WSOP 2008
“Whoa! Who Won that Pot?”
by Brett on 06.26.08, 11:29 pm
A large crowd gathered around Scott “SCTrojans” Freeman’s table in the $1,000 No Limit Hold’em w/Rebuys event. Freeman (pictured right), who was sitting with over 330K chips, got it all in preflop with Jeff “yellowsub” Williams and Albert Iverson, one of the tournament chip leaders. The hands:
Freeman: K
K
Albert Iverson: AK
Williams: J
J
Players from every table (including the Stud Hi-Lo tournament going on in the same room) came over to watch the pocket kings of Freeman hold as he jumped out of his seat and got a fist pound from Eric Froelich. Even Men “The Master” Nguyen walked over and asked us “How you get it in with ace-king?” Williams was eliminated in 34th place and earned $14,904.
Freeman is the first player to hit the 750K mark in the tournament and is the chip leader by over 200K. Jamie “TheChronic420″ Rosen has also made his way back to 350K by outracing Nicolas Levi. Rosen’s QQ was able to hold against Levi’s AK and Levi was eliminated.
Also holding strong with 27 players remaining are Peter “Nordberg” Feldman (260K) and Eric “E-Fro” Froelich (175K). Eliminated in the past hour were Keven “Stammdogg” Stammen, Randy “Randers” Haddox and Justin “looshle” Pechie.
The $1,500 Seven Card Stud Hi/Low that we mentioned is now in Level 4. Bryan Micon, Chris “SKOAL” Falconer, Bryan Devonshire and Brett “Gank” Jungblut are among the early chip leaders.
Get Your Fricke On
by Jill on 06.16.08, 12:10 am
As Events #29 and #30 got comfortable and settled into their later rounds, PocketFives caught up with the action, which was jam-packed full of fantastic online players. In Event #29, the $3K No-Limit Hold’em tournament, Jimmy “Gobboboy” Fricke sat atop the pack with 90K in chips; he continued to snatch up more by bullying the blinds. Mike “SowersUNCC” Sowers and Stu “TheDonator” Patterson cleaned up their table competition too, each guarding 55K in chips.
Another table to watch is Blue #11. Matt “Allinat420″ Stout sat in the first seat, joined by Joshua “pbdrunks” VanDuyn, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Kathy Liebert and others. As we watched this action-pakced table, ElkY took down a decent pot when he rivered trip-5s, holding A-5 in his hand. He increased his stack to 16K. One recent elimination of note was Chad “lilholdem954″ Batista, who reported to PocketFives that his A-Q refused to hold up to his opponent’s A-J.
Chip stacks from the recent round are as follows:
Jimmy “Gobboboy” Fricke - 90K
Mike “SowersUNCC” Sowers - 58K
Stu “TheDonator” Patterson - 50K
Matt “Allinat420″ Stout - 42K
Leo “Superfluous Man” Wolpert - 40K
Keith “KoolKeith13″ - 32K
Andrew “TiltyJoker” Lee - 25K
Craig “MrCasino” Gray - 18K
Bernard “ElkY” Grospellier (pictured at right) - 16K
Jon “pokertrip” Friedberg - 12K
Shaun Deeb - 8K
Joshua “pbdrunks” VanDuyn - 6K
Meanwhile, in Event #30, the $10K Limit Hold’em Championship, online players were making their presence known as well. Brock “t_soprano” Parker was sitting comfortably with 30K in chips next to Justin Bonomo, who held 16K. Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi was getting a massage while he played with his 20K in chips, sitting two seats from Eric “EFro” Froelich who maintained at 17K stack as well. Others still alive in the star-studded tournament include Vivek “psyduck” Rajkumar, Anna Wroblewski, and Marco “CrazyMarco” Johnson.
The battle for the bracelet continued in Event #28’s Omaha contest, which recently returned from dinner break. Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond and Steve “MrSmokey1″ Billirakis fought on with average-sized chipstacks, while Cole “cts” South was in deep trouble with only 80K left.
Online Presence in 10k Mixed Tourney
by AdamJ on 06.04.08, 10:55 pm
Despite the 10k buy-in and an eight game spread in WSOP Event #8, a handful of online players were scattered throughout the 192 player field.
There was a predictable amount of live cash game pros in the field, a group accustomed to playing all eight games which included: triple draw 2-7, hold-em, omaha 8, razz, stud, stud 8, no-limit hold-em, PLO.
There were a handful of notable tables that featured prominent online players like the table with Scott “emptyseat88″ Fischman, James “mig.com” Mackey, Robert Williamson III, Chris “Genius28″ Lee (right), Chau Giang, and Tom Schneider. Another interesting table included Jon “PearlJammer” Turner, David “Raptor” Benefield, Phil Ivey and Rafi Amit.
Although this event was loaded with stacked tables none was probably filled with more recognizable names than the table with Barry Greenstein, Gavin Griffin, Andy Bloch, Ram Vaswani, Jeff Lisandro and Matt “Hoss_TBF” Hawrilenko, an ultra high stakes limit hold-em specialist.
According to Patrik Antonius, Hawrilenko is one of the top four limit hold-em players in the world along with David Benyamine, Phil Ivey, and Bryce “Freedom25″ Paradis.
Other notable online pros playing in this event were Steve “MrSmokey1″ Billirakis, Eric “E-Fro” Froelich, Thayer “THAY3R” Rasmussen, Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy, Dario Minieri, Tom “Durrrr” Dwan, and Scott “gunning4you” Seiver.
In the $1K rebuy, Craig “Mr. Casino” Gray took a massive hit to his 600K+ stack when he ran into the AA of Lyric Duveyoung. With the blinds at 2500/5,000, Duveyoung raised to 13K and a player in middle position raised to 45K. Gray then reraised to 105k from the button and Duveyoung moved all in for nearly 350K. Gray instantly called with AK and found out the bad news. The board ran out J6238 and Gray was left with 240K in his stack. Duveyoung is the new chip leader of Event #5.
Jon “apestyles” van Fleet took out Alex Jacob shorty after at a nearby table. Jacob shoved his last 53K from the big blind with A6 and van Fleet called from the button with A2. Van Fleet, though, spiked a 2 on the flop and eliminated the 2006 USPC winner in 31st place. Ape has close to 200K going into the dinner break.
Dan “Stainley88″ Adams (right) found a way to hit the 6-figure mark for the first time by doubling up with 78. He shoved from the button and was called by the big blind with JT. Adams made a full house on the board of 73357. He then eliminated fellow online star Anirudh “BKiCe” Seth when Seth pushed his short stack forward with T4 and Adams called with A3. The A on the turn left Seth drawing dead and Adams now has 190K.
The field of 28 is still loaded with recognizeable online players, including Jeff “yellowsub86″ Williams (360K), Steve “gboro780″ Gross (225K), Amit “amak316″ Makhija (180K), Adam “Roothlus” Levy (160K) and Randy “Randers” Haddox (115K).