Home / Poker News June 2009 / Phil Ivey wins his 6th bracelet in the $2,500 NL Deuce to Seven event
Phil Ivey wins his 6th bracelet in the $2,500 NL Deuce to Seven event
Posted by: James Carter. - Sun, 2009-06-07 00:09
Phil Ivey started the final table of the $2,500 NL deuce-to-seven lowball event 6th in chips, but at the end of the day, it was him who held the golden bracelet high (his 6th) and pocketed the $96,361 first prize, together with probably several millions of dollars in prop bets.
The outcome of WSOP 2009 event #8 shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone. Deuce to seven lowball is considered one of the most skill-focused poker variants, and Phil Ivey is among the best players of the world. Put two and two together and you’ll see why he was definitely a favorite in this one, despite being one of the shorter stacks early in the day.
In Deuce to seven lowball the worst hand is the best basically. Flushes and straights ruin your hand and the best possible hand is the 2,3,4,5,7. Aces always count as high. The game features blinds as well as antes and in the first round of betting, players are compelled to make a raise if they decide to enter the pot.
Elia Ahmadian was the first player to be eliminated from the final table of event #6. Yan Chen was responsible for this deed.
Ivey found himself struggling early on, Raphael Zimmerman an unusually big thorn in his side. At one point in the game his stack fell to about 65,000, before he fed Zimmerman some of his own medicine and after crippling him, managed to eliminate him in 6th place.
Yan Chen managed to get the better of Rodeen Talebi next, and eliminated him in 5th place. By this time, Ivey had secured the chip lead and wasted no time in going after fellow large-stack John Monette on whom he scored a big pot shortly.
Monette did manage to get some of those chips back though when he eliminated Eric Kesselman in 4th place.
Ivey pushed out Yan Chen in 3rd place to set up the heads-up confrontation between himself and Monette, who enjoyed a slight chip lead at this stage.
The heads-up action lasted for nearly 3 hours as other pros kept showing up on the rail probably drawn by the prop bets they’d made on Ivey prior to day 6. The final hand of the event had Ivey’s 7,6,4,2 going up against Monette’s 9,7,5,2 with each player electing to draw a card. Monette drew a 7 and Ivey drew a 5 for the win.
