The Season XI World Poker Tour event at Prague was a bittersweet moment for the PartyPoker sponsored poker professional, Bodo Sbrzesny. The $186,466 prize money that he received for his third place finish was easily his best live score since he first hit the live tournament felt back in 2009. But when you consider Sbrzesny had the chip lead, and the experience, going into that final table it was also a terrible disappointment not to walk away with a spot in the WPT Champions Club. The news at WPT Baden is Bodo is back and this time he plans to go all of the way.
131-players started Day Two and at the end of six-levels it had been reduced to just 44. The highest percentage of those eliminations occurred in the first level of play, and one man in particular was taking full advantage. It’s not often that you see Ryan O’Donnell leaving his house. Like a mover and shaker in the higher echelons of Wall Street, young O’Donnell cannot leave his computer screen for an instant – there is just too much money to be made. He goes by the screen name MocaChoca89 where he runs riot over the Heads-Up Turbo Sit n Go fields on PokerStars. But O’Donnell is nothing if not adaptive, as he proved by getting familiar with the nine-handed tournament game, finishing the first level as the chip leader.
As the play crept towards the dinner break, two great players were banished from WPT Baden. Former WPT National Series Denmark winner, and general MTT powerhouse, Steve O’Dwyer was eliminated in a standard flip, as was the recent Online Triple Crown Winner, and former European Poker Tour (EPT) winner, Mickey Petersen, who too left the field as a result of ending on the wrong side of his all-important flip.
With talent like that being dumped into the waste disposal there was room for opportunity and that’s where Martin Staszko comes in. The former WSOP November Niner, and former PokerStars Team Pro understands how to build a stack. Don’t forget, it was Staszko who finished runner-up in the 2011 WSOP Main Event to earn over $5 million in prize money. Staszko became one of the chip leaders just after the break. Then the youngest-ever WPT Champion, Lukas Berglund, was the last big name to be eliminated from Day Two. The Swede was card dead all afternoon, and evening, before eventually succumbing: JJ<77 after his opponent made a straight on the turn.
But despite nursing a terrible case of man-flu, the German cash game specialist, and coach, Bodo Sbrzesny, finished the day as the chip leader with 403,000 chips, just two pieces of ceramic more than Vishal Punjab who finished with 401,000. Other notable players still in the chase for the WPT title are Day 1A chip leader Kimmo Kurko, Ryan O’Donnell, Martin Staszko, Marvin Rettenmaier and Kara Scott.
Day Three will commence at 14:00 (CET) and live reports can be found at WPT.com.
