Home / Poker News August 2012 / WPT Legends of Poker – Josh Hale Wins
WPT Legends of Poker – Josh Hale Wins
Posted by: Jo Martin - Fri, 2012-08-31 09:47
Josh Hale was the chip leader coming into the final day of the WPT’s Legends of Poker Main Event, by a pretty large margin too, so he was obviously the mathematical favorite for the title. That didn’t mean though that he would just have a walk in the park cruising to the title by any means.
The 6-handed final table had 3 ‘name’ players, any of whom could’ve seriously challenged Hale for the win. Unfortunately, none of these ‘name’ players even managed to get near the heads-up stage. As a matter of fact, they were the first three to bite the dust.
Jeff Madsen wasn’t the official short-stack at the final table, but with Lady Luck nowhere to be seen around him, he may as well have been. His final hand saw him commit the last of his chips on an A,3o against Max Steinberg’s pocket rockets. He picked up $75.4k for his efforts.
The next one to go was Greg Mueller. Mueller began the final stretch of the
poker tournament in second place, with a truly healthy stack indeed. He lost a bunch of chips before he got his last 2 million into the middle on a classic coin-flip with pocket 7s against Max Steinberg’s A,Ko. He was rewarded with $97.1k.
At one point, Ali Eslami was down to a handful of chips during the 4-handed stage. Then, just as he seemed like he was rebounding, he bit the dust in 4th, after his pocket Ks got cracked and left him crippled yet again.
Raouf Malek was eliminated in 4th place by Max Steinberg, so at that point, all final table eliminations had been scored by Steinberg. Sure enough, his run gave Steinberg a massive chip lead heads-up.
Hale proceeded to hit a quick double-up as soon as the heads-up action commenced and from there on out, he continued to chip away at his opponent’s stack until he was finally able to deliver the coup de grace. He picked up $500k for his win.
