Home / Poker News September 2009 / WSOPE London – final table set
WSOPE London – final table set
Posted by: James Carter. - Wed, 2009-09-23 07:51
The penultimate day of the WSOPE’s London £1,000 event saw 68 players return to the tables of the Empire casino, out of a 608 player starting field which had begun play on Day 1A and Day 1B.
The goal of the day was to play right down to the final table, and sure enough, when day was called, only the 9 final table participants were still in contention, with Fabien Dunlop holding a massive chip lead over the rest of the field. He had amassed 538,000 chips, over 200,000 more than second place JP Kelly, who had been the overall chip leader at the end of the two Day 1 flights.
The money bubble was set to 63rd place, and it didn’t take long for it to burst. In less than two levels, the bubble was reached and it burst wide open when Robert Lim had his pocket rockets cracked by Raymond Rahme’s trip nines. Rahme himself made it into the money, but failed to advance to the final table, biting the dust together with John Juanda, Nicholas Levi and Marcus Golser. All these guys managed to add another WSOP cash to their resumes, but cashing alone was not what Chris “Jesus” Ferguson was after. The Full Tilt Poker pro had been hovering around the top of the provisional chip leader-boards for days and given his name, he was widely viewed as one of the favorites for the bracelet.
His title run came to an end though, when the remaining players were condensed to two tables. He had been bleeding away chips pretty much all day, and by that stage, his once mighty stack had been reduced to a mere shadow of its former self. Things went from bad to worse for Ferguson when he found himself with only 4 BBs in his stack and decided to commit to a do or die move. He picked up a Q,J suited and he shoved all-in on it. He got called by Ian Frazer, whose A, Q suited had “jesus” at a disadvantage straight away. The board failed to land the miracle cards he needed to dig himself out of this tight spot and Ferguson hit the rail in 15th place.
As the field slimmed down to 13 players, the final table bubble jitters began to kick in and the pace of the action slowed to a crawl.
Ganesh Bathamanathan became the official final table bubble boy when he busted out in 10th place. He head appeared well on his way to a final table seat earlier, especially after he managed to land a runner-runner straight to crack an opponent’s pocket Ks and to add a bunch of chips to his stack.
All those chips deserted him though when Neil Suarez outdrew him, and left short-stacked he had no choice but to shove all in on the first reasonable pocket hand. He eventually trusted his tournament life to an A,7 he’d picked up and got called by Richard Allen with A,K. The rest, as they say, is history.
JP Kelly, Anthony Roux, Thor Drexel and James Tomlin have also made it to the final table.
