After five grueling days of play, the $50,000 HORSE has finally crowned a champion who will be the inaugural recipient of the David “Chip” Reese Memorial trophy. The final table kicked off at 3pm and, fifteen hours later, only one man, Scotty Nguyen, was left standing. Nguyen began the day second in chips and remained towards the top of the leader board all day. Along the way to his victory, Nguyen knocked out Barry Greenstein in 6th place, Matt Glantz in 4th place, and Erick Lindgren in 3rd place.
The game went on 3-handed with Lindgren, Nguyen, and Michael DeMichele for several hours before Lindgren got all his chips in the middle in a stud hand against Nguyen with a split pair of 8s with an ace. When all was said and done with the hand, Nguyen held a pair of nines and Lindgren’s eights did not improve, so he was eliminated and earned $781,440 for his 3rd place showing. Lindgren’s finish should also put him at the top of the 2008 Player of the Year standings, propelling him past Jacobo Fernandez, who has cashed in seven events so far this series. Erick has made three final tables this summer, including his bracelet win in the Mixed Limit Hold Em Event a couple of weeks ago.
Play moved much faster in the $50,000 HORSE once it was down to the final two. Nguyen held a 4.5-1 chip advantage after Lindgren’s elimination and quickly began to extend it even further. DeMichele put the last of his chips in during a Hold Em hand where he held A-3, which was far behind Scotty’s A-10. After the board ran out A-9-6-7-4, Nguyen went over to his crowd of supporters, which included his wife and professional players Daniel Negreanu and Layne Flack, to celebrate his victory. In addition to the prestigious title and large trophy, Scotty also won himself $ 1,989,120. The young Michael DeMichele earned $1,243,200 for second–his biggest live score to date.
The $50,000 HORSE was not the only event to award a bracelet winner yesterday. Event #48, a $2,000 No Limit Hold Em event, began its final table with internet pro Marco “CrazyMarco” Johnson as the chip leader. Johnson maintained control over the table until he was heads up with Brasilian player Alexandre Gomes. The two exchanged the chip lead several times during their heads up match, most notably when Gomes cracked Johnson’s pocket aces with his A-10.
That hand left Marco short stacked and, a few hands later, he got it all-in preflop with Q-J against Gomes’ A-K. The A-K held, giving Gomes the bracelet and the $770,540 first prize while Johnson took home $491,273 for his second place finish. Gomes no doubt spent the evening celebrating with his large contingent of supporters—some of the loudest we’ve seen so far this series.
The other No Limit Hold Em event, the $1,500 event, played down to a final table late last night. Several known players, like Andy Black, Hevad Khan, David “The Dragon” Pham, and Men “The Master” Nguyen, made deep runs in the event, but fell short of the final nine. JC Tran, Joe Pelton, and seven others will be returning at 2pm PST today to play down to a winner.
Two new events kicked off yesterday as well. The first was the $10,000 World Championship of Pot Limit Omaha. The relatively small field of 381 players each began with 10,000 starting chips and a red “reload” chip, which players could use at any point during the first three levels of play to add an additional 10,000 chips to their stack. By the end of the day, only 87 players remained, including the overwhelming chip leader, Josh Arieh. Josh will begin play today with 368,000 chips, which is over 150,000 more chips than Guillaume Patry, who is currently sitting in second place. Several other big name pros are towards the top of the leaderboard as well, including Scott Clements, David Singer, and Pot Limit Hold Em bracelet winner, Nenad Medic.
The other new event was another HORSE tournament, but this one had a much smaller buy-in than the star-studded $50,000 event. Event #51, a $1,500 HORSE event, attracted 803 participants, 179 of which will be returning for Day 2 today. The current chip leader in the tournament is Phil Hellmuth, who ran his chip stack up to 46,000 from his starting 3,000 chips over the course of eight levels of play yesterday. Coincidentally, Hellmuth also played in the $50,000 HORSE event as well, but he was one of the few players eliminated on the first day of play. A few other pros made strong showings on Day One, including Chad Brown and Joe Hachem.