There would be no chip farming or overly conservative play during the WSOP’s 11th event as it was a No Limit Hold’em Shootout. With only the top player from each table of six moving on to the next round of play, players had to go for the gold or go home.
The tournament began with 360 players who payed a hefty $5,000 buy-in to be in this event. The prize pool they were playing for came out to $1,692,000 in this three day affair.
With five out of six players at each table bowing out of the tournament, the eliminations came quick. By the end of the first day, there were only 36 players left who had to battle it out on the second day.
Big name players who were participating in day 2 included Tony G, John Juanda, Erik Seidel, Adam Levy, and Joe Sebok. However, none of these players would make to day six where the final table awaited.
Those that did are as follows:
Seat/Player (Chip Count is same in a Shootout)
Seat 1: Greg Mueller
Seat 2: Thomas Roupe
Seat 3: Philip Tom
Seat 4: Leo Wolpert
Seat 5: Timothy West
Seat 6: Sirous Jamshidi
The final table play kicked off with Greg Mueller being the aggressor which built him a fairly large lead. Everyone else looked pretty conservative compared to him.
In fact, over three hours went by before an elimination was even seen. And that elimination would be Thomas Roupe after Mueller’s pocket 9’s were one better than Roupe’s pocket 8’s and Leo Wolpert finished off his small chip stack a little later.
After taking out Roupe, Wolpert went after Timothy West who held pocket 9’s. West got no more help from the board though and Wolpert’s pocket kings were enough to eliminate West.
Philip Tom was the next person doing the eliminating as he took out Sirous Jamshidi. Tom held pocket rockets while Jamshidi’s jacks got no help.
Wolpert and Mueller got into a big pot later on as Wolpert had K-3 and Mueller held K-2. Wolpert got absolutely nothing while Mueller got a 2 on the river to send Leo packing.
Now it was down to heads-up play between Tom and Mueller. Tom held the advantage going in and widened it just four hands in by taking 650,000 chips from Mueller. The final hand saw Tom’s pair of jacks with an ace kicker best Mueller’s jacks and virtually no kicker (8) for the win.
Phil Tom had captured his first ever WSOP bracelet and got paid $477,990 on top of it. Here’s the rest of the results:
Rank/Player/Money
1.Phillip Tom $477,990
2.Greg (FBT) Mueller $298,638
3.Leo Wolpert $187,812
4.Sirious Jamshidi $118,440
5.Tim West $63,450
6.Thomas Roupe $38,070
7.John Juanda $16,920
8.John Murphy $16,920
9.Elton Beebe $16,920
10.Eugene Katchalov $16,920
11.Richard Kirsch $16,920
12.John Monnette $16,920
13.Eric Froelich $16,920
14.Adam Levy $16,920
15.William Palmer $16,920
16.Remy Biechel $16,920
17.Robert Firestone $16,920
18.Gabriel Costner $16,920
19.William (Bill) Blanda $16,920
20.Burt Boutin $16,920
21.Alex (Yahtzem) Jacob $16,920
22.Gregg Turk$16,920
23.Maciek (Michael) Gracz $16,920
24.Erik Siedel $16,920
25.Jacobo Fernandez-Hernandez $16,920