Friday afternoon, the 24 survivors from the World Poker Tour stop at the Aviation Club for the Grand Prix de Paris convened to work their way down to the final table. Over the span of nine hours, the players fell away until the final six men were left standing in what is one of the stronger final tables in recent WPT memory.
When the cards hit the air yesterday, Germany’s Philip Gruissem held the chip lead, but there were plenty of notable contenders nipping at his heels in pursuit of this title. Matthew Salsberg used a tremendous run of cards on Thursday to catapult his way into the upper reaches of the leaderboard, while European Poker Tour Grand Final champion Mohsin Charania, defending WPT Player of the Year Joe Serock and former WPT Paris champion Theo Jorgensen lurked in the middle of the pack.
Two of the short stacks at the start of the day, Nicolas Cardyn and Andrew Lichtenberger, were dropped from the tournament within moments of the start of the day’s play. In what was a stunner of a hand, Jerome Douieb was able to get both Dan Djorno and French rapper Bruno “Kool Shen” Lopes (who has quietly made quite a name for himself on the poker tables as well as the turntables) to commit their stacks when he held pocket Aces. Lopes was coolered with his pocket Kings and Djorno was drawing slim with his K-J and, once the board ran Jack high, Douieb rocketed up the leaderboard, Djorno was out and Lopes was left with only 50K in chips (he would go out soon afterwards to Charania).
This action all occurred within the first 45 minutes of action and it wouldn’t slow down much after that. Juha Helppi, Jean-Philippe Rohr and Kyle Julius all were eliminated by the leaders in the tournament (Helppi and Rohr by Salsberg, Julius by Jorgensen) as Salsberg seized the lead in the tournament. As the clock ticked past the two hour mark of the day’s play, there were only fourteen players remaining in the stately Aviation Club.
The unofficial nine handed final table was set once Jorgensen was able to eliminate Serock from contention in tenth place after five hours of play. Kyle Cheong, who had battled valiantly to make that table with a short stack, departed on the first hand after they were seated to Salsberg. Soon after that, Charania would bring the action to the television “bubble” as he pushed out Idris Ambraisse in eighth place after sweating out Ambraisse’s flush draw while holding pocket Kings.
With one more knockout to go to set the action for Saturday, the players stepped it back a bit. It took over two hours for the players to determine who the unfortunate soul would be who wouldn’t come back to take their shot at this prestigious WPT championship. In the end, it was a familiar name through the last two days of this event who would do the honors of the final elimination.
After a raise from Fabian Quoss, Douieb moved all in and Salsberg simply made the call, trying to entice Quoss to join the party. Quoss wouldn’t bite, however, mucking his cards as Salsberg’s dominant Big Slick was tabled over Douieb’s Big Chick. Although Douieb would flop a flush draw (for the outright win) and pair the board on the turn (for a shot at a chop if the board paired again), none of his outs would come home on the river, leaving him eliminated in seventh place and the final table set for the championship:
Seat 1: Matthew Salsberg – 1,575,000
Seat 2: Philipp Gruissem – 776,000
Seat 3: Theo Jorgensen – 1,169,000
Seat 4: Fabian Quoss – 570,000
Seat 5: Timothy Adams – 1,198,000
Seat 6: Mohsin Charania – 1,435,000
Salsberg has a slim lead over his three closest competitors and they have a wealth of poker hardware backing them up. As mentioned previously, Charania has a major title on the EPT, so he knows how to close out tournaments. The Canadian Adams picked up his first WSOP bracelet this summer, while Jorgensen is a former champion of this tournament and also holds a WSOP bracelet. Gruissem, who has been a powerhouse during this event and is looking for his first major title, should not be overlooked, while Quoss is an unknown quantity that could be the “fly in the ointment.”
The final table of the WPT Grand Prix de Paris will be streamed live on the internet beginning at noon (Eastern Time) on the WPT website, allowing fans to not only watch the proceedings live but also to get a look at the Aviation Club (quite the poker room, if you haven’t seen it before). Within hours, the latest champion will be crowned on the WPT…will it be history making (if Jorgensen wins, he would become the first player to ever win the same event twice in WPT history) or will it affirm a new power player in the tournament poker world?
