Home / Poker News June 2011 / 2011 WSOP – Event #2
2011 WSOP – Event #2
Posted by: James Carter. - Thu, 2011-06-02 13:35
The second event of the
2011 WSOP, the $25k NL Holdem Heads-up Event, drew an extremely select starting field. Given the size of the buy-in no one really expected anything less of it. 128 players coughed up the massive buy-in to create a prize-pool of more than $3 million. The structure of the event was overhauled quite a bit to give players room to maneuver: the buy-in, which had been a “mere” $10k in previous years, was raised to $25k. For that money, players got a total of 75k chips, only 25k of which was given to them at kick-off, together with 2 add-on buttons.
Due to the heads-up nature of the event, it took only 2 rounds for the 128-strong field to whittle down to 32. Needless to say, there were plenty of priceless match-ups in the first round already. Tom Dwan took on Peter Jetten, Daniel Negreanu battled Alex Kostritsyn and Jason Mercier had to deal with Gus Hansen, who by the way showed up in an excellent shape. Erik Seidel, who has not so long ago crowned himself the king of high roller events, played Dani Stern in round 1.
The final hand of the Seidel-Stern match-up saw Stern hit a runner-runner straight to eliminate Seidel and thus to advance to the second round.
In the second round, Daniel Alaei took on Justin Bonomo. Yevgeniy Timoshenko battled Daniel Cates, John Juanda played Kenny Tran and Jonathan Duhamel locked horns with John Duthie. Tom Dwan played Brynn Kenney and he successfully advanced past him into the third round. The final hand of this match-up saw Tom Dwan move all-in on the turn of a 9,4,8,10 board, holding Q,J for the straight. Kenney made the call and the rest is history.
Unfortunately for Dwan, in the third round, he faced Gus Hansen, who bounced him, denying him yet another chance to clinch a WSOP bracelet.
Timoshenko also advanced to the final 8, together with Matt Marafioti and Jake Cody.
