Monday is going to be a busy one at the Rio as four tournaments pick up mid-stream and one more gets underway. Let’s take a spin around the poker room:
Event #27: $3,000 No-Limit Hold’em Mixed Max
It will be short day for Event #27, as just two players remain in the tournament: Max Steinberg and Isaac Hagerling. Though neither player has the longest of live poker tournament resumes, Steinberg has a fairly sizable edge when it comes to success. He captured his first WSOP bracelet in a $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em event last year, has two other final table appearances (once in 2010 and once this year), and finished second in the 2013 WSOP National Championship. Hagerling does have three career WSOP cashes, but none of any real note.
The two made it to this point by wading through 591 other competitors in a fun tournament format. Day 1 was your normal, nine-handed, no-limit hold’em tourney. On Day 2, the tables were reduced to six-handed. When it got down to 32 players, though, the field was seeded by chip count and a heads-up tournament commenced. Brandon Cantu earned the top seed by collecting 519,600 chips. Steinberg was the eighth seed and downed Cantu in the quarter-finals. Hagerling began as the third seed and knocked out the likes of Nick Binger, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, and 2012 “Octo-Niner” Jeremy Ausmus on his way to the finals.
Going into the final heads-up battle, it is anybody’s match, as it is almost a dead heat. Hagerling holds 2.690 million chips, while Steinberg has 2.649 million.
Event #28: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em
It’s another player favorite, one of the “cheap” $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em tourneys. This one boasted 2,115 entrants, which created a prize pool north of $2.8 million. Just 16 players remain at two tables as a champion is expected to be crowned on Monday’s Day 3.
Japan’s Masayuki Nagata has a large chip lead; his 1.742 million chips outdoes Dan Martin’s by 700,000 and after them, the next largest chip stack is only 755,000. The story of the day, though, is the presence of one of poker’s all-time tournament grinders, T.J. Cloutier. Cloutier enters the day as one of the short stacks, sitting in just thirteenth place with 335,000 chips, but if anyone knows how to play a short stack, it’s Cloutier. At 73-years old, Cloutier is not nearly as prolific as he used to be; he has just five WSOP cashes since 2009. His last final table came in 2006, when he finished fifth in the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. Event, and he last won a bracelet, his sixth, in 2005, when he won the $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em Event.
Play picks up at 1:00pm Vegas time Monday and will conclude when only one player has all the chips.
Event #29: $5,000 H.O.R.S.E.
As usual, a H.O.R.S.E. tournament is filled with big name players. Amongst the 28 remaining players of Event #29: Greg “FBT” Mueller (chip leader), David Benyamine, Tom Schneider, David Bach, Marcel Luske, Todd Brunson, Dan Kelly, and Gus Hansen. Mueller should feel right at home at the end of a mixed game tournament, as he has had plenty of success in them at the WSOP. Earlier this month, he finished third in the $2,500 Eight Game Mix Event and was runner-up in that same event last year. In 2008, he finished 19th in the $10,000 Eight Game World Championship and in 2007 had another runner-up finished in a Mixed Hold’em tournament. He has two bracelets to his credit, both won in 2009.
Event #30: $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em
Day 1 of one of the $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em tournaments concluded Sunday, as 2,108 players are challenging themselves against the large field (that 2,100+ figure seems to be a sweet spot this year). 2009 WSOP Main Event third place finisher Antoine Saout leads the field after the first day with 131,700 chips. Three other players, including bracelet winner Alex Bolotin, have over 100,000.
The 216 who return for Day 2 have already cashed, so expect eliminations to come quickly at the start of the day.
Getting started Monday is Event #31: $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-low Split-8 or Better.
