WSOP 2008
Patience Pays
by Court on 09.29.08, 8:27 pm
After battling all day with a short stack, there has been an upturn for Tim “Tmay420″ West. Coming out of the last break of the day with around 16k it took Tim less than half an hour to run his stack up to 65k. It took a come from behind win with his A-8 all in against the A-Q of Peter Gould to get started, but after that double up the next one came with his pocket kings against pocket sixes.
“It was nice to look down and see kings,” Tim said. “It had been a while.” The kings hand was not all in preflop, but what didn’t go in pre got in on the flop where Tim’s overpair to the board held up against pocket sixes.
Former tablemate Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar ran pocket jacks into Chris Williamsson’s pocket aces and has been eliminated from the tournament. Williamsson has been on a tear, picking up aces and kings, and then more aces, and more aces. In Aguiar’s last hand the two went back and forth raising and reraising till all the chips went in, but by the time Aguiar got a bad feeling he had to much in the pot and too little left to let it go.
Ben Grundy (right) was not far behind Aguiar. After losing a pot to Negreanu, Ben moved in the next hand from the button for 17,400. Daniel thought from the small blind for a minute before saying “I just found these [chips] so I guess I’ll call.” Then before Daniel had his hands off the stack of 17,400 chips the player in the big blind said all in, prompting a “No” from Daniel as he jokingly acted like he was going to take his 17k back.
Once the joking was over Daniel went into math class to make his decision. The other player’s all in represented 36k on top of the 17,400 the three players already had in the pot. He decided he was getting 3 to 1 on his money and pointed out that he had to beat both players. “I can’t be in that good of shape,” Daniel said before somewhat reluctantly folding. Ben then showed the A
3
while his opponent had the AK
. Daniel said he was dominated and on the Q726Q board the AK held up to eliminate Grundy. Daniel said he would also have lost to the AK.
Daniel’s relatively new training site has had a lot of success, but one of the key instructors at the site saw his WSOPE event end late in day 2. Adam “A_Junglen” Junglen (left) and his PokerVT patch have both made their exit from the tourney.
Hanging On
by Court on 09.29.08, 6:10 pm
Around 17 hours of play have passed since the players sat down with their starting stacks of 20k chips. Tim “Tmay420″ West finished Day 1A a mere quarter shy of his starting stack and has been short for the entirity of day 2 play. He is now down in the 10 big blind area where options are pretty much limited to pushing all in or folding your hand.
If good things come to those who are patient, there should be a bright future for West. He has been the epitome of patience, folding ragged hand aftrer ragged hand. Finally he did move in for exactly 9k (blinds are 500 / 1k with a 100 ante) and picked up the blinds. Tim showed the 2 and another player at the table said “He’s not a super nit.” Even playing the short stack West looks to be having as much fun as anyone. Next up for him will almost surely be a double up or a bust.
The table with West and Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar (right) is short stacked all around with no huge stacks and most of the players below average. A new addition to the table picked off a player when his aces held up against AK, and when the next table broke Jeff “ActionJeff” Garza found his way to the empty seat to the right of Tim and two seats to the left of Aguiar. “Finally they brought a fish to the table,” Aguiar said in a sarcastic tone about Jeff’s arrival.
Brian “sbrugby” Townsend has jumped to the top of the chip counts, sitting with 260k. Over at the feature table Jamie Rosen saw his day come to an end shortly after dinner. “Up and down,” pretty much summed up what Chris “Moorman1″ Moorman thought of his day so far.
99 Players of Poker on Break
by Court on 09.29.08, 3:08 pm
Well, maybe a few less than 99 but no more than that. About 5 minutes before play ended on the thrid level of the day the 12th table was broken leaving only 11 tables playing 9 handed each. The remaining players are on their 2 hour dinner break and will return to play 2 more levels tonight.
Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar finished up the level with around 50k after going on a swing of winning a pot, losing a pot, and repeating the process. Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you want to look at it the pots ended up all breaking even to leave Aguiar about where he started. The last pot he called an all in for 9,500 and his 9
9 only had to outrun Jani Vilmunen’s Q-4 offsuit. A queen on the flop was the opposite of what Aguiar wanted to see and things didn’t improve as the rest of the board ran out.
A short Tim “Tmay420″ West got lucky to double up when his A-5 overcame pocket tens. With the double up West has 18k, an improvement over where he was but still leaving him as one of the shorter stacks in the tournament.
Not so short stacked going into dinner break is Brian “sbrugby” Townsend (left). After a player opened for 2,400 Brian raised to 7,400. His opponent put his hands behind his stack like he was about to push in, them seemed to decide it wasn’t the time and said “nice bluff” as he folded his hand. “Not a bluff” Townsend replied as he stood up to exit on dinner break. A quick count of his chips for the ESPN crew put him at an exact count of 147,500.
Chippers
by Court on 09.29.08, 2:03 pm
The World Series of Poker Europe, presented by Betfair, ended up with a total of 362 entrants. Of that number only a few over 100 remain and the number is falling like prices at Wal-Mart. The folks over at ESPN couldn’t be happier so far, with Daniel Negreanu finishing as the day 1 chip leader and them quickly zooming up to 300k today to take a sizeable chip lead.
Well, maybe ESPN could dream for a better scenario, with big names like Doyle Brunson and Barry Greenstein being eliminated today, and defending champion Annette “Annette_15″ Obrestad falling out yesterday, but all in all if Daniel makes the final table the ratings will soar no matter who else is there with him.
Phil Hellmuth is still hanging on with around 10k, demanding constant attention from the cameras. At one point a short stacked Phil decided to miss his blinds to go visit Daniel at the feature table, just in case there was a camera in the building not focused on Hellmuth’s antics. His ongoing conversation across the room with Mike Matusow has a few of the other players a bit on edge, but most everyone seems to be ignoring him, while David “DevilFish” Ulliot makes regular witty remarks about the attention loving star. Phil has mentioned no less than 6 times in the last hour how many bracelets he has won.
Still battling with the short stack, Tim “Tmay420″ West (right) commented that “10 big blinds is all I need.” Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar is at the same table with Tim, and though not nearly as short he would also like to add chips to get to a more comfortable level. With about 43k in front of him Aguiar moved all in after a player had opened for 2,800 and another player had raised to 7,500. His all in moment added over 11k to his stack and put him around 55k.
Aguiar (left) was also part of a mild controversy that was more a discussion of rules than a complaint. Sitting in the 9 seat Aguiar had not acted on his hand when the 1, 2, and 3 seats all folded out of turn, leaving Aguiar with a hand and only the blinds remaining. Jonathan put in a raise to 2,100 and picked up the blinds, showing the 65. Another player at the table mentioned after the hand that after more than 2 players act out of turn that a player in Aguiars situation should have his hand ruled dead for not stopping the action.
Many of the European players at the table seemed to agree this was a rule, and it may well be but in three years of covering and playing in major live tournaments I have never seen a hand ruled dead because other players acted out of turn. The question is, should the burden be on the player to stop the out of turn action or should it fall on each player to know when it is and is not his or her turn and on the dealer to catch any out of turn action?
Here is a quick update around the room of how some of the boys are doing. Blinds are 400 / 800 with a 100 ante to give a frame of reference.
Daniel Negreanu (right) - 300k
Justin “Boosted J” Smith - 160k
Scott “R_A_Y” Montgomery - 150k
Brian “sbrugby” Townsend - 130k
Scott “emptyseat88″ Fischman - 122k
Peter “#1Pen” Neff - 111k
Chris “Moorman1″ Moorman - 110k
Jamie Rosen - 55k
Stephen “Stevie444″ Chidwick - 47k
Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar - 55k
Adam “A_Junglen” Junglen - 40k
Tim “Tmay420″ West - 13k
All Day For A Quarter, Day 1A Complete
by Court on 09.27.08, 9:51 pm
At the end of the day the players with the biggest smiles are quite often the same players with the bulging bags of chips. There were plenty of big stacks around the room, but at the end of the day Tim “Tmay420″ West seemed to be one of the most interested in telling people how he finished the day.
The starting stack was 20,000. West bagged up a grand total of 19,975 at the end of play, going through a full 5 levels and 10 hours of play to move only one of the smallest denomination of chips from his stack. West (left) is known for being patient, easily qualifying for the biblical reference of “having the patience of Job.” He will be back on Monday to see what he can do with his stack in day 2 play.
West wasn’t alone in finishing with less than the starting stack. Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar would be happy to trade chip bags with West at this point. Aguiar was short stacked for a majority of the day, but stayed calm late in the day when many players would have become over aggressive and been sent packing instead of packing up their chips at the end of play. Aguiar was in a pot with Andy Bloch late in the last level. Another player had opened for 1,200 and Jonathan called from the cutoff. Bloch also called from the big blind and the three players saw a Q77. The initial bettor checked to Aguiar who bet 2,225. Bloch called and the other player got out of the hand.
With the 5 on the turn Aguiar checked to Bloch who checked behind. The J river brought another check from Aguiar but Bloch decided to bet out and tossed in a 5k chip. With a pained look on his face Aguiar counted out his chips, discovering he had exactly 11,700 left and if he made the call and lost he would have less than 7k remaining. After another 10 seconds or so he tossed his hand in, living to fight another day both figuratively and literally (well, literally in the sense of making another day in the poker tournament).
Aguiar was able to grab a small pot or two in the last few hands of play to chip up to 13,250 for an end of day count.
Here are how some of the other players finished up the day:
Scott “R_A_Y” Montgomery - 81,650
Scott “emptyseat88″ Fischman - 70,650
Chris “Moorman1″ Moorman - 53,700
Ben Grundy - 46,000
Isaac Haxton - 35,500 (right)
Isaac “mr. menlo” Baron - 34,550
Peter “#1Pen” Neff - 27,200
Tim “Tmay420″ West - 19,975
Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar - 13,250
Final Numbers: 159 players started the day with 86 making it through Day 1A. Full end of day chip counts are available here.
Here are the top 10:
| Name | City | Country | Chip | |
| 1 | Smith, Justin | Kissimmee, FL | USA | 158,925 |
| 2 | Sagstrom, Eric | Gothenburg | Sweden | 98,750 |
| 3 | Bloch, Andy | Las Vegas, NV | USA | 97,100 |
| 4 | Montgomery, Scott | Perth, Ont. | Canada | 81,650 |
| 5 | Demidov, Ivan | Moscow | Russia | 73,625 |
| 6 | Adams, Brandon | Miami, FL | USA | 72,475 |
| 7 | Matusow, Mike | Las Vegas, NV | USA | 71,550 |
| 8 | Fischman, Scott | Las Vegas, NV | USA | 70,650 |
| 9 | Dirksen, Dustin | Las Vegas, NV | USA | 70,100 |
| 10 | Gratte, Goran | Kungalv | Sweden | 67,725 |