Today is the beginning of the three-day $5150 Championship Event of the Harrah’s Indiana Circuit stop. Since Olsdog updated us there have been four more completed events and plenty of excitement from new and familiar faces.
Event 8 was the $550 Six-handed No Limit Hold’Em event which was taken down by 37 year old professional Mike Cordell from Little Rock, Arkansas. The win was worth $21,274 which Cordell commented was “just another day at the office.” He had cashes of over $50,000 last year at the Scotty Nguyen Poker Challange and the Jack Binion World Poker Open main event. This was his second circuit cash. Interestingly, he busted all five of the other players at the final table himself, most notably pro Doug (Rico) Carli. The tournament finished when Simon Mancini went all-in with K-2 and was called by the J-10 of Cordell, who caught a 10 on the flop which would be the dagger for Mancini.
Event 9 came in the form of a half No Limit Hold’Em, half Pot Limit Omaha event with a $550 buy-in. The $14,045 first prize was taken down by insurance company owner Robbie Frank. It was Frank’s third circuit cash to complement his three World Series of Poker (WSOP) cashes, but his first win. He is no stranger to cashing in big tournaments though, this is 16th major tournament cash, including some big ones for over $40,000. The last hand of the event was Omaha where Frank went up against Doug (Rico) Carli and caught a set of Kings on the flop to take out Carli’s pocket Aces. Carli took home over $7000 in his third cash of the Indiana circuit.
The 10th event was only a $340 buy-in, but with smaller buy-ins comes larger fields. This event had 364 entries including a 23 year old student named Brett Henthorn from Champaign, Illinois. Henthorn, who had only played $1-2 No Limit cash in Las Vegas with little success, decided to take his hand at a tournament and ended victorious. His first prize was worth $31,240.
The event before the Championship, event 11 was a warm-up of sorts, a $1060 buy-in No Limit Hold’Em tournament. The event was taken down by Dale Robinson for $73,154. He outlasted a field of 241 and took out Bernard Lee, who took home $400,000 in the 2005 WSOP Main Event, heads-up to win first.
Event 12 is the Championship Event and Doug (Rico) Carli has to be the favorite after his three cashes so far at this circuit. Look for updates on the completion of this tournament and more WSOP news as we get closer and closer to the 2008 World Series.