- Highlights of the day’s action at the WSOP.
Event #24: $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em Six Handed
The event that didn’t end saw Pierre Neuville decline to continue his heads up battle with Kevin “1SickDisease” Eyster at the end of ten levels of play. He declined the option to play another level deciding that today would be a better day to recover from his 2 to 1 chip disadvantage.
The two saw off challenges from Bryn Kenney and Andrew “LuckyChewy” Lichtenberger at the final table—Kenny finished fourth and Lichtenberger third, both hoping for their first bracelet.
Lichtenberger went out on a hero call, holding A-8 . The board ran out 4-Q-Q-3-K and Eyster jammed the river. A turn check had concealed Eyster’s pair of tens.
2012 Main Event champion Greg Merson managed a deep run to finish 13th out of 541 starters. November Niner Matt Jarvis started the day with a massive chip lead and a field down to 17 players but he lost momentum and was finally knocked out by Bryn Kenney who flopped a concealed hand of trip nines.
Event #25: $2,500 Omaha/Seven Card Stud Hi-Low Split-8 or Better
The mixed game event didn’t disappoint, and played to a finish which brought British pro John Kabbaj his second bracelet.
“I’ve had the worst two years of my life and this is quite special,” said Kabbaj. “I’ve been through a really bad divorce, sold my house, moved countries and had a really tough year. This is the icing on the cake.”
Kabbaj is known as the unofficial fifth member of the Hendon Mob. When he won his first bracelet in 2009, the win was embarrassingly celebrated with the Sex Pistols’ version of God Save the Queen rather than the more usual national anthem.
Eric Seidel and Mike Leah made valiant efforts at the nine handed final table, but Leah couldn’t get into the gear necessary to make a challenge for his first bracelet, and Seidel had to accept one more missed opportunity for his ninth.
Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, who ended the tournament in 19th place, felt bitter about a decision to exclude him for a round because of an overly loud celebration after taking down a huge pot. F5Poker covered the resulting twitter barrage in full
Daniel Negreanu provided support from the Twitter rail:
Event #26: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em
The day’s play carved the field down to 12 players, and much to his chagrin, Phil Hellmuth is not among them.
Actually 29th, but Phil’s only interest is in 1st.
Ryan Welch has the chip lead for the start of Day 3. He has over 1.5m chips, a sizeable advantage over second placed Dan Smith with 887,000.
Event #27: $1,500 H.O.R.S.E.
The cheapest H.O.R.S.E event of the series, at $1,500, sees Huck Seed, 1996 Main Event champion sat second in chips behind Jason Riesenberg.
Riesenberg’s last major WSOP cash was in 2008, where he took home $330k for an 18th place finish in the Main Event finally won by Peter Eastgate.
160 players still have chips after day 1 of the event, including Phil Ivey, but he’s got a mountain to climb to get back into contention—he has only 4,900 chips compared to Riesenberg’s 72,600.
There were 743 entries in total bringing the prize pool to a few thousand dollars over the $1m mark.
Event #28: $10,000 Pot-Limit Hold’em
The $10k Pot Limit Hold’em event secured 160 entries, but again the field includes some serious contenders.
At the end of the first day’s play, John Juanda, ended with second largest stack behind Tony Ruberto, whose largest win to date was the 2011 WPT Jacksonville Fall Series circuit event which netted him $325k.
Antonio Esfandiari is sixth in chips, with Chino Rheem in 8th. Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott is right behind in 10th with fellow British pro Barney Boatman in 12th.
Boatman joined Matusow in falling foul of the rules—receiving a penalty after exposing his hand with action pending. On balance Boatman got the best of it, as his opponent mucked a winning pair of aces at the end of the hand in question.
