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Monday, June 2, 2008

Day 4: Medic wins first bracelet

Medic alert! Nenad wins his first WSOP bracelet.

By Sarah Polson

The first winner of the 2008 World Series of Poker is in the books, as Nenad Medic has scored his first bracelet win.

Play will continue today with the start of the Event 3 and Event 4 while Event 2 heads into Day 2 of play after a record-breaking field came to play two Day 1's.

Event 1

It took about eight hours of play, but the final table of the $10,000 World Championship Pot-Limit Hold'em event finally found a winner on Sunday.

Nenad Medic defeated two former WSOP bracelet winners, Mike Sexton and Kathy Liebert, along with other accomplished pros such as Andy Bloch, Patrik Antonius, Phil Laak, Chris Bell, Amit Makhija and Mike Sowers.

Bloch led the pack heading into the final table with $2,115,000 in chips. His nearest competitor was Medic, who started the day with $1.2 million in chips.

Laak started out the day third from the bottom of the pack, just ahead of Liebert and Antonius, but he was the first one out after taking a big hit to double up Antonius prior to getting finished off by Medic.

Sowers was the next to go despite starting the day in the middle of the chip counts. Antonius couldn't stave off elimination for much longer either. After coming in the short stack of the day, he was eliminated in seventh place.

Sixth place went to Bell, and Makhija followed him to the rail in fifth place. Down to four-handed, Bloch was still the frontrunner while Medic and Sexton were nearly even in chips for quite a while, and Kathy Liebert was hanging on with the smallest stack.

Sexton put up a good fight, but the World Poker Tour host and former WSOP bracelet winner hit the rail in fourth place for this event. He lost a big race to Medic, which left him low in chips, and then Liebert delivered the death blow.

On his final hand, Sexton opened for $280,000 from the button and Liebert called from the big blind. The flop brought A J 8, and Liebert checked it to Sexton.

Sexton moved all-in for the rest of his stack and Liebert, sporting the PokerStars logo for the final table, quickly made the call. She revealed A 8 to Sexton's A 6, and when the board finished with a 4 6, Sexton bowed out to go collect his fourth-place-finish pay.

Despite raking in the rest of Sexton's chips, Liebert was the next to go. The remaining three players all got involved in the hand, which started with Medic making a pre-flop raise to $300,000 from the button. Liebert moved all-in from the small blind for $850,000, and Bloch pushed it up to $2.8 million to put Medic all-in if he chose to get involved.

Medic, looking down at pocket queens, made the call and was in good shape against Bloch's two nines and Liebert's pocket sixes. Things continued to look up for Medic when the flop brought A Q 2 to put him further ahead and the turn and the river brought a 4 and 5 to give him the win, take a chunk of Bloch's chips and send Liebert packing.

That left Medic and Bloch to battle in head-up play for the $794,112 top prize and gold WSOP bracelet. Medic started the match with about a 2-1 chip lead against Bloch, and continued to build on that for the most part, with Bloch occasionally able to rake in some chips to keep himself in it.

In the end Medic prevailed to add a WSOP bracelet win to go along with his World Poker Tour win. (Read his winner interview here.)

For more in-depth reports from the first event's final table, check out the Live Updates in the Live Tournaments section or check out the latest video from the WSOP.

Event 2

The second part of the $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em's first day took off on Sunday with more than 1,800 players registered to create a new WSOP playing field record. On top of that, it also created a record prize pool for the event.

The big question is who made it through those first two Day 1's to return to play for that money in Day 2 today?

Leader of the pack.

David Bach, who has a laundry list of poker tournament achievements dating back to 1997, is leading the players coming out of Day 1b. He finished the day with more than $115,000 in chips, which is more than the leader from Day 1a, Dan Hirleman.

Mark Vos, who won a WSOP bracelet in 2006 in a $2,000 No-Limit Hold'em event, also finished high in the chip counts on Sunday.

Other notables from Day 1b heading into play later today are Perry Friedman, Kenny Tran, Ryan Daut, Erica Schoenberg, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, David Singer and Marco Traniello.

Some familiar names that will begin play today from Day 1a include Johannes Strassmann, Paul Sexton, Terrance Chan, Todd Brunson and Matt Stout.

Play resumes today at 2 p.m.

Event 3 and Event 4

At noon Event 3, a $1,500 Pot-Limit Hold'em event, will begin its first day of play. Last year the event brought in 781 participants to create a prize pool of more than $1 million dollars.

The event was won by Michael Spegal, from Georgia, who defeated a final table that included pros such as Gavin Smith, Jon Friedberg and Eric Lynch.

Kathy Liebert indicated in a quick interview with PokerListings for our Live Updates that she plans to take a couple days off to refuel after finishing the final table of the World Championship Pot-Limit Hold'em event on Sunday, so it's unlikely she'll be in the mix when play begins today.

However, there should be plenty of other family faces to point out who finished up Event 1 and busted out of Event 2 already.

Some of those pros may be waiting until 5 p.m. to join in Event 4, the $5,000 Mixed Hold'em Limit/No-Limit event, instead.

Last year this event brought in more than 451 players as the first event of the 2007 Series, and quite a few pros from the live and online realms made it to the top of the pack. Steve Billirakis topped a final table that included Greg Mueller, Steve Paul-Ambrose and Kirk Morrison to take home the $536,287 top prize.

Stay tuned to PokerListings.com as we continue to bring you live coverage from the Rio in Las Vegas for each and every event of the 2008 WSOP in our Live Tournaments section.