WSOP 2008
CrazyMarco, Roothlus Chip Up
by Jill on 06.28.08, 12:30 am
Players recently returned from their dinner break in the $2K No-Limit Hold’em event, ready for action. The original field of 2,317 has been reduced to 480 in the last level, condensing play to one section of the Amazon Room. The average chip stack sat at 18K.
Several PocketFivers made moves to chip up, including Marco “CrazyMarco” Johnson, who has built a fortress of chips and is near the top of the official chip counts with 73K. Adam “Roothlus” Levy (pictured at left) also made small moves to increase his stack. In one example of position play that we witnessed, Levy min-raised on the button and got two callers. After the flop, he bet out to take down the pot uncontested. As we watched, his strategy of taking down small and medium-sized pots was working - he moved up to 27K in chips.
Meanwhile, PocketFives caught up to Tristan “Cre8ive” Wade’s table as he went all in for 13K on a board of 9
K
2 against one other player. His opponent, sporting an Intellipoker patch, asked him, “What? Do you have a king? A flush draw? You can’t have a flush draw!” before folding his hand. Tristan looked up and grinned as he took down the pot. Carter “ckingusc” King sat across from Tristan at the table, nursing a short stack of 10K. He accosted two PocketFives staff members in his quest to find out who Tristan was. He succeeded as Tristan finally introduced himself and crisis was averted. Settle down, boys - we’re covering you both.
Other recent drama included the elimination of Stu “thedonator” Patterson, who sat in the big blind with 7K in chips behind. He jammed all his chips in the middle and was instantly called by the small blind. When Stu flipped over A
J, he sighed and found he was behind the other player’s A-K. The board was no help and Stu made his way to the rail.
Brett “gank’ Jungblutt was recently eliminated from the $1.5K Stud Hi/Lo event in 54th place. His finish was enough to garner him $2,450. Craig “MrCasino” Gray is one of 38 players remaining in the event. When we last saw him, he was scooping a pot and increasing his chip stack to 40K.
Meanwhile, the $50K HORSE event continues on with Day 3 of play and Barry “barryg1″ Greenstein is still towards the top of the leaderboard. Several notable young players saw their bracelet dreams come to an end today including Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond, Steve Sung, and Tom “durrrr” Dwan.
Stud Players in the Money
by Crystal on 06.27.08, 10:43 pm
The bubble burst in event #47, the $1.5k Stud h/l and the remaining players are all guaranteed at least $2,450. Brett “Gank” Jungblut and Craig “MrCasino” Gray have both survived the day so far. Brett currently has around 18k while Craig has been hovering around the 12k mark for a majority of the day. Phil Hellmuth has made his 66th WSOP cash in this event and Men “The Master” Nguyen has now cashed in 61 WSOP events.
Many notable players are still alive in the $5k NLHE six-handed event with the field down to 47. Steven “Cornell Fiji” Ware went on a killer run after the bubble burst. He started play after the bubble with 35k in chips and an hour later held over 350k. PocketFives asked Ware if he had proposed marriage to Frank (the dealer who dealt him all those monster hands) and Ware laughed and said he probably should have.
Players who have been knocked out recently include Glen “choron” Chorny (69th, $8,323), Mike “inissint” Glasser (66th, $9,080), Jason “tresfull21″ Mercier (51st, $10,972), and Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar (49th, $10,972). Below are the unoffical chip counts of the remaining players.
Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier (pictured right)- 470k
Steven “Cornell Fiji” Ware - 370k
Jason Gray - 210k
Chris “cdbr3799″ Dombrowski - 200k
Ryan “Daut44″ Daut - 170k
Chris “cmoney3″ Kline - 150k
Shannon Shorr - 130k
Alex Jacob - 50k
A Player Makes a “FatalError”
by Crystal on 06.27.08, 8:17 pm
The bubble finally burst in event #46, the $5k NLHE six-handed event after over an hour of hand for hand play. Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar (pictured right) called another players all in preflop with Jon holding the A
J against the all in players AK. While other player was ahead preflop, the board ran out JT9J9 giving Jon a full house and the bubble boy was sent to the rail.
All the players remaining are guaranteed at least $8,323 but they all seem to have their sights set on the $911,855 that the winner will receive.
During hand for hand play, Steven “Cornell Fiji” Ware’s stack took a big hit when he called another player’s all in with top pair and the nut flush draw versus the all in player’s set of nines. When the set held, Ware’s stack was knocked down to around 35k and had to wait out the rest of the bubble without much action. Since the bubble burst though, Ware has been on a tear, catching pocket aces, pocket queens, and pocket kings… twice. The second time Ware held kings it seemed his luck had run out as his opponent held pocket aces, but the turn brought a third king and Ware’s stack shot up to 276k. Ware is now right near the top of the chip counts along with Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier (270k).
Also notable as a result of the bubble bursting is that player Nikolay Evdakov has now cashed eight times in this years WSOP which ties the all time record held by Michael Binger (2007), Chad Brown (2007), Phil Hellmuth (2006), Richard Tatalovich (2006), and Humberto Brenes (2006).
Event #47, the $1.5k Stud h/l event is progressing and Craig “MrCasino” Gray and Brett “Gank” Jungblut are still fighting to build their chip stacks.
Brett (pictured left) started the day short stacked and got into a big hand earlier. With 3 players in, there was heavy action, betting and raising, until 5th street when one player folded and Brett ended up all in against the other player. Brett showed down (84)48T against the other players (A3)363, Brett’s two pair behind the other players trip threes. Both players were dealt a jack on 6th street, changing nothing, and on 7th the other player peeled the 7 while Brett slowly peeled the 8 to make his full house complete and to more than double his stack.
Barry Greenstein is currently 2nd in chips in the $50k HORSE event, with Phil Ivey right behind him in 3rd. James “mig.com” Mackey and Justin Bonomo have been having a good day and has built their stacks up to more than 300k while Tom “durrrr” Dwan (120k) and Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond (54k) have lost some ground and will need to get their stacks moving in the right direction if they want to make day 4 tomorrow.
Stud Players Wanting Tang
by Crystal on 06.27.08, 4:26 pm
The players in the $1.5k Stud H/L event aren’t craving the astronaut’s orange-flavored drink, rather they’re wanting more chips like those held by chip leader Ben Tang. Tang comes into day 2 with nearly 40k in chips. Among the 117 players who will return today are Brett “Gank” Jungblut (5.3k) and Craig “MrCasino” Gray (11.5k) (pictured right) who will both need to win some hands early to build their stacks up if they want to be one of the 56 players who will cash in this event. The players will hit the felt again at 2 pm today without Brian “Devo” Devonshire and Scott “BigRiskky” Clements who both busted last night before play concluded.
Day 3 of the monumental $50k HORSE event will kick off at 3 pm today with only 67 of the original 148 players left to battle it out. Lyle Berman is the current chip leader with 507k in chips but the field is still filled with well known live pros and a few online players looking to make their mark. Among those are Justin Bonomo (384k), Tom “durrrr” Dwan (195k), Dario Mineri (50k), Barry Greenstein (473k), Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond (138k), and James “mig.com” Mackey (175k).
Rosen Claims Chip Lead Near Final Table
by AdamJ on 06.27.08, 3:10 am
Jamie “Chronic420″ Rosen (pictured right) took a page from Doyle Brunson’s book and it paid off.
He may have gotten lucky to reap the benefits but with the way Rosen has been running in the 1k NL rebuy WSOP Event #44, its hard to blame him.
After everyone folded to Rosen in the small blind, Rosen put his opponent all-in in the big blind for his 90k stack with blinds at 4k-8k-1k. Rosen said the big blind was extremely tight and was surprised when he snap called with A5, ahead of Rosen’s T2.
Rosen wasn’t trailing for long when he had his opponent drawing dead by the flop when it came all diamonds.
To quote one of the most common phrases thrown around from online players this summer, “It must be nice.”
Rosen is the current chip leader with 930k but most contend with Scott “SCTrojans” Freeman’s 720k stack at his table as well as Eric “E-Fro” Froehlich, who has 440k.
If not for a bad beat about earlier, Froehlich’s stack would likely be near the chip leaders.
Froehlich’s opponent raised to 24k and Froehlich re-reraised to 75k, only to have his opponent put Froehlich all-in for his last 300k. Froehlich called and tabled the AK, dominating his opponents AJ. To Froehlich’s dismay they chopped the pot when the board double paired, sending Froehlich from one of the chip leaders if he holds to an average stack.
Here’s some chip counts of other notable players left with the average stack at 390k.
Jesse Chinni - 875k
Alex Bolotin - 200k
Joe Tehan - 175k
Peter “Nordberg” Feldman - 140k
After patiently nursing a short stack for much of the evening, Jason Gray has been steadily building his chips since returning from dinner break from the 5k 6-max WSOP Event #46.
With the blinds at 500/1,000 with a 100 ante, Jason open raised to 2.5K on the button and the player in the small blind quickly reraised to 7.5K total. Gray thought briefly before putting in a third raise to 21.5K. His opponent then moved all-in for around 15K more. Jason, who had 30K to start the hand, made the call and was happy to see he was in better shape than he expected when he revealed A9 and the other player held A-8. The flop came 974 and, after the J hit on the turn, Jason made his flush and had the other player drawing dead. Jason had the other player covered and after the hand he was sitting in good shape with 60K.
Steve “MrTimCaum” O’Dwyer also got it all-in with a bigger ace than his opponent, but he was eliminated when the other player’s A-10 caught up to O’Dwyer’s A-J. There are still a number of notable players remaining in the field though. Here are our most recent unofficial chip counts:
Steven “CornellFiji” Ware - 280K
Shannon Shorr - 80K
Jason “treysfull21″ Mercier - 40K
Matt “mattg1983″ Graham - 40K
Vivek “psyduck” Rajkumar - 38K
Glen “choron” Chorny - 37K
Ryan “daut44″ Daut - 34K
Jason “JCarver” Somerville - 32K
Jimmy “gobboboy” Fricke - 21K
A few online players played in the 1.5k Stud Hi-Lo WSOP Event #47. With only a 544 player field and the small buy-in, the tournament provided a good opportunity for a deep run.
Among those still in contention with 280 players left are Scott “BigRiskky” Clements (875), Craig “MrCasino” Gray (6.5k), and Brian “Devo” Devonshire (9k) with the average stack at 6k.