Home / Poker News October 2008 / PokerNews Cup Event #1 Report
PokerNews Cup Event #1 Report
Posted by: James Carter. - Tue, 2008-10-14 17:35
The Crown Casino in Melbourne played host to the second edition of the PokerNews Cup. 422 players registered for event #1, a NL Holdem tournament with a guaranteed prize-pool of $75,000. Because of the large starting field, the guarantee was well surpassed as players like Antonio Casale, Karib Karib and Jozef Berec squared off at the tables.
The event was a one day one, which meant that the winner would have to be decided fast. Over the course of the first three hours more than 211 players hit the rail, and the action didn’t show signs of slowing down.
40th place was the bubble, and in a rather unusual turn of events, 2 players busted out in the same time, both on the bubble. Fotios Pavlidis and Greg Heaver both thought they were bubble boys for a second there, but eventually they ended up sharing the prize for 40th place, which essentially paid them back their buy-ins.
The pace of the action was maintained all the way to the final table, which was reached when Joshua Abor ran his K,6 into Michael Bancroft’s J,6. As it usually happens in such situations, the underdog got hit by the flop, and even though he was given a flush draw, the initial favorite failed to come through.
The first player to bust out from the final table was Nick Bizimoski. He shoved all-in on his pair of 10s, and got one caller in Harry Ligos who pitted his A,J against his opponent’s already made hand. The board sided with Bizimoski all the way to the river when a J fell and gave Ligos the pot.
Geoff Channing fell next at the hands of Ligos, followed to the rail by Philip Iglesias and Liad Moshe.
Ligos took out Louse Ingram in 6th, and Steve Little in 5th. Looking quite unstoppable, Ligos then proceeded to show Andrew Jeffeys the way to the rail, and disposed of former chip leader Danny Tang next.
The heads-up play found Ligos holding a serious chip lead over Michael Bankroft. Bankroft pushed his luck a little bit too far going all-in on a 10,5 in a hand in which Ligos picked up a pair of Qs. The board brought no change to either hand and thus Ligos walked away with the $17,732 first prize.
