Event #33 played host to the battle of the nearly guys as Max Steinberg and Samuel Gerber juked it out for their first World Series of Poker bracelet. It ended with Steinberg riding a couple of winning hands to the end of the $1,000 NLHE event with a $440,238 prize and his first bracelet awaiting him. Gerber has the small matter of $273,385 to console him but you’d imagine the bracelet with no money attached would have been more his idea of fun.
11 players will return for the final day of Event #34: $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha – Six-Handed with Japanese player Naoya Kihara holding a commanding lead. His stack of 1,548,000 chips puts him a long way ahead of nearest challengers Tommy Le (965,000) and Davidi Kitai (789,000). For those that don’t know Kihara he cashed in last year’s Main Event as well as the WPT Championship back in 2010.
Phil Ivey’s 2012 WSOP odyssey has been quite the story so far and his latest tilt at a bracelet is in Event #35: $2,500 Mixed Hold’em. Ivey made the final table with a stack of 136,500 and isn’t a million miles away from leader Jeop van den Bijgaart’s (try saying that when you’re drunk) chip count of 455,000.
The first day of Event #36 is in the books with 60 entrants advancing to the second day of the $3,000 NLHE Shootout (2k player max). The format saw 587 entrants split across 60 different tables and the winner of each takes the chip count that remains. It means most of the field currently sitting on a stack of 90,000 or 81,000 chips depending on if their table was nine of ten handed. Among those to advance were David “Bakes” Baker of 2012 WSOP H.O.R.S.E. bracelet fame and he’s joined by Joe Tehan, Antonio Esfandiari and Justin Bonomo, amongst others. For what it’s worth, Alessandro Longobardi was the last one into the winner’s enclosure.
Ivey is also alive in Event #37: $2,500 Eight Game Mix, albeit with one of the shorter stacks as Dan Kelly leads the 209 players heading into the second day of competition.
