Running Well

Poker players don’t get the weekends off. It’s on to Day 5 of the World Series of Poker Championship Event on Sunday, with 135 players remaining. That’s more than one full day ahead of schedule, as the original plan was to be down to 150 players by the end of Sunday.

It remains to be seen what will happen as the next few days unfold, as far as scheduling is concerned. The prevailing thought around the poker room is that the players who make the final table might end up getting a day off on Wednesday if this pace keeps up. Of course, tournament officials might also just be trying to build a buffer in case eliminations are few and far between the next couple days. If play is to continue one day ahead of par, only 60 players will still be alive after tonight.

One thing is for certain. There is no way the final table will be played a day early. Not with the pay-per-view broadcast scheduled.

Going into Day 5, which starts at noon Pacific time, the chip leader is Jamie Gold from Malibu, California, with $3,700,000. That is almost $1,400,000 more than the second place competitor, New Jersey’s Max Reele.

Very few “name” players are still remaining. Daniel Negreanu, Cyndy Violette, Ted Lawson, Joe Hachem, and Ted Forrest were all shown the door Saturday. The following are players that fans might recognize:

Prahlad Friedman 1,558,000
Jeffrey Lisandro 1,208,000
Eric Lynch 1,085,000
Annie Duke 919,000
Humberto Brenes 835,000
Allen Cunningham 503,000


He’s Baaaaaaack

A little after 3:30pm, a surprise visitor made an appearance amongst the tables: 2004 champ, Greg Raymer. Standing next to a table with two empty seats, he said to a floor manager, “I see there are two empty seats. I’ll buy in for….two hundred thousand.”

Looking at the tournament monitor to check to see what the average stack was, the official replied, “No, that will be two hundred eighty six thousand, six hundred ninety-nine.”

Hand of Day 4

Internet poker phenom Jason Strasser was one of the chip leaders going into the day and had continued to build his stack nicely when a horrible, horrible hand hit him in the face. He had raised to $15,000 pre-flop and Matt Wilson, a qualifier from Full Tilt Poker, re-raised to $75,000. Strasser put Wilson all-in and Wilson called for his remaining $400,000 plus chips with only A-K of spades. Strasser’s pocket Aces were dominating. The flop was innocent enough: J-7-4 with one spade. Wilson would need runner-runner Kings, spades, or Q-10 to win. And sure enough, two spades came on the turn and river, putting the table in a state of shock.

Wilson then proceeded to carry on and on about his victory, looking around for the ESPN cameras or anyone else who wanted to pay him attention. He then turned back to the table, mainly directing his comments towards Strasser, saying, “I’m sorry, but he raises every time. Fifteen thousand, fifteen thousand, fifteen thousand.”

Onlookers were stunned by the hand, which knocked Strasser’s stack down to a little over $200,000 and many were also not amused by Wilson’s antics. Being excited by your huge win is one thing, ranting and raving for a couple minutes is another. As professional poker player Chris Bigler put it, “That was sick.”

Strasser, on the flip side, calmly counted out his chips to send over to Wilson and went on with the next hand.

Unfortunately for Strasser, the beats kept coming, as he lost more chips later when his 10-10 couldn’t bet 9-9. He was able to run his chip stack back up, but he eventually bowed out in 169th place.