Event #2 is nearing an end. The $25,000 heads-up championship started with 128 players and has now worked its way down to the Final Four. Gus Hansen, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Eric Froehlich, and Jake Cody all advanced to tomorrow’s finale where they will battle it out for a WSOP bracelet and $851,192 first-place prize. This year’s heads-up championship saw a boost in the buy-in from $10,000 to $25,000, but did so at the cost of the size of the field which was cut in half from the 2010 event. Many of the world’s best were on hand including Tom “Durrrr” Dwan, Patrik Antonius, Rich “Nutsinho” Lyndaker, Olivier “LivB” Busquet, and Gus Hansen. One glaring omission was the world’s best poker player Phil Ivey who earlier this week filed a lawsuit against FullTilt Poker and Tiltware. His $150,000,000 suit might have at first appeared to be on the behalf of American players with money stuck on FullTilt, but it has since surfaced the lawsuit is merely for his own benefit. To read more about this suit and any other poker legislation be sure to check the FlopTurnRiver News Section regularly.
Back to Event #2, late Thursday afternoon there were four strong matches between 8 of the world’s best player. The first match to finish pitted David “Gauco2121” Paredes against Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko. Timoshenko was no stranger to success in $25,000 buy-in events having won the WPT Five Star World Poker Classic back in 2009 for a massive $2,149,960 payday. Paredes, on the other hand, had yet to hit a huge live score, but did have a nice 5th place finish in the NAPT Deep Stack early last year for $184,816. While Paredes was able to jump out to a small chiplead it was quickly reversed as Timoshenko took control of the match and took down the match after just two hours of play. The final hand saw an all-in PF in which Timoshenko’s Ace-Ten offsuit dominated his opponent’s Ace-Six offsuit. A monotone flop gave Paredes a slew of outs but he was unable to hit sending Timoshenko to the final four.
The next match to finish pitted one of the youngest bracelet winners ever in Eric Froehlich against FullTilt sponsored professional Nikolay Evdakov. Just twenty minutes after Timoshenko found his way to the final four he was joined by Froehlich who dispatched of Evdakov when his two-pair was able to hold up against his opponent’s top pair. Froehlich, who has won two World Series of Poker bracelets in the past, has nearly guaranteed the biggest payday of his career just by making the final four. With his two WSOP wins and a 2nd place finish in the Merge Poker Showdown heads-up championship it is pretty obvious he is quite comfortable in one-on-one play. He will need to put all of that experience to good use against Timoshenko who is no slouch himself.
The next two matches would settle the second Final Four heads-up battle for Friday. First up was the feature table that pitted Jake Cody and Anthony Guetti against one another. Cody, a young English professional, is best known for winning the EPT Deauville Main Event last year for a staggering $1,213,194. Guetti, who goes by the popular name “Tuff_Fish” online, is not the man who made the moniker famous. Instead he is a high-stakes cash game professional who has been crushing the games on sites like FullTilt for years. The match went back and forth before both players found very strong starting hands and got all the money in before the flop. Fortunately for Cody his Pocket Tens were just a bit better than Guetti’s Pocket Sevens, sending the online pro home in the process. Cody was left waiting to see who he would face in the semifinals out of Gus Hansen or Matt Marafioti.
While most observers know who Gus Hansen is, the name Matt Marafioti may not ring any bells. However, ask anyone if they know ADZ124 and even the more casual online fans will say yes. For years Marafioti has played as ADZ124 on both PokerStars and FullTilt. His controversial online persona has been carefully crafted through trash-talk, nitty play, and decisions that toe the unethical line from time to time. The high-stakes Canadian professional nearly won the $10,000 WSOP PLO Championship last year before falling heads-up to Valdemar Kwaysser. Sadly for Marafioti he found the same fate in Event #2 this year as he was unable to take down Danish superstars Gus Hansen. The longest match of the day spanned more than three hours and saw Hansen finally break through when his turned two-pair held up against Marafioti’s double gutshot straight draw. With that ill-timed semi-bluff going Hansen’s way the final four was set:
Gus Hansen vs. Jake Cody
Yevgeniy Timoshenko vs. Eric Froehlich
The matches are set to start early in the afternoon Vegas time and will continue until a champion is crowned. Be sure to check back here for a final update on Event #2.