Is That Chris Moneymaker at the Top of the Leaderboard?
Posted by Dan on May 29, 2009
The elimination list for Event #2 at the WSOP, the $40,000 40th Annual NL Hold’em Event, looks like a who’s who in poker. Hellmuth, Dwan, Minieri, Juanda, Negreanu, Chan, Duke, Greenstein, Ferguson, Elezra, Lindgren, Harmon, Deeb, Laak and Nguyen are all out. However, there are still some major players left in this field and it still looks very good for a notable pro to take this one down.
Hellmuth, as always, was one of the more entertaining eliminations. Ivey had been bullying him all day long and Hellmuth was just waiting for an opportunity to fight back. He finally drew a hand, AJh, and made a move on an Ivey raise and looked across the table at AK. Phil headed to the rail and was ranting the entire time.
Mike “The Mouth” Matusow has been noticeably quiet all day long as the cards have just not been coming his way. He has managed to stay alive though and while he is short stacked at $87,000, if the cards change, you would have to think that he is going to be have to be dealt with.
Big Papa has been hanging tough the entire day. While his stack has been up and down, he seems to be in true form and licking his chops at the $1.8 million dollar payday that goes to the winner. He will start day two at $244,000 in chips.
However, the story of the day has to be that Chris Moneymaker has not only made it past day one, but he is sitting in second place overall with $805,000 in chips. He has made some big calls, most notably against Ferguson, and may finally breakthrough in a major WSOP tournament for the first time since his WSOP win in 2003.
He has been about as big a bust as any World Series winner in the past. Literally being the one responsible for the current day poker boom, he has not had a major cash since the $2,500,000 payday 6 years ago. You often see him getting railed early on in day one, but not this time. He is still playing typical Moneymaker poker, but his cards are holding and the questionable calls are paying off.
The true test will come as this field narrows down. He is not afraid to call with any kicker, he makes huge bluffs and will chase down just about any hand. He is just as likely to go on a huge run as he is to go broke in the first fifteen minutes of the second day. However, if he starts to get cards, he will be dangerous because of the action that he gets when he is in a hand.
In addition to Day 2 of the 40th Annual NL Hold’em Event, the Omaha Hi-Low Split 8 or Better $1,500 tournament starts today. This is a 3 day event and the players will start off with $4,500 in chips. Levels in both tournaments go for 60 minutes and the action kicks off at 12 noon PST.
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Filed Under: WSOP 2009
Tags: Chan, Chris Moneymaker, Deeb, Duke, Dwan, Elezra, Ferguson, Greenstein, Harmon, Hellmuth, Juanda, Laak, Lindgren, Minieri, Negreanu, Nguyen, NL Hold’em
