Hellmuth Plays Himself Right out of the WSOP

Posted by pokerguru on July 13, 2009

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.

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Filed Under: WSOP 2009

Tags: Antonio Esfandiari, Chip, Dan Harrington, Gomez, Hellmuth, Hsiung, Ivey, Jenkins, Joe Sebok, Kenny Tran, Mourshaki, Preflop, Vitaly Lunkin

Event #4 has Hit the Brakes and May be Extended for Another Day

Posted by pokerguru on June 3, 2009

It is surprising that it took this long with some of the fields that we have seen, but a tournament may finally be extended for an additional day. Event #4, the $1,000 Stimulus NL Hold’em Event still has 12 players remaining and tournament officials are going to offer the players the option to pay through tonight until a winner is decide or to come back at 2:00pm tomorrow to finish. As of this posting, the leader is Jeff Oakes with 2.4 million in chips.

Event #5, the $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha Event, is now down to 27 players. This was supposed to be the game that was going to be featured on the live stream, but they have already stated that they will change the game to the NL Event #4 if that gets extended. The current leader is Jason Mercier with 262,000 in chips.

Event #6, The $10,000 7 Card Stud World Championship, is the third event that is being played down to f final table tonight. There are still 48 players remaining from the 142 man field and play in this one has been dragging for both days. Greg Mueller has a huge chip lead at 206,000. The next closest player is Hoyt Corkins with 148,000. Todd Brunson is still on the leader board, but he is slowly slipping. However, the bulk of the chips in play are sitting in front of the top 8 players so anyone on the front page is still very much in this to make it to the final table.

Two events started today, the $1,500 NL Hold’em event and the always fun $2,500 Deuce to Seven Lowball No Limit tournament. The leader board in the NL Hold’em event is once again littered with names that most people will not recognize. The big name pros are having an extremely hard time in the NL Hold’em events as every one of them has a huge target on their head. With the fields being so large, it is hard to imagine that we are going to see any major pros hoisting a NL bracelet.

The Deuce to Seven Lowball event seems like it is the place to be for a good time tonight. The sheer nature of the game lends itself to a fun time and the pros are eating it up. Just about every major player in the game has signed up for this one. If you are looking for a pro to take this one down, the money would have to be on Ivey or Negreanu. Both players are among the best in the world at this off the wall game and the amateurs are going to have a hard time keeping up with these two.

With all of the events going on, there are quite a few players that have been multi-tabling. It is not something that you see very often, but everyone is looking for a bracelet and players like Negreanu seem to be entered in every event on the board. The tournament staff is doing an incredible job of keeping everything moving and all of the players straight. Tomorrow could be pure insanity though with 3 final tables going and a total of 7 tournaments in all. Should be a fun day!