On the eve of the Championship Event of the 2011 World Series of Poker Europe, there are still two bracelets left to be awarded. During yesterday’s action, the relatively unknown Tristan Wade defeated a stacked final table in the €3000 No Limit Hold’em Shootout to take his first WSOP bracelet.
Although the tournament was a Shootout event, the players came in with stacks of slightly differing sizes due to table setups from the earlier rounds. Thus, the United Kingdom’s Max Silver held a 1,000 chip lead over Canada’s Mike “SirWatts” Watson when play began, with several top pros holding down the other seats. Poker “Triple Crown” winner Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, recent European Poker Tour London runner-up Steve O’Dwyer, Richard Toth and Emil Patel were just some of the formidable names in the running for this bracelet, with lesser known talent such as John Armbrust and Taylor Paur rounding out the field.
In the early going, Grospellier was a force on the tables. In a battle against Watson, “ElkY” was able to get value on every street before “SirWatts” laid his hand down on the river. Watson, however, would recover from that by taking a nice stack of chips from Patel first and then Dempsey. The first elimination would come roughly two hours into play, when Paur dumped Armbrust out in tenth place.
Watson would continue to push the game, eventually moving to the pole position in getting some revenge against Grospellier. On a 9-A-3-A-4 board, all of Watson’s chips would end up in the pot on the river and Grospellier made the call, tabling a powerful A-K. Watson, however, trumped Grospellier’s holdings by revealing pocket threes for the boat; this would temporarily put the Canadian in the lead with play six handed.
Temporarily because Wade, who quietly was stacking chips, took the lead from Watson prior to the dinner break. After the duo saw a 10-3-A-9-4 board, Wade opened up A-10 against Watson, good enough to take a significant pot. Wade would add onto his newfound lead prior to the dinner break when he busted O’Dwyer out in sixth place.
Following the dinner break, Watson extracted further revenge against Grospellier when he eliminated the popular French player in fifth place. Wade would do the honors in knocking out Silver, while Watson came back to eliminate Toth in third place. When heads up play began, Watson held a roughly 400K chip lead over Wade.
The twosome parried for almost two hours before Wade went on the attack. Tristan began to utilize a hyper aggressive style – pushing all in when in the big blind, making raises when on the button – that seemed to flummox Watson as the tournament wore on. Wade first wrested the chip lead from Watson using this approach and, although Watson was able to fight it off for some time, he picked an inopportune moments to go to battle.
After defeating Wade’s pocket Jacks with K-10 suited to pull close, Watson made a raise to 60,000 on the penultimate hand. After Wade pushed in a three-bet, Watson moved all in and was called by Wade. This time around, Watson’s A-5 would have to catch up to Wade’s pocket Jacks again, but the board wouldn’t cooperate. Once an Ace didn’t appear on the flop, turn or river, Tristan Wade was the unlikely champion of the €3000 Shootout.
1. Tristan Wade (United States), 182,048
2. Michael Watson (Canada), 112,526
3. Richard Toth (Hungary), 84,016
4. Max Silver (United Kingdom), 63,151
5. Bertrand Grospellier (France), 47,763
6. Steve O’Dwyer (United States), 36,357
7. Emil Patel (United States), 27,842
8. Taylor Paur (United States), 21,459
9. James Dempsey (United Kingdom), 16,637
10. John Armbrust (United States), 12,981
In Event #5, the €10,000 Split Format No Limit Hold’em tournament (or the “Mixed-Max” as the players like to call it), there are sixteen remaining players. After playing nine handed tables on Day One and six handed tables on Day Two, the remainder of the tournament will be heads up. The plan is to play down to the Final Four today, meaning there will be two rounds of matches.
Intriguing matchups in the first round include Shawn Buchanan battling Jason Mercier, Erik Seidel versus Brian Hastings and Bryn Kenney taking on Noah Schwartz. After the Final Four is determined today, the championship will be determined tomorrow.
In Event #6, the €1500 Six Handed Pot Limit Omaha tournament, the money bubble was reached on Day One, even though there were 339 players in the tournament. Several notable names were in action at the start of the day, including Roberto Romanello, Marco Traniello, Carlos Mortensen, Victor Ramdin, Alexander Kostritsyn, Richard Ashby, Tommy Vedes and 2011 WSOP-E bracelet winner Steve Billirakis. This tournament will play down to six players and its championship will also be determined tomorrow.
As these events close their books, the €10,000 Championship Event will begin and a strong international field is expected. Over the course of the next week (with a Ladies’ Event and the Caesars Cup battle thrown in), we will determine who will be the next World Series of Poker Europe champion.
