The $5000 No Limit Hold'em Six-handed event looked promissing after day 1, with Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier as 5th stack at the end of the day, and Ryan Daut and Jonathan "TwistedEcho" Heath both all in the final 96 they were very close to the money, 78 would get paid. In the end, unfortunately we didnt see any of them back at our final table, TwistedEcho got knocked out 68th, good for $8,323 , Ryan Daut did a bit better, he finished 31st (he got all-in with 93o being shortstacked, called by TT), for a $16,647 cash. ElkY got the furthest of them all, but still it wasn't enough, when he got knocked out 16th (he flopped TPTK, but his opponent had aces), cashing $31,781 . Their bracelets will have to wait a little longer.

6 other players did make the final table of course, which started with Richard Lyndaker as chipleader, and Davidi Kitai, looking for a second bracelet, starting with a shortstack.

Seat 1: Sam Trickett - 1,000,450
Seat 2: Davidi Kitai - 298,000
Seat 3: Joe Commisso - 1,961,000
Seat 4: Richard Lyndaker - 2,345,000
Seat 5: Tom Lutz - 1,493,000
Seat 6: Edward Ochana - 928,000

Again we saw some serious action right from the start, the first 28 hands were enough to lose 3 out of 6 players! At that rate it could have been one of the fastest final tables ever at the WSOP, but things changed when they got heads-up after Edward Ochana had been knocked out by Richard Lyndaker, who had rivered a straight. From that moment on, it seemed to be small pots all around, with the occasional all-in. The players actually broke the record of the longest heads-up battle on the 2008 WSOP: 209 hands (from 6 to 2 took 69 hands). It seemed like it wasnt meant to end: 13 all-in situations meant that 12 of them, the shortstack won the hand. On the 13th, we finally saw who wins this event: Richard Lyndaker is all-in with against Joe Comisso's . A comes on the flop and no help for Lyndaker, which means Joe Comisso wins his first bracelet and the biggest cash in this WSOP so far: $911,855 .

1. Joe Commisso $911,855
2. Richard Lyndaker $570,551
3. Edward Ochana $368,891
4. Sam Trickett $245,927
5. Tom Lutz $174,041
6. Davidi Kitai $120,693

By: Pindarots


Comments (1)

The $1000 No-Limit Hold'em with rebuys was not as popular as last year, when Michael Graves beat Theo Tran in a 1048-headed field, this year there were "only" 879 entrants, but compared to last year they did have more rebuys/addons (2508 instead of 2336). This year there was $693.444 waiting for the winner. Jesse Chinni started as chipleader, Aliaksandr Dzianisau as shortstack.

Seat 1: Scott Freeman - 675,000
Seat 2: Max Greenwood - 728,000
Seat 3: Curtis Kohlberg - 209,000
Seat 4: Rene Mouritsen - 1,007,000
Seat 5: Alex Bolotin - 308,000
Seat 6: Albert Iversen - 921,000
Seat 7: Aliaksandr Dzianisau - 186,000
Seat 8: Phung Ngo - 556,000
Seat 9: Jesse Chinni - 2,160,000

There was a lot of action at the table, within 22 hands, we got rid of 5 players! That included chipleader Jesse Chinni after he got knocked out with AKo vs the pocket aces of Rene Mouritsen, who had a massive chiplead after that hand. He soon got rid of Scott Freeman, but when Max Greenwood got all-in against him, he flopped to pair against the pocket 5's of Greenwood, but Greenwood managed to hit one of the 2 remaining fives to double up. Greenwood doubles up twice through Mouritsen after that, who knocks out Albert Iversen in 3rd place. The heads-up took only 33 hands for Max "InYaFace" Greenwood to get the chiplead and beat Rene Mouritsen with AJ vs KJ and to win $693,444 and his first bracelet!

1. Maxwell Greenwood $693,392
2. Rene Mouritsen $445,524
3. Albert Iverson $267,314
4. Scott Freeman $223,572
5. Jesse Chinni $183,070
6. Aliaksandr Dzianisau $144,188
7. Curt Kohlberg $111,786
8. Phung Ngo $87,485
9. Alex Bolotin $63,183

By: Pindarots


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Of course, the same as yesterday, most of our attention was drawn by our own James "Mig" Mackey at the tables. Today once again was like a minefield, to get to the final 24, 43 other pokerpro's had to be eliminated to get to our final 3 tables. At the end of day 1, Mig's table looked like this:

Andy Bloch $362,500
Gabe Kaplan $278,500
James Mackey $175,500
Isabelle Mercier $146,000
Robert Williamson III $104,000
Scotty Nguyen $101,000
Alex Kostritsyn $71,500

Apparently we had some changes to the tables, it looks like Mig had been moved to table 5 (it's rather hard to tell, live updates only go about as far as interesting hands evolving). He had some problems in the early stages, but not much after that he knocked out Doug Ganger at Stud-8. In a 3-way pot with Mickey Appleman involved as well, his pair of aces were good enough in the end, giving Mackey about 250k in chips. Soon after that, we see him get more chips, he shows up in the leaderboards with about 510k chips. Mig got moved again, this time to a table which contained: Chad Brown, Farzad Bonyadi, Barry Greenstein, Daniel Negreanu, Gabe Kaplan and Erick Lindgren.

We see player after player being eliminated, like Jeff Lisandro, Bill Chen, Phil Galfond, Tom Dwan, Dario Minieri, Marcel Luske (who was sitting at Mig's table), Alex Kostritsyn and David Oppenheim being the last to be knocked out today. This means we get down to the final chipcount, and much to our dismay we see James Mackey as one of the shortstacks. Tables got redrawn and Mig is sitting at table one; the final 3 tables are the following:

Table 1:
James Mackey -- 151,000
Farzad Bonyadi -- 365,000
Ralph Perry -- 1,043,000
Joseph Michael (aka "BigJoe2003") -- 647,000
Lyle Berman -- 939,000
Barry Greenstein -- 1,311,000
Mike Wattel -- 474,000
Phil Ivey -- 145,000

Table 2:
Michael DeMichele (chipleader, see picture)-- 1,351,000
Andy Bloch -- 421,000
Brandon Adams -- 290,000
Huck Seed -- 190,000
Chad Brown -- 81,000
Patrick Bueno -- 806,000
Gabe Kaplan -- 360,000
Scotty Nguyen -- 1,033,000

Table 3:
Matt Glantz -- 521,000
Raymond Davis -- 438,000
Erick Lindgren -- 485,000
Edwin Ting -- 261,000
Daniel Negreanu -- 1,226,000
David Bach -- 801,000
Michael Mizrachi -- 701,000
Doyle Brunson -- 777,000

There really are no soft tables at the $50k HORSE, but being this close to cashing makes you wonder. The first 16 of this event will get paid at least $124,320 , up to a maximum of almost 2 million dollar! So tomorrow we'll know who won't make the money and we hope to see Mig at the final table, ready to ship his second bracelet, but it's gonna be as hard as ever to achieve it with the 3rd shortest stack.

Interesting facts: 3 of the top 4 players at the World Championship Mixed Event (event 8) make it to the final 24 at the HORSE: James Mackey, Matt Glantz and Michael DeMichele (all at different tables btw). There are still 2 players in the race for back-to-back cashes for the $50k HORSE event, Gabe Kaplan (9th last year) and Barry Greenstein (7th last year). Barry Greenstein, Daniel Negreanu and Erick Lindgren are actually the only 3 players still remaining that have won a bracelet this year at the WSOP. The average stack is 616,667, with 24 people remaining, Michael DeMichele is our chipleader (see picture above) with almost 70 big blinds, Chad Brown the shortstack with about 5 BB's.

We wish Mig the best of luck tonight to finish in the money and at the final table tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll see who makes the final table and who is still in the race for one of the most prestigious of poker events known to date.

By: Pindarots


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Well that was only to call your attention heheh. Erik Seidel took part in the event 43, the $1500 Pot Limit Omaha 8 or better. 720 players registered, creating the prizepool of $982,800. To be honest that's not the kind of tournament that I'm really familiar with, and not really that much interested, so this post will talk the less possible about the tournament.

Well we all know that Seidel is one of the most all rounded poker players out there, playing the different kinds of poker very well. This time he was chasing his 9th bracelet, but it was not possible. Actually, from what I read, he never really had that much of a chance in the final table. He was considered by many, eventual champion Michael Klaser included, the most dangerous player in the table (I "think" they have a point ), but sadly didn't get many action. Well it's a pity, it would have been nice if he won.


The winner of this event was german Michael Kläser. He has a good story over the internet. Last year he was the winner of the Full Tilt Poker Million Euro Challenge, defeating thousands of players over the internet. That win gave him the opportunity to play live heads-up against Gus Hansen and Chris Ferguson, and he defeated them both. That marathon earned him $350k euros.

Now he won a very prestigious gold bracelet, defeating one of the most succesful players of all times. Michael Klaser earned $216,249 for his win.

Final results:

1. Martin Klaser -- $216,249
2. Casey Castle -- $137,985
3. Michael Fetter -- $83,538
4. Erik Seidel -- $68,304
5. Jon Maren -- $56,019
6. Chad Burum -- $44,226
7. Joseph Haddad -- $34,389
8. Larry Wright -- $27,027
9. Tom Chamber -- $19,656

By: Raidern


Comments (2)

In day 2 of the prestigious $50.000 World Championship H.O.R.S.E-event, we had our second day (of a total of 5). With 8 eliminations yesterday, there had to be more today, at the end we got down to 67 of the 140 starting the day. Fortunenately, James "Mig" Mackey is still amongst them, tho he wasnt doing as well as yesterday, when he finished as chipleader. His stack dropped to a little below average (he started with 214k, but dropped to 175k with about 220k average). Tom "durrrr" Dwan had about the same experience, early in the day he got the chiplead, but ended with 195k chips, so just below average as well.

Today seemed to be a day for the elderly, Doyle Brunson was running hot, also sending David Benyamine to the rail and he ended at the 10th chipstack. Minh Ly was doing even better, in 4th place, just behind Barry Greenstein.

Unfortunately, we won't be seing a back-to-back-to-back final table appearance from David Singer, he got into both final tables on 2 previous editions, but when he couldn't beat Rob Hollink's 2 pair in Stud-8 he was out of there. We also saw last year's winner (Freddy Deeb) and runner-up (Bruno Fitoussi) go out, as well as Chris Ferguson, Eli Elezra, Howard Lederer, Gus Hansen, Patrik Antonius, Dewey Tomko, Tom Schneider, Mike Matusow, Todd Brunson, Michael Binger, Ted Forrest, Johnny Chan, John Juanda, Jennifer Harman and Annie Duke.

Tony G and Ralph Perry have some history between them (Tony G said something bad when Perry made a questionable call in the Intercontinental Poker Championship once), and that was still noticable when they got moved to the same table. Obviously this resulted in a verbal fight and the exit of Tony G, when he got knocked out by Bill Chen.

That can leave only one chipleader, today it's Lyle Berman (who shows a stunning resemblance to Waldorf from the Waldorf and Statler-duo in The Muppets)

1. Lyle Berman 507,000
2. Patrick Bueno 485,500
3. Barry Greenstein 473,000
4. Minh Ly 451,000
5. Chris Reslock 435,500
6. Joseph Michael 401,000
7. Erick Lindgren 397,500
8. Justin Bonomo 384,000
9. Daniel Negreanu 374,500
10. Doyle Brunson 366,000

At the end of the day, Mig's table looked like this:

Andy Bloch $362,500
Gabe Kaplan $278,500
James Mackey $175,500
Isabelle Mercier $146,000
Robert Williamson III $104,000
Scotty Nguyen $101,000
Alex Kostritsyn $71,500

By: Pindarots


Comments (2)

It was really surprising to see how much energy those people have at the poker table, despite their age!
One thing we can't deny: some of these people got an insane amount of poker experience! Thats why it was a real achievement to win Event #42 of World Series of Poker 2008, which was the $1,000 Seniors No-limit Hold'em World Championship!

Buy-in was quite low for a event with a 'championship' name in it, just $1,000 . However, 2,218 entrants made the prize pool reach $2,018,380 , so there was more than enough cash to fight for.

Final table at the beginning:

Seat 1: Marc Fluss - 873,000
Seat 2: Charles Wood - 531,000
Seat 3: Ed Clark - 504,000
Seat 4: Marty Wilson - 454,000
Seat 5: Peter Silverstein - 435,000
Seat 6: Dale Eberle - 1,414,000
Seat 7: Fred Berger - 518,000
Seat 8: Dan LaCourse - 1,364,000
Seat 9: Jerry Yamachika - 558,000

After few eliminations the remaining two players started heads-up: Dan LaCourse had the advantage over Dale Eberle, as he had 4,100,000 chips against 2,500,000 from his opponent.
On the final hand Eberle raised preflop and LaCourse made the call. Flop brings and Lacourse being oop goes for check / call. Turn rolls out a blank , and Lacourse checks again just to face yet another bet from Eberle. Call? Not this time, he moved all-in! After some stalling Eberle made the call with for top pair, but unfortunetaly he was against from LaCourse. King, king, and only a king could help Eberle on the river as he was dominated. Not this time, river is a blank and we have our champion, Dan Lacourse who collects $368,832 and the gold bracelet!

Final results:

1. Dan Lacourse $368,832
2. Dale Eberle $235,141
3. Marc Fluss $156,424
4. Jerry Yamachika $131,194
5. Fred Berger $106,974
6. Charles Wood $84,771
7. Peter Silverstein $64,588
8. Ed Clark $49,450
9. Martyn Wilson $34,312

By: Defrag


Comments (0)

The biggest buy-in tournament of the WSOP has started. Yes, we are talking about the $50,000 World Championship H.O.R.S.E event! Only the very best (or richest) of poker players play this event, and when you see the list of players you can realize how prestigious it really is. 148 players registered and created the prizepool of $7,104,000. 1st prize is worth of $1,989,120.

Out of the 148 starting players, only 8 have been eliminated so far, Phil Hellmuth and Amnon Filippi (who finished 4th last year) being two of them.

James “Mig” Mackey has had an awesome day and finished it as chipleader. He was in one of the "tables of death" of the tournament, but still managed to do great and even leadered the board during the day. Take a look at his table: David Oppenheim, Andy Bloch, Lyle Berman, James "mig.com" Mackey, Jennifer Harman, David Singer. You don't have to think much to realize that two of the very best HORSE players are on his table: back-to-back final tablist David Singer and vice-champion Andy Bloch.

Funny to mention, because it was exactly against them that Mig had one of his nice pot-wins yesterday (quote from CardPlayer):

On a flop of James Mackey checked and David Singer bet. Both Andy Bloch and Mackey made the call. The came on the turn and Mackey checked again, allowing Singer to bet. Bloch made the call and Mackey said raise, then put in some more chips. Singer and Bloch both made the call. The players checked the river card and Mackey turned over for the nut straight. When he saw Mackey's hand Bloch laughed and mucked. Singer also mucked and Mackey won a nice three-way pot again two of the better H.O.R.S.E players in the tournament. At the end of the level he sat with around 185,000 in chips.

By the end of the day, Mig had 200,000 chips. Best of luck Mig!

Take a look at the current chipcount:

1. James Mackey 214,000
2. Chris Reslock 210,200
3. Pat Pezzin 200,400
4. Joe Cassidy 198,700
5. Ralph Perry 195,300
6. Stephen Wolff 192,700
7. Fu Wong 188,100
8. Douglas Ganger 183,200
9. Bill Chen 182,500
10. Tad Jurgens 172,700

You can check the full list of chipcounts at the WSOP website. Play resumes today at 3:00pm PDT

By: Raidern


Comments (6)

I just realized its our 50th post on this blog. I would like to thank you guys for reading us everyday during the world series

Event 41 of WSOP was the $1,500 Mixed Hold'em (limit/no-limit). The name pretty much says it all. It's an event where every half an hour the game changes from NLHE to LHE. 731 players registered for the tournament and the prizepool was short of a million, $996k to be exact. 1st place got paid $219,562.

What can we say about this event? You know when we say that certain player dominated the table, eliminated like 6 players all 'by himself' and wins it all? Well, it happened, but he didn't win in the end. Nick Binger, who happens to be Michael Binger's brother, was the guy who was dominating everything during the day and failed at the end. Binger eliminated everyone until he was sent out in the 3rd place. Seriously, the guy was running so good that it seemed like whatever he did was the correct the decision. He called a short-stack all-in from Chris Rentes with 72o and won it (Rentes had 5d6d and got no help from the board). Wish I was like that all the time.

Frank Gary, on the other hand, played some kind of a patient game. It was like he was just waiting for his time. Once the game got to 3handed, Binger actually had a huge lead of over a million. Little by little it that lead was cut to 250k chips. Eventually Binger was sent off by Jonathan Tamayo, in a threes vs queens situation, where the queens ruled him out.

Heads-up started with Tamayo ahead in a 2:1 chiplead. Eventually they got even and they started alternating the lead just like the tournament alternates the game-style. We can say that the big hand of the tournament, even if it wasn't the final one, was a hand that crippled Tamayo. The texas boy flopped a nutstraight, but Gary got a runner-runner nines full of tens that gave him the big lead he would never lose.

The final results are:

1. Frank Gary $219,508
2. Jonathan Tamayo $140,093
3. Nick Binger $84,814
4. Chris Rentes $69,348
5. Alex Jalali $56,875
6. David Machowasky $44,902
7. Mats Gavatin $34,902
8. Michael Chu $27,440
9. David Sorger $19,956

By: Raidern


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Yeah, thats the word for what John Phan has achieved. The man didn't need to wait a single week to win his 2nd WSOP bracelet. After winning the $3,000 NLHE event last week, he now won the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw. Basically the rule is: the "worst" hand wins (7-5-4-3-2). In case you would want to know more, here you go.

The number of registered players was quite low when we think about a WSOP event, "only" 238, prizepool $547,400, 1st prize $151,896. That's obviously because its not a very popular game.

Anyway, the finalists were: John Phan, David Sklansky, Robert Mizrachi, Ben Ponzio, Shun Uchida and Gioi Luong. Everyone excepted the last two were bracelet winners already, so this one of those great final tables.

During the day some kind of rivalry was born. Phan and Luong had a couple of discussion on some situations. First, Phan pushed 6k chips in thinking he was on the blinds, and Luong asked the dealer to call the floor. And then, in a discard round, Luong tried to change one of his discarded cards, what Phan didn't like and immediately called the floor. The situation wasn't cool anymore, and it was only better after Luong was eliminated (by John Phan).

If you wan't to know a bit more about this, check the spoiler.

+ Show Spoiler +

The competition was very close all the time. In no moment one player got a huge lead and became untouchable. The heads-up between Shun Uchida e John Phan started very even, but eventually Phan prevailed and started to create a good lead. The HU didn't last much, around 40 minutes actually. But that was enough for Phan to win his bracelet. He won the bracelet with a hand that people calls "number 2", the 2nd best hand: 7-6-4-3-2. Great way to finish the tournament and win his 2nd bracelet!

John Phan after the win:


^^v

1.John "Razor" Phan $151,911
2.Shunjiro Uchida $95,795
3.Gioi Luong $61,582
4.Robert Mizrachi $41,055
5.Ben Ponzio $28,738
6.David Sklansky $20,527

Comments (2)

The $1500 No Limit Hold'em events are those that usually have the biggest turnouts, and this event was no different. 2720 players registered for the event, creating a prizepool of $3,712,800.

It was one of those final tables with not so much hype, not THAT KNOWN faces. David Woo and Thomas Werthmann were the most experienced of them all, the ones with most tournament success etc. Werthemann has a WSOP bracelet, he won a pot limit event in the 2005 wsop, and before the final table he was running good as he started the last day as the chipleader.

Seat 1: Eric Beren (640,000)
Seat 2: David Woo (640,000)
Seat 3: Habib Khanis (645,000)
Seat 4: Mike Glasser (495,000)
Seat 5: Curtis Early (1,225,000)
Seat 6: Jim Paras (535,000)
Seat 7: Matt Wood (675,000)
Seat 8: Thom Werthmann (1,600,000)
Seat 9: Thanh Dat Tran (1,255,000)

David Woo was already in a similar position during last years WSOP. It was his 2nd final table in a NL Hold'em event, but the other time he finished 5th. This time everything worked in his favour.

He took out the chiplead from Thom Werthmann really fast in a hand that was key for the rest of the day. Woo hit a set of queens on the flop and won a huge pot of 1,900,000, that let him with over 3 million chips after this particular hand.

After that it was all good for him. He also eliminated both Curtis Early and Thomas Werthmann in the same hand (6th and 5th place). It was a very thrilling hand where 4 players limped. Flop showed Q-10-J, Woods folded and the rest of them went all-in, but Woo had the two other players covered.

Woo had the nut straight, with AK
Early had top pair and straight draw with KQ
Werthmann had two pairs with QJ, aiming a fullhouse.

Turn and river didn't make a difference, and Woo managed to take the pot and eliminate his opponents.

Woo said: "As it turns out, everybody limped, I flopped the stone cold nuts and scared for my life because I know people have tremendous draws." - I can imagine how fast his heart was beating after that hand :D.

David Woo celebrating victory in the happiest day of his life

1.David Woo $631,550
2.Matthew Wood $389,844
3.Eric Beren $278,460
4.Habib Khanis $233,906
5.Thom Werthmann $191,209
6.Curtis Early $150,368
7.Thanh dat Tran $113,240
8.Michael Glasser $85,394
9.Jim Paras $58,290

By: Raidern


Comments (3)