WSOP 2008
Minieri Steamrolling on Final Table Bubble
by AdamJ on 06.18.08, 3:29 am
Nearly ten feet away from about a dozen fans watching his every move, Dario Minieri’s aggressiveness had the floor staff searching for chip racks.
With chips stacked six racks high and a colony of chips left on the felt in front of him, Minieri (pictured right) has seen his chip stack go from 300k to 1.8 million in the last two rounds of the 2.5k 6-max NL WSOP Event #31.
Minieri has been raising nearly every pot and his fearlessness has got him busting opponents with hands as weak as middle pair that were good.
Minieri’s aggressiveness has even made Scotty Nguyen merely an onlooker sitting to Minieri’s right. Despite not playing many hands, Nguyen’s mouth was as active as always, reporting to the players at the other table about Dario’s demolition derby.
“The young gun is taking em’ all down baby,” said Nguyen in his standard high pitch tone.
Play is down to one seven-handed table, breaking when one more opponent busts. Minieri has roughly a third of the chips in play.
Frank “Round42″ Rusnak busted out right before the consolidation when his 3-bet all-in preflop with A
K
was called by 88 and Rusnak failed to improve taking home 38k.
Rusnak’s stack had been on a nosedive prior to his elimination, going from 650 to 200k after he lost two preflop all-in hands with his pocket tens to pocket kings and his pocket jacks losing to Seth “grtwhitehoop” Fischer’s utg shove with pocket queens.
Justin “Fluffdog” Filtz (500k), Seth “grtwhitehoop” Fischer (320k), and Scotty Nguyen (400k) will also be battling Minieri’s stack to make the final table.
The $10K Limit Hold-em has come to an end and Rob Hollink of the Netherlands is the world champion. He defeated Jerrod Ankenman, co-author of the Mathematics of Poker, after a lengthy heads up match and will be taking home $496,931 in addition to the bracelet.
Shortly after Hollink was awarded his bracelet, John Phan was given a bracelet of his own for taking down the $3K No Limit Hold Em event. This was definitely the hot ticket tonight at the Rio as a crowd of people, including Joe Sebok and Jason “jp osu” Potter, gathered around Phan and his heads up opponent, Johnny Neckar.
The crowd reached its peak when it was announced by the tournament director that the two players had both agreed to move all-in dark on the next hand. The dealer then dealt out the flop, turn, and river and the two players took turns revealing their hole cards. This continued for a couple of hands, including one in which Phan doubled up when his 7 high was good against Neckar’s 2-4, before the two returned to a more conventional game of poker. Only a few minutes later the duo got it all in pre-flop with Phan holding A9 and Neckar holding Q
J. An ace on the river sealed the deal for Phan and he was awarded the bracelet and first prize of $434,789.
The Sowers Taste of Defeat
by Jessica on 06.18.08, 2:18 am
It looked to be a showdown of the North Carolinians when Mike “SowersUNCC” Sowers (pictured at left) was moved to Court Harrington’s table after the dinner break. Before the two could tangle, Sowers got involved with another player at the table when he raised to 2,050 in late position with the blinds at 400/800 and a 100 ante and the player in the big blind called. The flop came out A8
7 and both players checked. When the A came on the turn, the big blind bet out 1,200 and Sowers raised to 3K total. The other player then put in a third raise to 6,200 total. Sowers thought briefly before flat calling, leaving 14K behind. When the 4 came on the river, his opponent bet 12K and Mike didn’t hesitate long before making the call. The player showed A8 for a full house and Sowers mucked.
The very next hand Sowers shoved for his remaining 4,725 with J8 and ran into the pocket kings of the player on the button. A king on the flop pretty much sealed Mike’s fate and he was sent to the rail right before the final break of the evening. Others joining him on the rail include Cal Spears and Stu “thedonator” Patterson.
Though Court will no longer be able to compete with Sowers, he has gotten involved in a chip stacking competition with another big stack at a nearby table. Clayton “clayton_27″ Newman came over to Harrington’s table and challenged him to a creative chip stacking war. Both boast some impressive chip stacks. Newman has 75K and Harrington is not too far behind with 65K. Clayton has opted for the tall and skinny method of chip stacking while Court’s chips have been arranged into a multi-tiered pyramid. We’ll keep you posted if they get any more creative in these last two levels. In the meantime, here are some updated chip counts:
Michael “worldsgrtest” Banducci - 50K
Scott “ssitron” Sitron - 35K
Phillip Yeh - 27K
Shawn “buck21″ Buchanan - 25K
JC “PrtyPSux” Alvarado - 22K
Andrew “tiltyjokers” Lee - 19K
Over in the Brasilia room, Bruno Fitoussi took a big hit to his stack minutes after players returned from the break in the 2.5k 6-max NL WSOP Event #31 with eleven players left.
Fitoussi raised preflop and John O’Shea from the blind called. The player led into Fitoussi for 35k on a K63, and Fitoussi raised him to 115k only to be faced with a re-raise all-in back at him. Fitoussi called with K6 for top two pair but was trumped when his opponent tabled a set with 33.
The hand left Fitoussi with 120k, losing 360k in the pot.
Joining Fitoussi are P5ers Frank “Round42″ Rusnak and Seth “grtwhitehoop” Fischer. Rusnak has chipped up a lot in the past hour and has 500k. Fischer is the short stack with 183k.
Justin “Fluffdog” Filtz is also at the table staying steady with his stack at 497k.
The other table includes Dario Minieri and Scotty Nguyen. Minieri has 300k and Nguyen has 380k.
Minieri and Rusnak Closing in on Final Table
by Jessica on 06.18.08, 12:46 am
A
trio of online players are making a final table run at the 2.5k 6-max NL WSOP Event #31 with 18 players left. Dario Minieri (pictured right) has position on Scotty Nguyen and has Nguyen outchipped by a small margin at 300k to Nguyen’s 275k.
P5er Frank “Round42″ Rusnak has a little above average stack with 300k as does his table mate Bruno Fitoussi. Sandwiched between Rusnak and Fitoussi is Justin ”Fluffdog” Filtz, who one of the biggest stacks at the table with 493k.
Filtz has been eyeing the bracelet after turning 21 eleven days ago. Although Filtz has some impressive results online, including a 20th place finish in an FTOPS event in March, he considers himself more of a cash game player that specializes in heads-up play.
If Filtz is able to win a heads-up match in this event, he would miss being the youngest bracelet winner by one day at 21 years and 12 days.
Meanwhile the current record holder for youngest bracelet winner, Steve “MrSmokey1″ Billirakis (pictured at left) is getting low on chips in the $5K Stud8 Championship event. Steve lost a big pot when he paid off Davidson Matthew’s trip queens after his low draw developed into two pairs, fours and eights. James “mig.com” Mackey has also dropped far below his 10K starting stack. With the limits at 250-500 ante 50 and a 75 chip bring-in Billirakis and Mackey have 2.5K and 4K respectively. With the level coming to a close in less than ten minutes, the two will surely be looking for a good spot to try and double up.
One player who successfully doubled up a couple of times is Jordan “Octavian_C” Rich who was as low as 1100 chips just an hour ago. After scooping several pots with two pair when no one else in the hand made a qualifying low, Rich now has 16K. He has been involved in a number of hands and always seems to walk away with at least half the pot every time. Most recently, Rich split a large, multi-player pot with Todd Brunson when he made Qs and 8s on sixth, which was good enough for the high hand while Brunson was the only player to make a qualifying low.
Brock “t_soprano” Parker was recently eliminated from the $10K Limit Hold Em Championship Event in 5th place when his Q8 failed to catch up with Jerrod Ankenman’s A9. He earned $102,460 for the finish.
Fivers Going Strong Six Handed
by Crystal on 06.17.08, 7:19 pm
P5ers are holding strong as players continue to drop from the $2.5k NLHE six-handed event #31.
Jason “treysfull21″ Mercier won a huge pot when he got all his chips in preflop against another big stack. The AK that Jason held dominated the AT of his opponent and when the board ran out A8224 Jason doubled his stack to over 200k.
Not long after that hand a battle of the P5ers nearly took place on Jason’s table. Jason raised in the cutoff and was called by Billy Westom in the small blind. Frank “Round42″ Rusnak who was in the big blind played with his chips contemplating a call but instead decided to re-raise for another 14k on top. An exciting P5 filled hand might have been in store, but Jason and Billy both folded giving Frank the pot.
Keven “Stamdogg” Stammen has also been doing well. When the button on his table raised to 3.3k preflop Keven made the call from his sb. The flop came with the 883 and both players checked to see the Q come on the turn. They both checked again and when the 4 dropped on the river Keven bet out 6k and the button called. Keven tabled the QJ for a pair of queens and the button mucked.
There are currently 47 players remaining. Chris “cdbr3799″ Dombrowski, Aditya “intervention” Agarwal (pictured left), and Michael “slugo5″ Glasser have been eliminated from today’s event but many players are still active in the field. Unofficial chip counts are listed below.
Jason “treysfull21″ Mercier - 200k
Keven “Stamdogg” Stammen - 160k
Frank “Round42″ Rusnak - 140k
Billy Westom - 95k
Shannon Shorr - 85k
Todd “tbt4653″ Terry - 70k
Paul “uclabruinz” Smith - 62k
Ian “IanJ300″ Johns - 50k
Mineri Looking to Run Deep
by Crystal on 06.17.08, 4:20 pm
Day 2 of event #31, the $2.5k NLHE six-handed tournament, is set to restart at 2:30 pm today with Dario Mineri (pictured left) 2nd in chips with over 191k. Only 73 out of the original 1012 players are left and they will play down to the final 9 tonight before play concludes for the evening. Other players still in the hunt include Matt “Hoss_TBF” Hawrilenko (78k), Billy Westom (70k), and Aditya “intervention” Agarwal (46k). Jeremiah “Believer82″ Vinsant was eliminated last night in 80th place for a payday of $4,189.
Also starting at 2 pm is the final table event #29 the $3k NLHE with Matt “plattsburgh” Vengrin coming in as the chip leader with over 1 million in chips. Tony “Bond18″ Dunst is also at the final table with 333k which is good enough for 8th out of the 9 remaining players but we wouldn’t be surprised to see him build that stack up and finish even higher once play begins.
In the Amazon room event #32 has just taken an unscheduled 30 minute break to accomodate for the estimated 400 people that are still trying to register for the event. This seems to be the first time the WSOP has had any trouble with registrations this year. We’ve heard from one of the players who registered late for the event that the computer system was registering players as alternates rather than at empty tables and then the entire system actually crashed. We imagine this may be the cause of the backup in registrations today but if we find out otherwise we’ll let you know.
Before the break began, Danny “THE_D_RY” Ryan was short stacked after losing a few hands but was then able to double up back to around 2.5k when he turned a king high flush against his opponents top pair. Other P5ers spotted in the field include Court Harrington, Adam “adam_mc” McGregor, and Phil “USCphildo” Collins.