WSOP 2008
He’s a Shaniac!
by Jill on 06.21.08, 5:07 am
The pace in the Amazon room slowed to a crawl as 64 players remained in Event #38, the $2K Pot-Limit Hold’em tournament. Hand-for-hand play endured for 45 minutes of the last level as players eyed the guaranteed payout of $3,744. When the bubble still hadn’t burst at the end of Level 10, groans were heard everywhere. Tournament directors instructed the players that they would play through the bubble tonight before taking a quick ten-minute break to ease the burden of the news.
Unfortunately, several PocketFivers suffered at the whims of the bubble; Noah “Exclusive” Boeken was eliminated when his 5
5
were dominated by his opponent’s pocket nines. Other recent eliminations include Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Eric “Rizen” Lynch, Shaun Deeb, Shannon Shorr, Chad “lilholdem954″ Batista, and Danny “THE_D_RY” Ryan, who was spotted talking with friends on the rail.
Building a stack, however, was Shane “shaniac” Schleger (pictured at right) who had 48K in chips. When P5s caught up with Shane’s table, he was raising to 3.4K preflop in early position and bullied his whole table into a fold. He remained aggressive as the last level of the day concluded, making sure that he stayed above the average stack of 36K.
After the ten-minute break, Shane managed to catch a couple of monster hands perfect for chipping up: in the first hand, Shane reraised preflop against one other opponent who folded queens; he showed pocket aces. The next hand, the same opponent raised and Shane re-raised once again. This time there was no fold and Shane called his opponent’s potted all-in. Shane held pocket queens to his opponent’s A
K and he managed to catch a club flush on the river. The Shaniac was living large with 85K at the conclusion of play tonight after the bubble finally burst and the players were sent home. Play resumes at 2PM PST tomorrow afternoon.
Stu “thedonator” Patterson battled on in Event #37, the $10K Omaha 8 tournament. The field narrowed to 30 remaining players with average stacks of 142K as we caught up with Stu’s table showing the 37
T4 on the board. Stu bet 8K after the turn and was called. The Q dropped on the river and Stu bet again, receiving a call. He showed down pocket aces for the win and was up to 112K in chips. Shortly after, Stu re-raised a limper and min-raiser to 25K preflop. The limper dropped out but the min-raiser called and the board came 4AK. Stu bet 8K, met a reraise and called. The 2 hit the river; when his opponent bet out, Stu folded and his stack dropped to 80K. At the next table over, Mike Matusow was making train noises for no apparent reason.
The field has since narrowed to 27 players who are all guaranteed $22,090 for making it this far. Players drew for new seats and have since returned from a short break; play will certainly continue late into the evening as all contenders compete for the $535,687 first-place finish and bracelet.
Across the Brasilia room at the Event #36 $10K, the final table for Event #36 has been set and play ended for the evening. Cody “thugmoneymkr” Slaubaugh is the acting chip leader with 1.59M after busting Bryan Micon (pictured at left), who walks away with $28,391 for his deep run. Owen “ocrowe” Crowe also earned his seat at the final table when he eliminated Tom “titantom32″ Braband. Braband’s pocket nines were dominated by Crowe’s AQ on a Q-Q-4 flop; he busted in 12th Place for $36,741. Aaron “gotcha55″ Kanter will sit at the final table as the 200K short stack. Play also resumes tomorrow at 2PM PST.
Lieu Doubles, Saul Busts
by Brett on 06.11.08, 9:55 pm
With a below average stack in the middle stages of the 5k NL WSOP Event #21, Liz Lieu (pictured right) caught the break she needed at just the right time.
On a flop of 647, Gavin Smith led for 700 and Andy Black raised to 2k. Lieu 4-bet all-in for 8200. Smith folded (which he later said was aces) and Black moved all-in, having Lieu outchipped by a few thousand. Black tabled 44 and Lieu showed her double draw with the Q8. The turn was a Q but the river 9 rescued Lieu’s stake in the tournament, increasing her stack to 18k.
There was an incredible amount of live pro’s at Scotty Nguyen’s table, who was playing alongside Kenny Tran, Noah “Exclusive” Boeken, Layne Flack, Huck Seed, and Eric Cajelais.
P5er Andy “BKiCe” Seth drew one of the tougher tables in the field with cash game savants Daniel Alaei, Nick Schulman, and Brian “tsarrast” Rast. Gavin Griffin and Matt “plattsburgh” Vengrin were also at the table, making for an interesting mix of players. Seth had one of the bigger stacks at the table with 31k at the 150-300-25 level.
Kevin “BeLOWaBOVe” Saul sitting alongside his friend Jason “JCarver” Summerville, lost over half his stack when his flopped set lost to a turned straight, losing a big bet on the turn and the river where Saul check-called both streets.
A few hands later with around 3k, Saul moved in under-the-gun at the 150-300-25 level with KT but ran into an opponents AK and Saul failed to improve.
Undeterred by busting, Saul was back at again in just enough time to join a handful of online players mixing it up in the 3k HORSE, WSOP Event #22 which started at 5pm.
Vying for his fifth WSOP cash this summer, Craig “MrCasino” Gray (pictured left) elected to skip the 5k NL event earlier so he could play the 3k HORSE. “There’s so many NL tournaments and this is just more of an enjoyable experience to me,” Gray said. “It’s like poker’s fun again.”
Fresh of their success in the 10k Mixed Event, Tony “tongni” Rivera and James “mig.com” Mackey are looking for another final table in a mixed games event after they were the last two standing in the 10k Mixed tournament. Ironically enough, both were dropouts from the University of Missouri but didn’t know each other til they met at the final table.
Here’s a list of some of the other notable online players scattered throughout the 408 player 3k HORSE field:
Johnny Bax
Brock “t_soprano”
Mike “SowersUNCC” Sowers
Chris “sooooted” Vaughn
Stacked 5k Mixed field, Sowers Bad Beats Dicken
by AdamJ on 06.03.08, 1:27 am
For those trying to game select WSOP tournaments to play, looking for fields ripe with weak players to enhance their chances, the 5k mixed hold-em event would fail miserably.
The 332-player field read like a who’s who list of poker professionals from both live and online communities.
Multiple tables had four to six recognizable names in poker and some tables were stocked with a bevy of big names like the table that featured Barry Greenstein, David “Devilfish” Ulliott, Phil Hellmuth, Hoyt Corkins, Scott “SCTrojans” Freeman, and Amit “Amak316″ Makhija.
Ulliott had the distinct pleasure of sitting to Hellmuth’s right, prompting him to attach a piece of paper over his left ear that read “bullshit deflector.”
Greg “FBT” Mueller , last year’s 5k mixed hold-em 2nd place finisher, drew one of the tougher tables in the field with Jon “PearlJammer” Turner (pictured at right), David “Raptor” Benefield, Corey “ugotpzd” Carroll, Gavin Griffin, and Andrew “Good2cu” Robl.
It didn’t take long for Mike “SowersUNCC” and Darrell “Gigabet” Dicken to bump heads, a clash that left Dicken exiting the table talking to his former tablemates about the upcoming rebuy event.
With blinds at 200-400 in the limit round, Sowers raised to 800 from middle position and Dicken reraised to 1200 out of the blind. Sowers put Dicken all-in for his last 300 and Dicken was shocked to see that his Q8 was dominated by Sowers A8.
‘When you go all-in with Q8 its more likely your not dominated,’ lamented Dicken, as he stood up awaiting his fate.
The board brought no hope for Dicken and he was eliminated.
A hand minutes earlier between Sowers and Dicken played a bigger part in his departure however.
With blinds still at 200-400 in the limit round, Sowers and Dicken got involved in a capped pot preflop where Sowers got all-in on the flop.
On a KKT flop, Sowers found himself in a cooler with AK, trailing Dicken’s TT. After a baby card dropped on the turn, Sowers hit a miracle K on the river.
Another table included a diverse collection of poker players from around the world in both live and online realms with Roland De Wolfe, Noah “Exclusive” Boeken, Isaac “luvtheWNBA” Haxton, former world champion Greg Raymer, and last year’s 5k mixed hold-em champion and youngest bracelet holder, Steve “MrSmokey1″ Billirakis.
It didn’t take long for the affable De Wolfe to get ribbing from the table after his AQ beat his opponents AA in an all-in preflop hand in the NL round after De Wolfe’s second queen dropped on the river, sending his opponent recounting the hand to a friend still in the tournament.
‘The good thing about that is that if you go on to win the tournament you won’t be able to brag about it because i’ll be able to remind you of that,’ Raymer said to De Wolfe.