WSOP 2008
Levy Advances; Wolpert, Sebok Heads up in Event #11
by Brett on 06.06.08, 9:20 pm
Adam “Roothlus” Levy advanced to Day 2 of the $5K NLHE Shootout when his pocket jacks held against pocket sevens. Leo “Superfluous Man” Wolpert (pictured right) and Joe Sebok are heads up with opponents as we put this post together and both have decent-sized chip advantages. Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy is still five-handed at his table and appears to be very short. He lost a big pot earlier to Beth Shak when he was forced to fold pocket kings on a board that read 9
8
3.
The remaining P5ers clashed with one another in the $1.5K short-handed event. First it was Tom “titantom32″ Braband eliminating Ben “bfineman” Fineman when Braband’s KQ
got the best of Fineman’s T
T with Fineman all-in for his last 30K preflop. Braband spiked a queen on the flop and built his stack to over 100K.
Then Devin “TranquilChaos” Porter (left) took out Antuan “bigboybunk” Bunkley with a two-outer, encapsulating what was a very tough day for Bunkley. With the blinds at 1.5K/3K, Porter called a 25K shove from Bunkley with pocket fives and cracked his QQ with the 5 on the river.
Things have since cooled down for both Braband and Porter. Braband lost a 120K pot when he called a reshove with 77 and ran into QQ. The queens held and Braband was left with around 50K. Tom has since been chipping up, however, utilizing an effective re-steal stack to pick up about 20K chips in a matter of minutes without having to show a hand down.
Porter lost 40K shortly after Braband’s big hit. He raised to 9K from under the gun at 1.5K/3K and the player to his left shoved for 32K more. Porter reluctantly called with pocket eights and wasn’t surprised to see the AA flipped up by his opponent. The board bricked for Porter and he was left with a little over 80K.
The tournament just went on a 20-minute break with 24 players vying for the top prize of $372,929.
Gray Chipleader, Hamby and Lynch Barely Alive
by Jill on 06.06.08, 3:19 am
In Event #9, the $1.5k NLHE 6 Handed field is down to 90 players. PocketFives caught up with Jared “TheWacoKid” Hamby (pictured at left) discussing fantasy baseball while short-stacked and Eric “Rizen” Lynch with an equally perilous stack of 17K. Meanwhile, Antuan “bigboybunk” Bunkley kept his table on the edge with his growing stack, faking an all-in push from the button against the small blind. He turned up 83 and laughed good-naturedly; the small blind nervously chuckled.
Ben “bfineman” Fineman, representing for the Philadelphia Eagles in a lucky cap, remained healthy with 51K in chips. After Caroline Cooper’s all-in with AQ couldn’t catch up against AK, Ben finished her off the next hand when his 33 held. Other recent eliminations include Jimmy “gobboboy” Fricke and Steve Paul-Ambrose.
Meanwhile, in Event #10, the $2.5k O8/Stud 8 tables remained stacked with online players. Craig “MrCasino” Gray (pictured at right) remained chipleader with 28.4K, coming strong off his 17th-place performance in the $1K NLHE with rebuys event. He recently sat down at Brock “t_soprano” Parker’s table, who has 18K in chips after a flush busted his Omaha straight draw. Craig gave major props to PocketFives for covering the online community (Thanks, Craig!) before telling a story to Brock about playing with Phil Hellmuth yesterday. He animatedly recounted that Hellmuth gave him a hard time about the online poker community, saying that it was too soft. Craig said that when he asked Phil, “Isn’t bulldozing soft fields your specialty?” Hellmuth had no comeback. Apparently, there’s a first time for everything.
Wolpert Keeps Building
by Jessica on 06.02.08, 8:54 pm
Leo Wolpert (pictured at right) got his 600 chips back plus a little extra when he busted Craig Gray in a coin flip situation. He now sits at around 25k. Dan “Stainley88″ Adams’ chip stack has been heading in the opposite direction and he is down to 3k.
The prize pool and payouts were announced after players returned from a short break. A total of 713 players entered Event #3 and the top 77 will get paid. 1st place will be taking home $214,131.
A third event is getting underway today. Event #4 is a $5k mixed limit hold em event and is also the first evening event of this year’s world series. Several players who busted out of Event #3 earlier today are going to be taking advantage of the late start and playing. Some of those players include Jimmy “gobboboy” Fricke, Joe Sebok, Eric “Rizen” Lynch, and last night’s Event #1 runner-up, Andy Bloch.
Now that Event #2 is into the money action has rapidly picked up. Jon “pokertrip” Friedberg, Mike “SirWatts” Wattel, Antuan “bigboybunk” Bunkley, Bobby “Pupkin” Crosby and Matt “All In At 420″ Stout were all eliminated in the last level. Stout got his money in preflop with AQ against an opponent’s AK and failed to improve on a board of KJ663.
Several P5ers are among the 240 players still alive, including Shane Scheleger (100K), Stuart “The Donator” Patterson (95K), Dom “piscopo2911″ Cuzzi (30K) and Maria “Maridu” Mayrinck (10K). Mayrinck claims she’s on “monkey tilt” but hopefully the recent 20-minute break has cured it.
More Players Disappearing as Day 1B Wraps up
by Jessica on 06.02.08, 2:02 am
Still no sign of Chris Savage (it’s more than likely a case of mistaken identity early on in the day) and there are several other players who have disappeared from the Amazon Room as play continued this evening. Some notable eliminations include Glen Chorny and Ezra Galston (pictured at right).
Play only continued for 16 minutes once players returned from their final 20 minute break, but that was long enough for a few more players to bust out as Day 1B came to a close. Vivek “psyduck” Rajkumar got involved in a 3-way all in with A2 against pocket deuces and AK and an ace on the flop sent him to the rail shortly after play resumed.
Barry Greenstein was also eliminated after the break when his 7 7 failed to crack his opponent’s A A. He dutifully signed his book for the other player and called it a night ten minutes early.
There were many players who used the final sixteen minutes to their advantage though. Antuan “bigboybunk” Bunkley maintained his healthy stack while his friend, Chad “lilholdem954″ Batista watched him from the rail throughout the evening.
Mark “pokerbok” Vos also continued to accumulate chips during the day’s next-to-last level, chipping up through many small pots. In the cutoff, Vos was first to act and raised to 2300; he was immediately called by the big blind. The flop read 532 and the big blind checked. Vos asked how much he needed to bet to put the big blind all in, which was 10K. When he made the bet, the other player folded and he increased his chipstack to 70K. Vos has a big stack, but the biggest stack at his table belongs to the Day 1B chip leader, David Bach, who is sitting on 114K.
During the table’s next hand, play stalled as the antes failed to add up correctly. Confusion ensued as a tournament official hurried to the table to investigate; she stated that any conflict would stall the entire tournament 20 minutes. A player at the table finally confessed and received a warning just before the break.
The play for Event #2 ceased 16:13 into Level 9, with the ante at $100 and the blinds at 500/1000. Day 1B now mirrors the play of Day 1A and both will join together at the same relative point in the tournament tomorrow. The total registration for the event topped at 3929, and the top prize will be $831,462.
Play will resume tomorrow with the remaining players playing down to the final table. Meanwhile, Nenad Medic and Andy Bloch are now heads up in the 10k PL Hold Em event.
As we wait for Event #1 to wrap up, the search for brsavage continues…