Home / Poker News September 2010 / WSOPE High Roller heads-up event kicks off
WSOPE High Roller heads-up event kicks off
Posted by: James Carter. - Thu, 2010-09-23 11:30
There was a lot of worrying about how many players the 2010 WSOPE’s High Roller NL Holdem Heads-up event would attract. Some experts said there wouldn’t be more than 50 something players willing to cough up the £10,000+£350 buy-in, but to the relief of the organizers, more than 100 hopefuls showed up, ready to put their monies where their poker skills were.
The prize-pool reached more than £1 million this way, guaranteeing a payout of £288,409 for the eventual winner.
The third round of the event will be the crucial one as that’s when the money bubble will burst, deciding who goes home empty handed and who sails into the money, securing a minimum payout of £22,847.
Phil Ivey made it through his first two matches in a stylish fashion. First, he disposed of Sam Trickett, then he did away with Erik Sagstrom. Most of the matches of the first two rounds were surprisingly short, and players found no shame in dropping their buy-ins within a few hands.
Full Tilt Poker pro Chris Ferguson started off well, but he dropped his second match with an astonishing quickness. Andrew Feldman’s pocket Qs bested his A,K to bounce him from his second match in fewer than 10 hands.
Mike Matusow represented the exception though. He took his time both times around. First he eliminated Sam Stein in over 2.5 hours, then he held on for 3 hours before succumbing to Ilari Sahamies.
Andy Bloch and Erik Seidel also dropped out of the
poker tournament in the first round. Tom Dwan and John Juanda were eliminated during the second round. Neil Channing moved on to the third round, together with Chris Moorman and Huck Seed.
Other players to stay in contention were Ram Vaswani, Howard Lederer, Daniel Negreanu and Yevgeniy Timoshenko.
