WSOP

Hellmuth in Fine Form on Day 3 of the 2009 WSOP

WSOP 2009 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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