While the first Day One for the 2016 World Series of Poker’s Championship Event was held on Saturday, several other tournaments either wrapped up or were near their conclusion. In one event in particular, a popular professional player picked up the second leg of poker’s Triple Crown in winning a WSOP bracelet.
Event #63 – $1000 No Limit Hold’em
Fighting through a sizeable 2452 player field, poker professional and World Poker Tour analyst Tony ‘Bond_18’ Dunst emerged as the champion of the tournament.
There were 25 players left on Saturday that had a shot at this tournament championship and they took roughly four hours to determine the final table. Dunst, who eliminated Pratik Ghatge in tenth place to bring the final nine men together, was in second place behind Jason Rivkin at the start of the action, but he was closely pursued by Matas Cimbolas, Josh Field and Francisco Araujo. How close was the pursuit? Dunst only held a 400K chip edge over Araujo with Cimbolas and Field both only 100K chips behind him.
Dunst would eliminate three of the seven opponents on his way to capturing the chip lead to take on Rivkin for the championship. Up by about three million chips at the start of heads up action, it would take more than three hours of play before Dunst would be able to put away Rivkin. On the final hand, Dunst put the pressure on by moving all-in pre-flop and Rivkin called. Rivkin actually held the edge pre-flop with his K-10 against Dunst’s Q-8, but the Q-8-7 flop completely flipped the script. A nine on the turn brought some outs for Rivkin to the straight, but a ten on the river wasn’t enough for Rivkin to overcome Dunst’s power game at the final table.
1. Tony Dunst, $339,254
2. Jason Rivkin, $209,596
3. Josh Field, $153,015
4. Francisco Araujo, $112,724
5. Matas Cimbolas, $83,804
6. Sergio Cabrera, $62,880
7. Levon Torosyan, $47,622
8. Raffaele Castro, $36,406
9. David Sciacqua, $28,097
With the win, Dunst has now accomplished two of the three steps to poker’s Triple Crown. The WSOP bracelet, along with Dunst’s victory at the WPT Caribbean in St. Maarten in 2013, leaves Dunst a European Poker Tour Main Event victory away from achieving a goal that only five men (Gavin Griffin, Roland de Wolfe, Jake Cody, Bertrand Grospellier and Davidi Kitai) have been able to achieve. As his duties with the WPT take up a good deal of his time, Dunst will have to see if he can squeeze in some EPT events to be able to reach that goal.
Event #64 – $3000 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo
Overcoming what was a tough gauntlet of Omaha players, pro Kyle Bowker came out on top of Event #64 early Sunday morning, his first-ever WSOP bracelet win.
Scott Clements led the final 21 players to the tables on Saturday with the goal of the championship in everyone’s eyes. Several strong contenders such as Blair Rodman, Ben Yu, Jon Turner, Ari Engel, Rex Clinkscales and Marco Johnson were eliminated in the run-up to the final table and, once Clements took down Anil Gurnaney in tenth place, the official table was set with Richard Ashby holding the edge over Noah Bronstein and Clements. Bowker, for his part, was in the middle of the pack as the final drive to the champion began.
The normally sedate pace of the Hi/Lo discipline was offset by the ratcheted action of Pot Limit play, but it still took almost six hours before Bowker could face off against Kate Hoang in heads up play. Starting with almost a four million chip edge, Bowker never let Hoang have a sniff of the championship, turning trip deuces on the final hand to best Hoang’s A-A-10-4 and capture the title.
1. Kyle Bowker, $294,960
2. Kate Hoang, $182,281
3. Jarred Graham, $124,360
4. Richard Ashby, $86,422
5. Chris Ruby, $61,196
6. Noah Bronstein, $44,171
7. Daniel Lowe, $32,510
8. Scott Clements, $24,409
9. Paul Taylor, $18,702
Event #65 – Ladies’ No Limit Hold’em Championship
The final nine women from an 819 player field will come together on Sunday to determine the Ladies’ Championship. There are two prominent professionals who are a part of the mix, with Amanda “Mandy” Baker sitting in second position behind Wendy Freedman and Amanda Musumeci rumbling around the middle of the pack waiting to strike. While Day 1B is going on beside them, these ladies will be fighting it out for a very good prize of $149,108 and the Ladies’ Bracelet.
1. Wendy Freedman, 909,000
2. Amanda Baker, 675,000
3. Courtney Kennedy, 567,000
4. Barbara Johnson, 416,000
5. Amanda Musumeci, 403,000
6. Xiu Deng, 376,000
7. Natalia Breviglieri, 357,000
8. Yaxi Zhu, 221,000
9. Nicole Schwartz, 185,000
Event #66 – $1000 No Limit Hold’em Hybrid Online/Live
Six men will step from the shadows of online play to take part in the second running of this event. After 1247 players ponied up the “G” to play on WSOP.com, Clayton ‘SLARKDUCK’ Maguire will bring the survivors to the felt on Monday to finish off the tournament. He will have one of the top pros in the world looking him in the eye come Monday in Simeon Naydenov, who has career tournament earnings of more than $1.5 million and won a WSOP bracelet in 2013.
1. Clayton ‘SLARKDUCK’ Maguire, 7,157,023
2. Simeon ‘FeelGoodInc’ Naydenov, 6,203,740
3. Marc-Oliver ‘mariovideo’ Carpentier-Perrault, 2,520,809
4. Park Yu ‘Sparrow’ Cheung, 1,118,408
5. Spencer ‘TheGoat21’ Taylor, 943,029
6. Richard ‘jklotz’ Tuhrim, 761,991