Non-Stop Action on WSOP Day 8

The final table was finally determined for the $1,000 Re-buy No-Limit Hold’em event at the World Series of Poker Thursday evening and will be played in front of the ESPN cameras on Friday at 2:00pm.

Heading the field with $549,000 is Chuck Thompson, who made an absolutely spectacular run from the brink of elimination. Thompson started the day with the third lowest chip stack – only $26,700 – but survived long enough to build his stack up to $47,000 before more than doubling up when his Q-Q beat Marco Traniello’s J-J and Nam Le’s A-8.

Then, Thompson went on a monster run in just fifteen minutes, starting at around 6:40pm.

First, he doubled up through Nam Le by hitting an inside-straight draw against Le’s Q-Q.

Next, his pocket rockets eliminated Anthony Cousineau and his A-K.

Finally, five minutes later, he victimized Nam Le once again, sending him home in 11th place. Thompson held Q-Q (popular hand, apparently), Le held A-K, but no Ace or King fell and Le was out of luck.

Perhaps the hand of the day, however, belonged to Michael Gracz. On the turn in a hand against David Pham, Gracz bet $60,000 (betting rounds were $5,000/$10,000) into a board that showed a dangerous K-Q-4-J. Pham called. When the river paired the Queen, Gracz pushed his remaining $70,000 or so in, creating a massive pile of chips in the middle of the table. Pham thought for a couple minutes before conceding the hand and mucking his cards. With a large crowd looking on, Gracz flipped over his cards, only to show 4-6 of hearts. Spectators and players alike went wild when they saw this sickening bluff. Eli Elezra commented that it was one of the better bluffs he’s ever seen.

Ted Forrest, who came over from his 7-card stud table to see what was going on, was also impressed when he heard what happened, stating, “That takes big balls.”

Another exciting hand occurred a little earlier when Barry Greenstein, short stacked, went all-in with 10-9. When a caller flipped over 6-6, another player commented that Greenstein wasn’t in as bad shape as he probably would’ve expected, considering he had two over cards with straight potential. The hope was short lived, however, when his opponent flopped a 6 and then added insult to injury when he caught quads on the turn, knocking Greenstein out in 20th place.

The following are the final table competitors, along with their chip counts:

1. Chuck Thompson - $549,000
2. C.T. Law - $516,000
3. David Pham - $323,000
4. Shae Drobushevich - $248,000
5. Pascal Perrault - $225,000
6. Michael Gracz - $173,000
7. Shane Schleger - $134,000
8. Phil Gordon - $91,000
9. Meng La - $71,000

At the same time the $1,000 No-Limit event was narrowing down to one table, Event #8, the $1,500 Seven-Card Stud tournament, was underway. The turnout is once again a record – 472 players for a total prize pool of $651,360.

While stud can have the tendency to be a slow game, there was plenty of action to be found, but not necessarily relating to the cards on the table.

Nearing the dinner break, Chris Tsiprailidis got into an argument with another player, supposedly having something to do with an incorrect signal for a raise, followed by another inappropriate “signal”. Whatever the argument was about is really beside the point, because what followed was even more intense. Tsiprailidis was to Paul Darden’s immediate left and his arguing began to upset Darden because it was distracting him from the game. Fed up with all the noise, Darden told Tsiprailidis to “shut up”, spurring a new tête-à-tête between the two. Eventually, the two men were standing nose to nose yelling at each other and it actually looked like things might come to blows. As security was being called, Tsiprailidis told Darden that he wanted to take it outside, and Tsiprailidis actually did march out into the hallway. Fortunately, the normally cool and collected Darden sat back down to continue playing. Tsiprailidis came back a hand or two later, but the two did not even look at each other.

Later in the night, John Phan was severely short stacked and went all-in for his remaining chips. Right after he did this, he got a call on his cell phone and answered it. Because players are not allowed to talk on their phones while they are in a hand, the floorman declared Phan’s hand dead. Someone pointed out that he was already all-in, so there was no way the phone call could help him or affect play in any way. Phan, being the pro that he is, offered to muck his hand, but the Tournament Director ruled that play could continue, which of course was met by the ire of the player who called Phan’s all-in. Turned out that Phan lost the hand, anyway.

Originally published June 10, 2005