Tuesday, June 3, 2008

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Day 5: WSOP not just Hold'em anymore

Jesus shows the way into another day of poker.

By Sarah Polson

The exciting news for the day was supposed to be that Event 2 had reached its final table on Monday. No such luck, as nearly 18 hours of play brought the event down to the top 18 while Events 3 and 4 played their first days for the 2008 World Series of Poker.

Today Event 2 will play to a winner, kicking off a little earlier than its scheduled 2 p.m. start time to accommodate the remains of the larger-than-expected field. Plus Events 3 and 4 will continue into their Day 2's, while Events 5 and 6 get started.

There's certainly no lack of poker action as the World Series of Poker continues.

Event 2

Monday saw the return of 448 players for the $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em event for Day 2 action that was supposed to lead to a final table. In the wee hours this morning, however, the players took a vote and stopped playing at 18.

After about 17 hours and 45 minutes of play, they'd had enough for one day, and will resume play today at 1:30 p.m.

David Back started the day on Monday as the chip leader and he parlayed that lead into making the top 18. He's not the leader anymore, but he's still in the mix in the middle of the pack.

Some familiar names joining him are Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and Perry Friedman.

According to WorldSeriesofPoker.com the players remaining and their chip counts are:

• Theo Tran: $1,577,000
• Aaron Coulthard: $1,347,000
• Josh Engerdahl: $1,115,000
• James Akenhead: $1,100,000
• Matthew Kearney: $900,000
• Joe Rutledge: $824,000
• Eric Hicks: $788,000
• Melvin Jones: $755,000
• David Bach: $750,000
• Jeft Wiedenhoeft: $576,000
• Chris Ferguson: $420,000
• Minh Nguyen: $380,000
• Mike Ngo: $340,000
• Elia Ahmadian: $322,000
• Perry Friedman: $303,000
• Blake Kelso: $230,000
• Grant Hinkle: $188,000
• Frank Sinopoli: $167,000

Event 3

Having just barely made it into the money in Event 2, David Singer is off to a good start in Event 3. After the first day of play on Monday, the 713-person playing field has been whittled down to 63, and Singer is near the top of the pack with about $125,000 in chips.

He may be the best hope for making it to the final table for the pro player contingent, though David Levi, Lou Esposito, Tom McEvoy, Noah Schwartz and Joe Tehan are still in it as well.

Among those who fell on Day 1 were T.J. Cloutier, Phil Ivey, Greg Raymer and Billy Baxter.

Baxter has been a regular on the poker scene for many years and was inducted into the World Series of Poker Hall of Fame in 2006. He was taken out of this tournament when he got all-in with A-J on board of T-3-2 and an opponent with A-2 called.

The turn and the river had nothing for Baxter, so he'll have time to rest up for the start of another event.

Play for Event 3, the $1,500 Pot-Limit Hold'em, will reconvene at 2 p.m. today.

Event 4

The second event to get its start on Monday was the $5,000 Mixed Event, which has players switching between Limit and No-Limit Hold'em. The event drew about 100 fewer players than it did in 2007 when it was a World Championship game, but with 332 anteing up this year, there was still a hefty $1.5 million prize pool on the line.

Phil Hellmuth missed the first event of the season this year to attend a wedding but blew into town on Sunday to play in Day 2a of Event 2. He lasted only about an hour and then headed off for a night of Love, clubbing and Chinese poker with Raffi (yes, the children's singer Raffi), Roland De Wolfe and Josh Arieh.

Out but not down.

All the details of the night are in Hellmuth's blog, and the result of his long night was that he skipped out on playing in Event 3 and waited to play in Event 4 instead, which started play at about 5 p.m.

In Event 4, Hellmuth wrote that he took one bad beat against Justin Bonomo. Hellmuth was holding pocket queens and Bonomo had T9.

Bonomo raised it up before the flop and bet every street, according to Hellmuth, and Hellmuth just called him each time. The board came down with 8-7-2-4-6 to give Bonomo the straight.

It wasn't enough to bust Hellmuth; that would come later. At about 2:15 a.m. with only 15 minutes left in play for Day 1 of the tournament, Hellmuth ended up all-in with AQ against a player with 95. The other player spiked a nine on the river to sent Hellmuth to the rail.

Hellmuth remains positive about his start to the series, though.

"The great news is that I was only all-in twice all day, and I'm playing a great game right now," he wrote in his blog. "If I can keep playing at this level the whole month, then I'll be very pleased. The world still seems to misunderstand Hold'em, and that's fine with me!"

Some of the other big-name players who busted out on Day 1 of Event 4 include Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott, Michael Mizrachi, Robert Mizrachi, Eric Lynch, Jennifer Harman, John Hennigan and Dario Minieri.

With 91 of the original 332 players coming back today, there are actually quite a few familiar names still left in play as well. Bonomo put the approximately $10k he got off of Hellmuth to good use and is sitting near the top of the leaderboard.

There are plenty of players right behind him in the counts such as David Williams, Gavin Griffin, Maria Ho, Bill Chen, Ted Forrest, Roland De Wolfe, Mark Newhouse, and PokerListings favorite Jimmy "gobboboy" Fricke.

A little bit further down in the count are J.C. Alvarado, Andy Bloch, Howard Lederer, Chau Giang, Josh Arieh, Andy Black, Antonio Esfandiari, Patrik Antonius, Anna Wroblewski, Robert Williamson, Isaac Haxton, Marcel Luske, Danny Wong, Michael Binger, Phil Laak, Hoyt Corkins, Alex Kravchenko, David Benyamine, Noah Boeken, Erick Lindgren and Ralph Perry.

That means when play resumes for Day 2 at 3 p.m. today, there will be plenty of pros to check up on in the PokerListings Live Tournaments section.

Event 5 and Event 6

Two more events get under way today with the first rebuy event of the series and the first Omaha event of the series.

First up is the start of Event 5, $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em with rebuys, at noon. Last year saw plenty of deep-pocketed pros rebuy multiple times to try to stay in it, but it was Michael Chu who bested the 814-player field without having to rebuy even once.

At 5 p.m. the sixth event of the WSOP begins with a $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo Split Eight-or-Better tournament. Last year, this event brought in a 690-person playing field and created a $941,850 prize pool.

The player who got the best of it was Russian Alex Kravchenko. He defeated a final table that included Jordan Morgan and Bryan Devonshire to take home a $228,446 top prize and begin a run of seven cashes during the 2007 WSOP.

For all the latest news straight from the Rio in Las Vegas, tune in to the Live Tournaments section where the best reporting crew on the tournament circuit will be churning out live updates, videos, photos, reports, interviews and more for each and every WSOP event.

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