The 25th of June saw a single final table in the form of the $3,000 NLHE Event 44, with the other events being over shadowed by the start of the first of the “Big Three” starting with the beginning of the $111,111 One Drop Event #47.
Event #44
The $3,000 No Limit Hold’em Event #44 has found it’s winner in Sandeep Pulusani. The young American has now won his first WSOP bracelet and has a $592,684 cheque to go with it. Jason Mercier busted out in 16th for $21,773 after so many had been keeping their eyes on his stack, expecting him to make a run for the title. We have a full report of the Final table coming up later today, but until then you’ll have to make do with the final table payouts.
- Sandeep Pulusani – $592,684
- Niall Farrell – $366,815
- Michael Rocco – $229,500
- Martin Hanowski – $166,579
- Zo Karim – $122,974
- Mark Teltscher – $92,186
- Man Le – $70,120
- Pedro Rios – $54,053
- Phillippe Vert – $42,230
Event #45
The $1,500 Ante Only No Limit Hold’em Event #45 had a short day on the 26th. With just 71 players coming back for the second day of action it only took 8 levels to cut that field down to just 9 players, who will be coming back to the final table. Players who won’t be making the trip to the streaming table include Neil Channing (56th for $3,020), JC Tran (34th for $5,125), Allen Cunningham (21st for $6,242), and David Vamplew (16th for $7,697).
The stacks for the final 9 are:
- Paul Lieu – 579,000
- Ben Volpe – 523,000
- Daniel Johnson – 479,000
- Louis Bonnecaze – 330,000
- Horacio Chaves – 214,000
- Chris Moorman – 279,000
- Adam Stone – 214,000
- Blair Hinkle – 182,000
- Samuel Panzica – 153,000
The players will be back in action at 1pm Vegas time, and will be p[laying down to a winner.
Event #46
The second day of the $3,000 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo Split 8 or Better Event #46 saw the field whittled down to just 17 players. Players who survived the bubble on Day 1 but didn’t make it to Day 3 included Gavin Smith (32nd for $6,899), David Baker (42nd for $5,617), and Mike Matusow (39th for $5,617).
The final 17 are back for Day 3 at 2pm, and the big stacks are going to be:
- Alexey Makarov – 471,000
- Ashly Butler – 456,000
- Zhen Cai – 414,000
- John O’Shea – 364,000
- Vladimir Shchmelev – 339,000
- John Cernuto – 271,000
- Stephen Chidwick – 243,000
- Brain Hacker – 239,000
- Andrey Zaichenko – 219,000
- Allyn Jaffrey Shulman – 172,000
Event #47
It’s that time that a lot of us have been waiting for. It’s time for the biggest buy in event of this year’s WSOP, the $111,111 One Drop Event #47. Several of us in the Poker media were doing our best to guess how many players this event would attract, with the smart money being on 180-200. It seems the smart money wasn’t that smart because only 166 players signed up for the tournament. This field had most of the names you’d expect to show up, including Phil Hellmuth, Ike Haxton, Dan Smith, Ben “Bttech86” Tollerene, Scott Seiver and last years runner up Sam Trickett. Unfortunately for these top flight pros, none of them will be returning for Day 2, as they all busted out.
108 players will be returning to this event, and notable players doing so include Steve O’Dwyer (83,000), Jason Mercier (160,000), Shaun Deeb (228,000), Vanessa Selbst (337,000), reigning champion Antonio Esfandiari (445,000), Jean-Robert Bellande (719,000) and Daniel Negreanu (785,000). This event seems to contain the distilled essence of the cream of tournament poker. The big stacks coming into Day 2 are:
- Brandon Steven – 1,398,000
- Tobias Reinkemeier – 1,225,000
- Dan Shak – 999,000
- Jason Mo – 875,000
- Chris Lee – 906,000
- Ben Lamb – 855,000
- Matt Glantz – 854,000
- Don Nguyen – 847,000
- Bobby Baldwin – 839,000
- Farshad Fardad – 833,000
The card will be back in the air at 13:00pst, and the players will be trying to keep their dreams alive to pick up the $4,830,619 first place.
Event #48
Anything coming after the One Drop Event is going to be a bit of an anti climax, so I think the WSOP organisers decided to “hide” the $2,500 Limit Hold’em 6-Max Event 48 in this spot, as other more popular formats would distract from the bigger event. 343 players stumped up the cash to play in this event, and only 119 are heading into Day 2. Pretty impressive as it’s rather hard to get all your chips in while you are deep stacked in one of these events.
Players who didn’t make the second day include Barry Greenstein (who, according to his twitter, is boycotting $100k+ buy ins until he has a spare $100K to burn), Andre Akkari, JC Tran, Nick Abou Risk and Phil Hellmuth. Hellmuth busted when his aces got sucked out on by Marco Johnson’s Js8h making trip 8’s on the river.
Notable players still in include Max Silver (7,500), Humberto Brenes (7,500), Max Pescatori (14,100) and Joe Cada (20,400). The big stacks coming back into Day 2 are:
- Paul Mattioda – 57,900
- Ray Henson – 53,900
- Marco Johnson – 46,600
- Jon Turner – 43,800
- Danny Warchol – 41,600
- Jeff Thompson – 38,100
- Tom Schneider – 38,000
- David “Bakes” Baker – 35,800
- Otto Richard – 31,800
- Todd Witteles – 31,800
The players will be back in action at 2pm Vegas time to edge towards the final table.
Player of the Year
Thursday’s action hasn’t seen any changes in the top 10 of the WSOP Player of the year race, but with players in the top 10 running deep in events I don’t think this is going to continue for long. We’ll keep an eye on the scores, and let you know how the results from Thursday impact the race.
- Daniel Negreanu – 470.53
- Tom Schneider – 438.51
- David “Bakes” Baker – 414.10
- Jared Humby – 368.73
- Daniel Kelly – 344.70
- Jason Duval – 328.85
- Mark Radoja – 327.75
- Erick Lindgren – 323.51
- Jesse Martin – 318.38
- Scott Clements – 303.50
Thursday the 27th of June is going to see the final tables of Events #45 and #46, as well as continuing action in not only the One Drop event, but the 6-Max Limit Hold’em of Event 48, and the start of the $1,500 NLHE Event #49 and the $2,500 10 Game Mix Event #50. We’ll have all the news up for you, as well as the final table report as soon as we can.