Home / Poker News June 2009 / Thang Luu sets record, defends $1,500 Omaha Hi/Lo title
Thang Luu sets record, defends $1,500 Omaha Hi/Lo title
Posted by: James Carter. - Tue, 2009-06-02 07:26
Event #3 of the 2009 WSOP, the $1,500 Omaha Hi/Lo one saw Thang Luu set a world record as the first ever to successfully defend a WSOP side-event title. Luu had won the same event last year (it was event #6 then) and managed to secure the golden bracelet yet again this year, asserting himself as the absolute champion of the $1,500 Omaha Hi/Lo event. Not only did Luu achieve the unprecedented double, he beat a record field to the title this year.
The last day of the $1,500 Omaha Hi/Lo contest wasn’t void of incidents either. One such incident involved Freddy Deeb, who refused to muck his hole cards despite the fact that another player had shown the absolute nuts, and there was no way he could’ve hit a qualifying low. At one time during the day, play had to be interrupted because players could not hear each other over the loudspeakers which announced the WSOP’s invitational event.
19 players returned to fight it out for the title on Day 3 and the eliminations started about 30 minutes after the start of the action. The first elimination - that of Jeremy Harkin - started what proved to be an avalanche of eliminations, as following his departure from the tournament table, no fewer than 5 players bit the dust in under 30 minutes.
Henry Hull, William Seale, Edgar Cheng, Adam Quiggle and Dan Spear hit the rail one after the other, in that order.
Following that initial flare, the pace of eliminations ground to a crawl and over the following 3 hours, only four other players were sent packing.
Sebastian Ruthenberg became the final table bubble-boy when he was eliminated in 10th place for $16,829.
Jordan Rich and Ed Smith had a virtual strangle-hold on the other final table participants at this point, as nobody could muster even half as many chips as one of them. This was the time when Luu got going: first, he knocked out Freddy Deeb, then he doubled up through Reslock.
Jordan Rich became Luu’s next victim, followed by Robert Price.
The heads-up stage pitted Luu against Ed Smith, the player who was second in chips at the beginning of Day 3. The final board of the day gave Luu a better two pair to offer him the win and a successful WSOP championship defense.
