WSOP 2008
Strasser vs. Nguyen
by Crystal on 07.10.08, 8:43 pm
Jason “strassa2″ Strasser probably just made the ESPN footage of the main event. With the blinds at 1.2k/2.4k with a 300 ante he raised to 7k from middle position and Men Nguyen pushed all in for 20.8k more. Jason contemplated for awhile before deciding to make the call and Nguyen proudly flipped over his A
A
while Jason tabled the KT
. His chance to bust a well known pro loomed and the flop came 542. Jason would need running cards to best Nguyen’s aces but the turn brought the 8 sealing the deal. The Q fell on the river and the 60k pot was shipped over to Nguyen with the ESPN cameras catching all the action.
Thayer “THAY3R” Rasmussen (pictured right) won a gigantic pot over 200k earlier when he flatted the small blind’s raise with pocket eights in the big blind after it was folded around to the small blind. Thayer promptly flopped a boat when it came 8-4-4, trumping his opponents pocket kings. Rasmussen later got moved to a table playing alongside Brent “astrolux85″ and and Hunter THE_HUNT_D” Frey. Several other stacked tables are forming that bear mentioning. Earlier we reported on the table that contained Leo “Superfluous Man” Wolpert, Owen “ocrowe” Crowe and “Bodog” Ari Engel, but that isn’t the only table where you’ll find PocketFivers duking it out. Just a few tables over, Brian “Like7″ Lamanna, Aditya “intervention” Agarwal and Kush Patel are all seated together as well. Another table to watch out for boasts Tim ‘tmay420″ West, Garrett “GBecks” Beckman, Darren “DABADESTCHIC” Nelson, and Cort “thecortster” Kibler-Melby.
After being merely a spectator for the first few levels, Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy’s chip stack started fluctuating in big margins. Keith “damurdera3″ Ferrera raised to 5400 under-the-gun and a player in middle position shoved all-in for 20k. Josephy re-raised to 38k and Ferrera moved all-in for a total of 202k. Josephy made the call tabling pocket kings but was trailing Ferrera’s pocket aces. The hand boosted Ferrera’s stack to 409k and Josephy was left with around 60k.
Luckily for Josephy, a table change helped move his stack north. In his first orbit at his new table, Josephy raised under-the-gun only to have a player in the blind put him all-in for his last 57k. Josephy made the call and tabled pocket kings again but this time was ahead of his opponents pocket jacks. The board ran true for Josephy, although his friend Kevin “BeLOWaBOVe” Saul, watching from about 40 feet away from the rail, had thought Josephy lost given his demeanor.
“Tell him to smile next time he doubles through,” Saul said to Pocketfives. A few minutes later Saul came over to congratulate Josephy on his double up and gave him a hard time about looking glum. Given Josephy’s last level, who can blame him?
“I had a lot more,” Josephy told Saul in response to his ribbing.
There are currently only 801 of the 1307 players that started the day which means we are only 135 spots away from the money. Play has been fast and furious all day but will likely slow down as the bubble approaches.
Here are some of our most recent unofficial chip counts:
Matthew “Burton1080″ Jensen - 465K
Andy “tufat23″ Teng - 350K
Owen “ocrowe” Crowe - 330K
Jeff “YoungSupremacy” Hakim - 320K
Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier - 305K
Cort “thecortster” Kibler-Melby - 270K
Aaron “NDGrinder59″ Steury - 265K
Devin “TranquilChaos” Porter - 225K
Hunter “THE_HUNT_D” Frey - 220K
Aditya “intervention” Argawal - 220K
Frank “Round42″ Rusnak - 200K
David “Raptor157″ Benefield - 195K
Peter “number1pen” Neff - 165K
Jonathan “therookieqq9″ Plens - 160K
Garrett “GBecks” Beckman - 155K
Ryan “Daut44″ Daut - 145K
David “Bakes” Baker - 140K
Josh “squintngo” Goldstein - 135K
Brent “Astrolux85″ Roberts - 135K
Jason Gray - 120K
Kush Patel - 115K
Tim “tmay420″ West - 110K
Bruce “Cornellxc11″ Hyde - 105K
Chris “cmoney3″ Kline - 95K
Chris “SLOPPYKLOD” Klodnicki - 94K
Matt “mattg1983″ Graham - 90K
Clayton “clayton27″ Newman - 89K
Darren “DABADESTCHIC” Nelson - 86K
Justin “truesyalose” Truesdell - 75K
Jon “Pearljammer” Turner - 70K
Cody “shankingyou” Shedd - 43K
Strasser Delivers Cooler in Level 1
by Brett on 07.06.08, 4:47 pm
Less than an hour into the first level of play we heard “All-in and a call on table 57!” and found that Jason “strassa2″ Strasser (pictured right) was all in preflop with AA against another player’s KK
. The other player was calling for the king to come but the board ran out 88358 and Jason’s aces held and he doubled up to nearly 30k.
Michael “inissint” Glasser was also seen scooping up a pot when his KJ hit a flop that contained both a king and two diamonds. Glasser made his flush on the turn and then and jack came on the river. His opponent called a bet holding the KJ but his two pair wasn’t good enough. Another player at the table noted that Glasser was “on a freeroll” after the flop and indeed he was. His stack has grown to around 23k.
Michael “BraveJayhawk” Jensen is off to a very fast start at his table. He has already worked his way up to 50K. When we asked Jensen how he acquired so many chips, he said he picked up 5-6 relatively large pots, but hadn’t had any huge all-ins just yet. He also wanted us to give a shout out for him: Mom Jensen–your son says hi!
Tristan “Cre8ive” Wade was only trying to speed up the game when he called out “player down!” after his table lost a player. Perhaps it was the exuberance with which he said it or the the small space in which it was shouted (Tristan is playing in the much smaller Tropical room where satellites are usually run), but a floor person very quickly made their way over to Wade’s table. The floor person was prepared to scold the dealer for the manner in which it was called out, but when he saw a female dealer, he realized it was Tristan who was the culprit. Wade was warned to be less enthusiastic about the elimination of other player’s and Tristan sincerely apologized, noting he was just trying to speed up the game, not make light of another player’s misfortune.
Garrett “GBecks” Beckman is seated at the featured table outside of the ESPN Final Table Arena with Phil Ivey. One table loaded with P5ers is in the Brasilia Room, where Table 40 includes Bryan “bparis” Paris, Dustin “stelvask” Siegel and Matt “plattsburgh” Vengrin. One table over, we found Shane “shaniac” Schleger, Joe Pelton and Ben “bfineman” Fineman seated together. Here’s a look at a few other interesting table draws as play began this afternoon:
Amazon Blue 23: Zach Hyman, Maria Ho, Jeff Schulman, Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy
Amazon Green 15: Brandon Schaefer, Clayton “clayton_27″ Newman, Kirill Gerasimov
Brasilia 2: Dag Martin “dmmikkel” Mikkelsen, Carl “colson10″ Olson
Brasilia 33: Tracey “xtrACEy” Nguyen, Todd Brunson, Tom “titantom32″ Braband
Buzzios 9: Ian “IanJ” Johns, Christan “KCRUEL” Kruel