott “SCTrojans” Freeman. Apparently, Barry made his move on the button by pushing all in to Scott’s preflop raise. Barry held 9
7. Scott, trying to edge out a Scandinavian player at the table, called the raise and flipped over A-J offsuit.
In the only hand Barry has played for his tournament life, he managed to hit a 9 on the river to save his stack and suck out. He recounted how tilted Scott got at the bad beat; apparently Scott raised all in for the next seven hands, despite being deep-stacked even after the beat. The field lost two more players after Barry told his story; play is now down to the final two tables and will resume tomorrow at 2PM PST while players compete for the bracelet and $628,290.
Daniel Negreanu (pictured at right) had much to smile about in the $5K Pot-Limit Omaha with Rebuys as his stack went from 100k to over 1M in twenty minutes. Play was down to the final two tables. Negreanu went over the one million mark when he busted David Williams’ 500k chip stack in the following hand:
On a flop of 7
32
, Williams bet out 40k and Negreanu called. The T dropped on the turn and Williams bet and got raised by Negreanu. Williams reraised all-in, prompting a snap call from Negreanu. Williams tabled the T
987, drawing dead to Negreanu’s AT{7s]7 full house.
Negreanu jokingly said he’s hoping to get at least ninth place so he can break even from the 85k he’s invested in the tournament. Many big names remain in the final 14 including Johnny Chan, Chris Ferguson, Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond, Brian “tsarrast” Rast, Phil Hellmuth, John Juanda, David Benyamine, and Alexander Kostritsyn.