Action heats up at WSOPC Caesars Palace

Three more events brought a win for a dealer, a deal for a win and some Omaha action at the World Series of Poker Circuit at Caesars Palace Las Vegas this week.

Event 4 - $550 No-Limit Hold'em

Anthony Tran has been dealing games for 18 years, and playing poker a little longer than that, but he scored his first tournament win ever this week at the WSOPC Caesars Palace.

Tran prefers cash games, playing $40/$80 Limit Hold'em games, but he decided to play in Event 4 of the WSOPC while on vacation in Las Vegas. His choice turned into a $458,941 win that brought with it a championship ring.

To get to that win, Tran had to make his way through 133 hands of play at the final table before going heads-up against Sales Dominique for another 76 hands. He started with a sizable lead against Dominique, but play see-sawed back and forth before Tran was finally able to triumph.

"He didn't play too good," Tran said of Dominique. "He would check and call a lot. When he bet a hand, he bet too much. He got lucky, but I [knew] sooner or later I [had] to win."

The final-table results were:

Event 5 - $1,570 No-Limit Hold'em

Nick Brancato was the winner of Event 5 of the WSOPC Caesars Palace this week, but not because of the deal of the cards. Instead, he was declared the winner after play got down to the final four and the players decided to make a deal to end the game.

Eleven players were left after the first day of play ended at 2 a.m. After five more hours of play on the second day, the final table was finally down to four players - Brancato, Durwood Murray, Surinder Sunar and Dorothy von Sachsen - who took a break to talk over a deal.

Sunar had started out the day with a big chip lead, but it was Brancato who was sitting with the lead after the deal was made because he'd taken out three other players earlier in the final table.

The final-table results, not taking into consideration the deal made, were:

Event 6 - $550 Omaha Eight-or-Better

Gebrehiwet Goitom was sitting in the middle of the pack when the final table of the Event 6 began play this week. The event hadn't looked good initially for him, and he'd been steaming after absorbing a lot of beats, but he played his way back to a win.

Originally from Ethiopia, Goitom has been playing poker for about 11 years, and he said he plays very well once he has chips. Once he's got a nice stack, he plays aggressively, which helped him move up the leaderboard and into a WSOPC event win.

By the time Goitom had battled his way into heads-up play, he had a substantial chip lead over his opponent, Kevin Petersen.

Petersen had started out the final table even lower in the chip count than Goitom, but now he was facing a $440,000 chip stack with only $175,000 chips of his own.

As they played, Goitom ground down Petersen, who was just barely clinging to life by winning a couple of all-in matchups. He couldn't make much headway though to overcome Goitom's lead.

On the final hand, Petersen was holding 3♣ 5♦ 7♥ Q♥, and Goitom had 4♦ 6♣ J♠ Q♠. The board came Q-4-3-9-T to give Goitom queens and fours to Petersen's queens and treys. For the win, Goitom picked up $24,199.

The final-table results were:

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