Home / Poker News September 2009 / WCOOP Day 18: Grospellier and Dan Kelly win again
WCOOP Day 18: Grospellier and Dan Kelly win again
Posted by: James Carter. - Wed, 2009-09-23 07:48
If one had to pick a single day which best represents what the 2009 WCOOP stands for, Day 18 would have to be it. Why? Quite simple: if you needed further proof that online poker was indeed a skill based game, Day 18 provided plenty of it. A mere two days after having secured his first WCOOP bracelet in even #38, French pro and ex Starcraft player Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier returned to the WCOOP tables with a vengeance. His return resulted in a win in the $215 NL Holdem event, where not even a massive starting field of 9,220 players could keep ElkY and his second WCOOP bracelet apart.
The massive starting field combined buy-ins for an equally massive prize-pool in event #43: $1,844,000. That meant that the winner would walk away with over $250,000, not to mention to WCOOP bracelet.
Having survived all his opponents but one, ElkY took on player “jektiss” heads-up. The decisive hand of the confrontation saw jektiss making his move from the button and ElkY calling his bet to see a flop of: Jd,5c,6h. Nobody made a move on the flop, but following the 8c on the turn, ElkY did fire out a bet. Jektiss called him, and a 9s fell on the river. The money went all-in and ElkY showed 10,Q for the Q-high straight which made short work of jektiss’ 10-high straight (he had 10,7o in his pocket).
It only took a few more hands from there on for ElkY to secure the win and the $263,323 prize that came with it.
Victor Ramdin finished 22nd in the event and Peter Jetten finished 39th.
Event #42, the $10,000+$300 High roller HORSE event featured a starting field of 103 players. Though the small starting field coupled with the large buy-in, made for excellent EV+, the quality of the field leveled the EV. At such buy-in levels one won’t ever encounter any amateurs and the beating all those good players to the top spot will never be easy. Dan Kelly managed to pull it off though. He defeated Ozenc Demir heads-up, despite starting the mano-a-mano stage with a disadvantage. As soon as there were only the two of them at the table though, Kelly took over. He soon did away with Demir’s chip lead and scooped a decisive Stud Hi/Lo pot to cement his status.
He picked up split Ks in that hand and proceeded to make Kings up on 7th street. Demir failed to produce a valid low hand and his fate was sealed. He picked up $175,100 for his second place though, which is quite a nice consolation prize.
Chad Brown finished 10th in the event, and Shannon Shorr finished 11th.
The highlight of the 2009 WCOOP, the Main Event also kicked off on Day 18. Scheduled to run for 2 days, day 1 of the event saw a starting field of 2,144 players whittle to 178 by the day’s end.
Jason DeWitt finished in the chip lead, having amassed a 925,921 stack.
