In winning only the second World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet in the history of his country, the Netherlands’ Marc Naalden dominated final table play, suffered a slight setback during heads-up action, and came back to win Event #38, the $2,000 Limit Hold’em tournament.
The final table was determined early Sunday morning from the original 446 runners. Naalden, who had dominated the field since action was at 25 players, came to the featured table with a sizeable chip lead. His two closest competitors, Danny Qutami and Steven Cowley, didn’t even have as many chips combined as Naalden with his stack of 755,000. When play began at 2:00pm Sunday afternoon, the players went to work quickly, with Cowley eliminating pro Rep Porter in ninth place after an hour of play.
Naalden extended his lead when he crippled Jared O’Dell with pocket aces, jumping up over one million in chips. O’Dell was eliminated soon afterwards in seventh place and was immediately followed by Naalden’s elimination of Qutami, who bled chips at the final table. After Naalden eliminated Alex Keating in fifth place, he held over half of the chips in play.
Once Tam “Tommy” Hang (who finished in third place in last year’s $10,000 World Championship of this discipline) was eliminated in fourth and 2006 WSOP bracelet winner Ian Johns dropped in third, heads-up play came down to Naalden and Cowley. While it seemed that it would be a quick ascension to the bracelet for Naalden, who had Cowley dominated by over 7:1, it would actually prove to be one of the more exciting battles of this year’s WSOP.
Over the first 30 minutes of heads-up play, Cowley put on a surge that actually pushed him into the lead. In that time span, he either won or chopped every pot that was contested and had the Scandinavian scratching his head. After an hour, Naalden gathered himself and pushed back the Cowley assault, retaking the lead that he had held for much of the late action in Event #38. Naalden continued to batter the valiant Cowley until after two hours of heads-up play, he was able to catch a queen against Cowley to win the gold WSOP bracelet and $190,770 first place payday.
Two tournaments enter their final day of action with quite a bit of work to be done. Event #39, a $1,500 No Limit Hold’em tournament that started with 2,715 players on Saturday, could only get down to 26 by the 3:00am WSOP curfew. There is some controversy as to the chip count of the player at the top of the leaderboard, Michele Iacovone, as he has quoted his stack at 1,605,200 and there are no tournament chips of the 100 denomination in play. Nevertheless, he is atop the remainder of the field, with former World Poker Tour (WPT) champion Joe Bartholdi, veteran Raymond Davis, Alex Jacob, Nam Le, and WSOP bracelet holder Brandon Cantu in hot pursuit of the $657,787 first place prize.
Stacked tables of professional players remain in Event #40, the $10,000 World Championship of Pot Limit Omaha, and they were also unable to work their way down to the final table on Day Two. There are still 43 players remaining in the fight from the 295 starters. Noah Schwartz is at the head of the field, which also includes bracelet holders such as Full Tilt Poker’s Howard Lederer, PokerStars’ Barry Greenstein, Bodog’s David Williams, and Josh Arieh. The $40,000 Anniversary Special champion, Vitaly Lunkin, and Padraig Parkinson are a couple of the European players also in the mix. At the end of the rainbow when the tournament ends tonight: a highly prestigious gold WSOP bracelet and a $679,379 bankroll boost.
A total of 280 players stepped up to take part in Event #41, the $5,000 No Limit Hold’em Shootout, and after the carnage of Day One was finished, 30 players remain on five tables. There are some notable names that are alive as Day Two starts, such as Peter “Nordberg” Feldman, Mark Teltscher, Barney Boatman, Jennifer Harman, Amit “amak316” Makhija, Jean “Prince” Gaspard, and David “The Dragon” Pham. Even with this much star power, the attention of fans gathered at the Rio will be on 2009 double bracelet winner Phil Ivey as he aims for a third this year, a feat no one has accomplished since Ivey in 2002.
Day One of the $2,500 Mixed Game tournament, Event #42 on the WSOP schedule, drew a 412 player field eager to attack the eight disciplines of poker that it features. The combination of games could conceivably be a more difficult challenge than HORSE and the quality of some of the remaining players in the tournament shows the skill necessary to battle in this arena. 2009 WSOP double bracelet winner Jeff Lisandro, David Sklansky, John Juanda, Robert Williamson III, Marcel Luske, and Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi are just a few of the top names that are still in contention for this championship.
Two tournaments will start play today in the Amazon Room at the Rio: the $1,000 Seniors No Limit Championship and the $2,500 Razz tournament, Events #43 and 44 respectively. Stay tuned to Poker News Daily for the latest from the 2009 WSOP.
