Regardless of who the player is, it is almost gratifying when you see them get knocked out trying to put a ‘fancy move’ on the table. Hellmuth did exactly that and instead of chasing down his next bracelet, he will once again be watching the final table of the Main Event from the rail. Hellmuth got a little greedy with his AA and he paid the dearest of prices in elimination.
Mourshaki was in early position and fired out a raise of 22,000. It folded around to Hellmuth who was in late position and he flat called. This is all hindsight of course, but just calling gave everyone behind Hellmuth, including two blinds, the odds to make the call regardless of what their hands were. With the amount of money he had left, the move here was for him to push all in and try and get heads-up. Instead, he wanted as many people as possible in the pot and that never bodes well for AA.
Once Hellmuth called, 3 more players joined the dance to a flop of Jc10d5c. This is precisely the type of flop that you do not want to see with AA. Flush and straight draw on the board and someone very well may be sitting with J10. Hellmuth was about to find out the hard way that he made a mistake and it was going to cost him the tournament.
Once the flop hit, Jenkins was first to act and immediately pushed all in. The original raiser and the one person that Hellmuth would have more than likely been heads-up against, Mourshaki, folded his hand and then Hellmuth pushed the rests of his chips into the pot (110,000). Gomez let his hand go and Hsiung made the call putting both players at risk for elimination.
The cards were turned and Hellmuth saw his worst nightmare come true. Jenkins had flopped an open ended straight and was holding 89h, Hellmuth of course had AA with the A of clubs and Hsiung was holding the winning hand at the moment, Jh10c. The turn card fell and gave Jenkins the lead with a 7d. Hellmuth was drawing dead for the outright win at this point and Hsiung was down to 4 outs. However, he had Hellmuth covered so Phil had a small shot at the rest of the board pairing or possibly hitting one of the remaining two A’s to get a small piece and survive. Neither happened as the river was a 3s and Phil was shown the rail. If Phil had pushed all in preflop, he probably would have been able to get Mourshaki isolated and would more than likely have lived to see another day.
While Hellmuth was being shown the door, Ivey has continued on and is not one of the chip leaders of the tournament. He now has 1,276,000 and if far and away the best of the remaining 400 or so players. The overall chip leader is Matt Affleck who has accumulated 1,819,000. It will be interesting to see how he holds up as the numbers get lower and he starts to face off with the likes of Ivey. Other notables that are still alive are Dan Harrington, Joe Sebok, Antonio Esfandiari, Kenny Tran and Vitaly Lunkin.
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.
If you wanted to see a Pot Limit Omaha clinic, all you needed to do was watch the final table of Event 35 on Friday night. Play after play, read after read was absolutely perfect and Richard Austin made quick work of the remaining players to capture his first WSOP Bracelet. While it was not a very large field, the $5,000 buy in made the payoff over $400,000. This tournament ended just after 8:00pm and is easily the fastest moving final table of the tournament. We saw lots of aggression and some bad timing from the other players at the table. The final hand was typical of the action with all three players committed and Austin obviously coming out on top.
In other tournaments… Event 36 is moving along very well and as of this posting, there were only 66 players remaining. The bubble was 171 and after it was reached, they never looked back. Chips are continuing to fly and Jonathon Plens holds a small chip lead with 520,000 in his stack. Still a long way to go in this one though and lots of players are well within striking distance.
“You know it baby” is probably being heard quite often in Event 37 as the ever enjoyable Scotty Nguyen holds the chip lead with 317,000. As stated yesterday, this field is packed with superstars and they are all still hanging around. Both Doyle and Todd Brunson have worked their way up the leader board and are only 5,000 in chips apart. Some other notables that are stacking chips are Greg Raymer, Dutch Boyd and Howard Lederer. With only 36 players remaining, this final table is starting to shape up to be an all-star cast.
Event 38 was the only event kicking off today and it is still a little early for overall chip counts, but Kid Poker is making some noise early on in the $2,000 Limit Hold’em event. Erick Lindgren looks to be in trouble and Hellmuth’s stack seems to be growing at a steady pace. This is far and away the slowest day we have had in a while and it seems as though a lot of these players are starting to wear down. This is the break that a lot of them needed, except of course for those in the limit tournament and Stud Championship.
For those of you in the fantasy WSOP leagues, start taking the long days into account as a lot of these old-timers are starting to wear down. Frustration is also taking its toll on a lot of the cash players that are wasting days at a time only to get knocked out right before the bubble. If you want some insight, start reading the Tweets from the players and you can see that these big fields and multiple day tournaments are starting to wear thin. Look for a lot of the younger players and the season tournament pros to really start to shine.
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.
The 40th Annual No-Limit Holdem Event at the WSOP started the event off in grand fashion. This event is packed with some of the biggest names in poker, but a lot of the new comers and internet superstars did not fair very well in the early going.
The most notable of the early departures was Dario Minieri. While he has proven he has moxy in the WSOP, his claim to fame came via some impressive wins on PokerStars. He recently made an appearance in High Stakes Poker and got felted during the last installment of the season. His bad luck continued as he was chased fairly on in the action.
Another huge internet name that has already been sent to the rail is Steve “gboro780” Gross. While he has an incredible reputation as an online tournament player, his venture to high stakes live action was not so successful. He had the unfortunate luck of drawing an A9 to Doyle Brunson’s AQ and put Texas Dolly up over $200,000 in chips.
The kickoff event of the tournament is going to add almost $2,000,000 to someone’ bank account and you would have to think it is likely to be a big name player. While there are some amateurs in the field, this one is loaded with land mines called, Hellmuth, Chan, Brunson, etc…
With the size of the field, this tournament will be reminiscent of some of the older tournaments that the pros used to dominate. A lot of the luck factor will be taken out and skill should come out on top. With this being the second largest buy in of the tournament and more than likely being considered very prestigious due to its title and uniqueness (this is supposed to be a onetime anniversary event), you would have to think that every pro will be on their A game the entire time.
Another huge factor is that this is the first event any of these pros are playing in. Playing against Brunson on Day 1 of the entire event is going to be much different than facing him on Day three of the actual Main Event. My money is on the big boys for this one.
Stay tuned for more updates. We will post them as they come in.
