Home / Poker News September 2009 / WSOPE Main Event Day 3 – the bubble bursts
WSOPE Main Event Day 3 – the bubble bursts
Posted by: James Carter. - Wed, 2009-09-30 13:00
Day 3 of the 2009 WSOPE Main Event saw the survivors of a truncated Day 2 play right down to the money bubble. Although Day 3 had been planned to last till 27th place was reached, the organizers put an end to the hostilities as soon as the bubble burst at 37th.
Due to the nature of the event and to the more than illustrious starting field, the list of players who trickled to the rail on day 2 was equally impressive. Early eliminations were those of Todd Brunson and Joe Beevers. Jani Vilmunen, the winner of the £5,000 event of the WSOPE was denied another cash too, as he hit the rail relatively early on Day 3.
Sami Kelopuro and John Juanda bit the dust too, thus eliminating the possibility of a successful title defense by the American.
Responsible for Phil Hellmuth’s elimination on Day 2, Antonio Esfandiari ran out of magic powder as well as chips, hitting the rail after Freddy Deeb.
2007 WSOPE Main Event winner, Annette Obrestad didn’t fare much better either, and it became certain that this year’s edition of the Main Event wouldn’t see one of the past winners making a comeback.
As the money bubble neared, play slowed down a little but it only took 14 hands to decide the bubble boy once the field was down to 37. That dubious honor befell John Tabatabai, who became the last player to walk out empty handed, despite the fact that he’d managed to swing his stack quite skillfully during the previous two days of action.
The final hand found Tabatabai quite unprepared to head to the rail as he’d got his last chips in on a pair of Aces against Peter Gould’s pocket 7s. Luck was not on his side that time though and the very first card to hit the board was a 7, giving Gould a set over his overpair. The other cards on the board failed to bail Tabatabai out and he was done, much for the delight of Men Nguyen, who managed to sneak into the money this way, on a 63,000 chip stack.
Other short stacks to make it past the money bubble were Antoine Saout and James Akenhead, both November Nine members. The 36 survivors were quite a bunch from every respect: Yevgeniy Timoshenko was there too, after having won $1.7 million in the WCOOP Main Event on PokerStars about a week ago. Doyle Brunson was among the survivors too, and so was Day 1B chip leader, Steve Zolotow. Soccer player Teddy Sheringham, who had impressed everyone with his fancy playing a day before, made it past the bump too, together with Liz Lieu who remained the only woman left in contention.
Matt Hawrilenko finished atop the provisional chip leader board with a 701,500 chip stack. He was followed by Steven Fung and Praz Bansi. Arnaud Mattern wasn’t far behind either. John Kabbaj, Peter Gould and Eric Liu were also among the top 10. Jason Mercier and Matt Hawrilenko are two 2009 WSOP bracelet winners who are still in the game, with Hawrilenko having better than average chances to add a WSOPE bracelet to his trophy collection.
