Home / Poker News June 2011 / WSOP 2011 – Badecker wins $1,500 NL Holdem Shootout
WSOP 2011 – Badecker wins $1,500 NL Holdem Shootout
Posted by: Jo Martin - Sun, 2011-06-12 13:39
Event #13 of the
2011 WSOP, the $1,500 NL Holdem Shootout, saw a massive “name” pro participation. 16 players returned to the tables on the final day of the event, in order to battle it out in a two-table SNG format. The field managed to play down to the official final table relatively fast. When the final table was reached, it was Andrew Badecker who had the largest stack.
Given the high number of “name” participants in the event, the final table had more than its fair share of poker celebrities too. Erik Cajelais, Vitaly Lunkin, Dan Kelly and David Pham all made it to the final stretch.
All these “name” pros faded away during the final table hostilities though, so by the time the heads-up stage was reached, only the eventual winner Andrew Badecker and Robbie Verspui were in contention. Badecker had a pretty large lead (5.22 million chips to Verspui’s 1.8 million), so it looked like it was going to be a walk in the park for him, but Verspui wasn’t going to call it quits with the gold bracelet looming on the horizon. He managed to even things up, and he even took over for a while, but it just wasn’t meant to be. A couple of unlucky hands later, he had gone from hero to zero again, his back against the wall and his tournament life staked on an A,Jo. Badecker made the call in the final hand of the tournament holding Kh, 2h.
The flop gave Badecker the lead straight away: it fell 7,5,2, giving him a pair of deuces. The K on the turn pretty much sealed the deal, improving his hand to a two pair. The 5d on the river officially ended the race, giving Badecker the title, the gold bracelet and the $369k top prize.
