With all the No Limit Hold’em games that have been trotted out in the 2008 WSOP, a change of pace occurred in Event #12. That’s because this tourney was all about Limit Hold’em.
This $1,500 buy-in event saw 883 people ante up the entry fee and that pushed the total prize pool to $1,205,295. The duration of the event was three days long.
There were plenty of big name players that turned out for this event such as Phil Hellmuth, Erick Lindgren, Tom Schneider, Daniel Negreanu, and Chris Ferguson. Shannon Elizabeth also showed up this one.
The bust outs came slowly until the limits were raised and then they started coming more frequently. By the end of Day 1, only 179 of the original 883 players remained. Tom Schneider and Erick Lindgren were the only aforementioned players to be among the 179.
Day 2 of the event sought to whittle the field down to the last two tables. With 179 players left, this wasn’t unreasonable at all and there were only 18 left standing by day’s end.
Erick Lindgren was able to make it through this day along with European Markus Golser, and Ali Eslami who was one of the players that took down the Polaris poker machine last year.
Day 3 began with Lindgren looking for his second bracelet of this year’s WSOP as he won Event #4 already. But it wasn’t to be as he was eliminated by Markus Golser in 10th and that setup the final table.
Here’s how things looked heading in:
Seat/Player
1. Vinny Vinh
2. Teddy ‘Iceman’ Monroe
3. Markus Golser
4. Ali Eslami
5. Brendan Taylor
6. Jimmy Shultz
7. Chung Law
8. Christoph Niesert
9. Zac Fellows
The final table would be a short ride for both Chung Law and Christoph Niesert as both were out in 9th and 8th place. Eslami was quick to join them after Jimmy Shultz caught an ace on the river to knock him out.
Shultz then put Markus Golser and Teddy “Iceman” Monroe out next leaving only four players remaining.
It was Vinny Vinh’s turn to do the eliminating next as he busted Brendan Taylor out with pocket kings. However, that would be all for him as Shultz came calling again with a measly pair of 7’s that was still good enough to take care of Vinh.
The heads-up play was now down to Jimmy Shultz and Zac Fellows who’d been relatively quite at the table till now. After two hours of play, Shultz put Fellows on the ropes.
With pocket 3’s Fellows pushed the remnants of his stack in but Shultz caught a heart on the river to make a flush and Fellows was done.
Shultz had won his first WSOP bracelet and $257,105 to go with it. After his big win, Shultz announced that he was donating a generous 25% of his winnings to a fire department.
The rest of the results are as follows:
Rank/Player/Money
1.Jimmy Shultz $257,049
2.Zachary Fellows $165,165
3.Vinny Vinh $99,099
4.Teddy Monroe $82,883
5.Brendan Taylor $67,868
6.Marcus Golser $53,453
7.Ali Eslami $41,441
8.Christoph Niesert $32,432
9.Chung Law $23,423
10.Erick Lindgren $14,775
11.Zachary Henderson $14,775
12.Steven Shkolnik $14,775
13.Jon O’brien $11,772
14.Eric Pratt $11,772
15.Duc Nguyen $11,772
16.Joseph Sanders $8,769
17.Stephen Foutty $8,769
18.Arash Beral $8,769
19.Kevin Marcotte $6,727
20.Mitchell Mantin $6,727