F^$%£@%@&$^@& was the sound emanating from Phil Ivey’s dressing room as his latest bid for a bracelet came to an end in the early hours of Thursday morning. Event #24 Omaha Hi-Lo Split-8 or Better saw Ivey’s run end in third place with all the excitement meaning that Joe Cassidy and Scotty Nguyen have to return at 2 p.m. Thursday afternoon. Talk about an anti-climax.
Canadian Simon Charette overcame the heartache of last year’s second placed finish to become a proud owner of a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet after coming out victorious from Event #23. The $3k NLHE Six-Handed event wasn’t for the faint of heart with five of the 19 remaining players combining for lifetime tournament earnings of circa $25 million. None of that mattered one iota to Charette who slayed all before him to take home $567,624 and the bragging rights among the entire Torontonian poker world. How do you like that, eh!
Limit Hold’em’s latest moment to shine is in Event #25 with the final ten set for the last day of the ‘other’ hold’em discipline. Victor Ramdin holds a narrow lead over the rest of the field with a stack of 165,500. The shootout on the final day will see the ten battle for $116,118 and some bona-fide poker bling.
Vadzim Kursevich, the Belarusian, leads Event #26 with two other Europeans joining him in the top five heading into the final day. 18 players remain in the $3,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event that started with Phil Ivey’s short stack of 700 being blinded down to nothing. Stars fell throughout the day as if in poker’s version of the Grand National with various WSOP and WSOPE bracelet holders falling by the wayside.
H.O.R.S.E. is one of those games that for kids and adults alike is loads of fun. Event #27 is one of the adult incarnation and the $1,500 version had 889 entries with Skip Wilson leading the 165 players vying for the bracelet and payout. 2010’s Main Event champ Jonathan Duhamel didn’t have his ‘A’ game and was among those eliminated. Fortunately for Duhamel, poker’s version doesn’t end up with the losers having a ball punted at their backside.
