Hellmuth in Fine Form on Day 3 of the 2009 WSOP

Posted by pokerguru on July 13, 2009

While Hellmuth’s cards ran a little hot and enabled him to build a decent stack, his cards were not the story of the day. The Poker Brat was in fine form as he threw temper tantrum after temper tantrum. When is this guy going to grow up? Does anyone still find this entertaining or has it become as old and annoying to you as it has to most of the poker fans that we know?

While he had several outbursts, 2 of them stood out from the rest. In one hand, he went to the flop with the lead of KQ to KJ. His opponent took the lead on the flop with a J hitting and the K on the river spelled disaster for Hellmuth. He continued to call down and then expected to win when he hit the river. He went off on the dealer about how he allowed a dominated hand to catch up to him as though it is unacceptable for anyone to hit a hand against him.

His last tirade of the day came during the last few minutes. The tournaments have had countdowns in the last 10 minutes by drawing cards to decide how many hands would be played. This prevents players from stalling so that they can avoid the blinds at the end of the day. For some reason, the tournament director allowed them to play down to zero and Hellmuth once again went off. While his point was correct, the scenes that he makes are quite annoying.

While the antics of Hellmuth tend to steal the headlines, the real story is the humongous stack that Bertrand Grospellier has managed to build. With a stack of 1,380,500, he holds over 400,000 to the second place player. While he was building his stack, well over 1,500 players found the rail. Some of the most notable victims of the day were: Jennifer Harman, Grey Raymer, Marco Traniello, John Cernuto, John Juanda, Robert Mizrachi, Jason Alexander, Matthew Vogel, Jeff Lisandro and David Ulliott.

Even though he was knocked out, Jeff Lisandro has wrapped up the Player of the Year Award as he had outlasted everyone that was within striking distance. There is no denying that he was far and away the best of the season with 3 bracelets to his credit and several other deep runs.

Day 4 will kick off at noon and there should still be plenty of fireworks to see. With 800 players still alive, we are over 100 people away from the bubble. Expect some aggressive play until there are about 10 players to go when the play will slow down dramatically. The short stacks will delay every hand in the hopes that someone else will get knocked out before them and the big stacks will get hyper-aggressive in the hopes of stealing blind after blind.

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Filed Under: WSOP 2009

Tags: Bertrand Grospellier, David Ulliott, Grey Raymer, Hellmuth, Jason Alexander, Jeff Lisandro, Jennifer Harman, John Cernuto, John Juanda, Marco Traniello, Matthew Vogel, Poker, Robert Mizrachi

Justin Bonomo Leads the Pack Going into Day 3 of the $40k Event

Posted by Dan on May 30, 2009

Just when you thought normalcy was going to settle in at the WSOP, all hell broke loose. As the bubble got closer, some big names took major hits and the leader board got flipped around just a bit. Once again, one of the younger players on tour, Justin Bonomo, took charge and headed into the third day of the tournament as the chip leader with 2,678,000.

Grey Raymer has been playing great poker for the entire tournament and although he hit a small hiccup, he is still in this tournament with 2,287, 000. A name we have not seen atop the leader boards in quite some time, Ted Forrest, is also perched to make a run at the final table. With 2,586,000, he is sitting in second place and looking strong.

They had intended on playing down to 18, but play slowed down dramatically and 23 players will sit down at the table on day 3 in an effort to get to the final table. There are a lot of short stacks which may lead to a very short session. The next few players should go out rather quickly as they begin to play short-handed tables.

Here are your chip leaders heading into day 3:
Justin Bonomo 2,678,000
Ted Forrest 2,586,000
David Baker 2,367,000
Greg Raymer 2,287,000
Lex Veldhuis 2,103,000
Alex Torelle 1,725,000
Keith Lehr 1,257,000
Vitaly Lunkin 1,166,000
Matthew Marafioti 1,003,000
The rest of the field is under 1,000,000 in chips with the bottom 6 having less than 500,000.

In other tournaments….
The first bracelet of the season was won by Andrew Cohen, winner of the $500 Casino Employees Event. He takes home a healthy $83,778 as he bested 866 other players. He also had the honor of going through the first ever bracelet ceremony.

Day 1 is over for the Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better (Event #3). This tournament saw a record breaking entry of 918 players. If it is a sign to come, this WSOP is going to have the largest prize pools that we have ever seen. The day saw a lot of action with over 700 players in the starting field finding the rail. Chip counts were not yet available as of this posting, but some big names are still hanging tough. Defending Champion Luu is still in the field and Eli Elezra finished the day very strong and is over 50,000.

In addition to Day 3 of the $40k event and Day 2 of the Omaha Hi/Low tournament, Event #4, a $1000 NL Hold’em event, kicks off today at 12 noon Vegas time. This event will actually be covered on ESPN if you are interested in seeing the live stream.