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Event 35: Ayaz Mahmood turns out to be the champion of champions
2010-07-29
Ayaz Mahmood made his career’s first World Series of Poker (WSOP) gold bracelet victory by winning the $10,000 buy-in Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em championship. Mahmood first attended the WSOP in 2003 and this was his fourth appearance in the final. He defeated Ernst Schmejkal in the final match which was played in the best of three format. Mahmood had an earning of $626,674 as the prize money for winning the event. The event number 35 saw 256 entries with the net prize money being totalled at $2,406,400 and having 32 final paid places. The match was played at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino Las Vegas, Nevada. The details of the way match went by are as under.
On the first day 256 of the best players in poker were up against each other in a contest which required strong nerves and brilliant skills to win. The event had some of the best names from poker. Out of the 256, 64 survived to play the next day. At the end of the next day there were only 8 left to make an attempt for the golden bracelet and the huge winning sum.
The final eight did not have a single former WSOP winner. The winner Mahmood had to win nine straight heads-up matches in total to emerge victorious. Ernst Moritz Schmejkal was the toughest opponent that he faced and also the last one. Though he defeated him 2-0 in the best of three final format, the victory was not easy for him as the match had to be extended to an unscheduled fourth day.
Match 1 saw the two opponents battling it out for more than 6 hours and although in the final two hours Mahmood had the lead, it was not easy for him to take the first match.
Match 2 was played on the fourth day. The final hand was dealt after five hours of play when against Schmejkal’s Ad 6s, Mahmood had Qh Th. This was followed by Ah Td 9c. When the final two cards were Jd Ks, Mahmood managed to make a straight and win the second match. Thus he won the best of three finals by 2-0.
The runners up won $386,900 while the two semi-finalists, Jason Somerville from New York and Alexander Kostritsyn from Moscow each won $ 219,969. Both of them had won 6 of their 7 matches. The remaining players in the final eight won $94,956 each. The finishers were Vanessa Rousso from USA, Faraz Jaka from USA, Ludovic Lacay from England and Thang Pham from USA. The defending champion of last year Leo Wolpert failed to cash in this year.
Ayaz Mahmood is a Bangladeshi born 38 year old who has been living in the US since he was 14. He is in fact the first Bangladeshi born WSOP champion. Before turning to playing poker full time in 2004, Mahmood owned a furniture store in Houston.
He was quite excited on winning the title and said that he had waited ten years for this. He said that it was not an easy task to win the title against strong players and was happy on being able to do so. He said that now he would like to have a shot at the main event.
The November Nine is coming, Who are you betting on? Matthew Jarvis at +700, maybe Soi Nguyen at +1200? The lines are all at www.sportsbook.com get over there today and bet!
Harold Angle uncontrolled at the 2010 WSOP Senior Championship
2010-07-29
Harold Angle made his career’s first World Series of Poker (WSOP) gold bracelet victory by winning the $1,000 buy-in Seniors No-Limit Hold’em World Championship at the 2010 WSOP. At the age of 78 he further proved the statement that one is never too old to be the poker champion. He won a huge amount of $ 487,994 by defeating Micheal Minetti who had to contend with the second place. The event witnessed an unprecedented number of entries at 3,142 with net prize money of $ 2,827,800. The number of paid places for the event which was held at Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino Las Vegas, Nevada were 324. The way the whole event went by can be summarized in the following words.
The 3,142 entries and the net prize money were records of sought on the first day. There were a number of well known players in the list and at the end of the day there were only 450 players left. Berry Johnston and Tom Schneider were near the top of the leader board. At the end of the second day there were 26 players left instead of the expected nine since the play time had already been far exceeded.
The way Angle had played on the first day (he was down to just 400 in chips), his victory on the last day was highly improbable but he managed to make it to the final table on the last day.
The final table had nine players with none of them having ever won a WSOP gold bracelet before and all of them being residents of United States of America.
Angel had a 7-1 chip lead over his last rival Michael Minetti when heads up play began as Minetti played tough while the duel lasted for 45 minutes. The Massive chip disadvantage that he was facing was huge and he could not overcome it. When Angle was dealt Ks Js against Minetti’s Jh Jc, the final hand of the tournament came. Angle managed to hit a king on the flop as Minetti had had an important advantage. Kc 9d 9c 8c 5h ran on the final board to give Angel his first WSOP victory.
Minetti got a prize of $ 301,839 while John Woo who had finished at the third place won a prize of $ 213,612. Eric Stemp finishing at the fourth place won $ 154,624 while Daniel Camillo got $ 113,225 for finishing fifth. Preston Derden collected $ 83,782 for the sixth spot while the seventh place finisher Ernest Ward pocketed $62,833. Carlos Pianelli at the eight spot won $ 47, 591 and Jay Hong at the ninth place had to manage with $ 36,450.
The eldest of the nine players at the final table, Harold Angle retired after working as a sales executive for a major show manufacturer. He has been married for 60 years and has 3 children, 10 grand children and 6 great grand children.
It was his first cash in at a WSOP event and he thought that the experience was enjoyable. He said that patience, knowledge of the game and luck are the three most important things that one needs to have for winning a game.
He hoped that he would be able to participate in the coming years as well.
The November Nine is coming, Who are you betting on? John Racener at +700, maybe Jason Senti at +2000? The lines are all at www.sportsbook.com get over there today and bet!
CAKE POKER MANAGER APOLOGISES FOR SECURITY BREACH (Update)
2010-07-28
"Somewhere along the software ladder, there was a error of omission, commission, stupidity, documentation or some combination thereof.
Lee Jones, the Cake Poker Network cardroom manager, has 'fessed up to the embarrassing disclosures by Poker Table Ratings Tuesday (see previous InfoPowa report) that the security encryption on the network was not all that it should be.
The PTR sleuths have in the meantime produced video evidence of their ability to successfully steal hole cards as these were dealt, along with passwords and user names from multiple Cake Network skins.
Posting on the respected poker forum 2plus2, where a lengthy thread is running, Jones wrote:
"Sure, when the issue came up in May, I asked our software management team. They told me that we were more secure than Cereus [another network whose security flaws were exposed by PTR]. When this all came to light a few hours ago and they got down into the actual code, it turned out they were wrong (as one of the senior managers just admitted to me).
"Somewhere along the software ladder, there was an error of omission, commission, stupidity, documentation or some combination thereof. I'm not happy about it and neither is the manager to whom I spoke.
"Furthermore, I definitely have to accept some blame here. I could have (and wished I had) pushed further on the response I got, talked to some development people about it (they're in-house), etc.
"I'm going to post an official response shortly, but believe me, I feel crappy about having said in May that we had stronger encryption than Cereus did when we didn't. The lesson I've learned is to ask more harder questions when these sorts of things come up.
"I owe the entire Cake poker community an apology: I am very, very sorry."
WSOP Event 48: Eskeland Excels
2010-07-26
The 48th Event at the 2010 World Series Of Poker was the $2,500 Mixed Game scheduled for the 26th June, 2010. Eight different games were played that began at 3:00 p.m. with 20 players at 3 tables. The game ended 14 hours later with Sigurd Eskeland emerging as the champion.
As the match got under way with the final two, Steve Sung & Sigurd Eskeland, Eskeland made a bet & the first three cards were dealt with by Sung. He had a Qc 9h 9d. Sung then declined to make a bet leading Eskeland to make a turn of his card which was the Kc, thus calling the current bet of zero by both the players. The final card was dealt with in the current poker hand, a 10c and Eskeland discarded his hand to a bet from Sung. Then Sung made a razz hand, which got him 1,200,000 however, Eskeland was still up ahead of him with 2,600,000.
A few minutes later Sung again made a razz hand with Eskeland having to make a forced bet in the stud game & requiring Sung to raise the amount of the bet to a normal-sized bet. There was the fourth street by Sung with Eskeland matching the bet. Eskeland bet on the fifth street & asked Sung to match the raise. Eskeland folded on sixth street when Eskeland checked and Sung bet. With this both players levelled against each other.
Next came in the stud, with Jh As 6s Ad of Eskeland & Qh Ah 5d 3d of Sung, putting Eskeland back in the lead. He opened the betting round and then called a completion from Sung on third street. When Sung bet nothing on the turn card, Eskeland bet and Sung matched with him. Sung check-raised on fifth street allowing Eskeland to call. On sixth street it was Eskeland who bet with Sung calling. Eskeland began a final round of betting & got Sung to fold.
The next hand showed Eskeland- 6d 2c 4h 10c, & Sung- 3s 10s 5s 3d. Sung opened the betting round but three-bet Eskeland after Eskeland increased the size of his bet. Fourth street was pretty simple with Sung betting and Eskeland matching the bet & it was the same till seventh street when Sung bet and Eskeland forfeited his interest in the current pot. Thereby, Sung was up by 200K, he had 1,800,000 to Eskeland's 1,600,000.
After this there was a flop of 10h 9s 3h. Sung check-called a bet of 640,000 from Eskeland and they both passed the 4d on fourth street. The river card was 5h, Sung bet out 200,000, and got Eskeland to fold.
Eskeland rose to 80,000 from the buck and got a situation of a three-bet to 260,000 from Sung. The cards were as such, Sung- Qd Qs & Eskeland- Ac 9s. The flop came 3d 9c 4c but it didn’t prove to be of much help to Sung. However, the Jc on the turn gave Eskeland a chance to draw for his flush in addition to his higher card. The final card was the 2c, giving Eskeland all the cards of the same suit as well as his victory, with which the event ended.
Steve Sung had won a bracelet last year in a $1000 event but could only gather a $160,952 & a 2nd place this year. Whereas, Sigurd Eskeland, from Oslo, Norway had previously cashed in two WSOP events, including the main event in 2008 but went all the way to win $260,497 & the coveted bracelet in this WSOP.
And the WSOP action isn’t over yet. www.sportsbook.com has the lines for the final table even held in November. The current longshot is Jason Senti at +2000. Are you ready to take a shot at the longshot, or maybe the favorite John Dolan at +250? Head over to Sportsbook.com today and get into the action!
WSOP Event 50: $5K POT-LIMIT OMAHA
2010-07-26
The 50th event of the World Series Of Poker was the $5K POT-LIMIT OMAHA which was held on the 28th of June and went on for three consecutive days.
There was naturally a lot of anticipation regarding the event and a great run-in to the bracelet was expected.
The remaining 31 contestants were all set for the face-off determined to win the bracelet. With all talented contenders left on the field, it was Robert Mizrachi at the top of the chip counts, followed by Chance Kornuth, Jose Barbero, and Eric Liu.
As the event reached its third day, there were 28 players left, and a possibility of the winner being revealed that day itself. As the blinds were to get steeper starting at 5,000/10,000 there was every possibility of some very quick eliminations.
With 20 players left after a much expected explosive round, the game only got interesting. From 5,000/10,000, the blinds went up to 6,000/12,000 and the average stack also rose over 405,000.
With Ross Boatman, Josh Tieman and Ayaz Mahmood also out of the game there were a total of seventeen players left.After another level was completed, and the players came back after a twenty minutes break there were only 14 players left and the blinds rose yet again to 8,000/16,000.
There was yet another thing that happened during this level, Ran Azor, one of the players was seen enthusiastically blowing smoke rings into the air while all the others were in a hand. It was finally found out that he was smoking a fake cigarette which did have the nicotine and smoke but did not have any smell. The poor floor guys had no clue what to do as they had no idea if it was legal or illegal. It was thereon decided that the stench less smoke would certainly act as a distraction for the others if not anything else and so, he was asked by the floor to put it off.
With the approaching final table the players decided to go a bit slower and demanded a short break. Hence the play was to be resumed after a halt of five minutes. There was an addition to Kevin Boudreau's chips as Niall Charlton's were also added to his after the latter was eliminated at the 14th position. Scott Mandel also eliminated David Iammarino after flopping a flush against him. He was at the 13th position and took with him $24,711.
With 12 players left on the table, the blinds being paid still got steeper to 10,000/20,000.
Robert Mizrachi took the call and Mark Eddleman was taken down at the eleventh position after being busted.
After the level got over with just ten players remaining as it had been desired, the players went on a hour long dinner break and returned at about 8.40 for the final table of the game, the blinds rising again to 12.000/24,000.
Ran Azor was first to leave the final table, finishing at the tenth position and taking home $31,448. With the final nine players being established, the game was stopped so that the chip counts could be taken and remaining players could again situate themselves on the table.
Robert Mizrachi and Kevin Boudreau seemed to have the largest fan following in the crowd. Hasta Luego Barbero was soon sent out of the game finishing at the 9th spot, followed by Robert Mizrachi (whose fans couldn't unfortunately save him) and Eric Liu.
At level 25 and with six players left, the blinds reached up to 20,000/40,000 and the average stack to a whopping $1,380,000. Julian Gardener was knocked out at the 6th place for $91,387, followed by Scott Mandel who was eliminated at the fifth rank foe $122,455.
After the fifth elimination, the players went on a twenty minutes break and when they returned to play the blinds had risen up to 30,000/60,000.
There was a tiff which broke out between Chance Kornuth and Kevin Boudreau. It went on to such a level that the latter had to be warned for a penalty.
Soon the blinds started looking larger than the stacks and it was easy to make out that the time of the final decision wasn't too far. Ted Martin was busted in 4th spot for $165,825, and Danny Smith finished 3rd with $226,923.
The final battle was between Kevin Boudreau and Chance Kornuth. It did not take long for the winner to be decided and the crowed cheering for Kornuth was overjoyed as he emerged as the champion after beating Boudreau, who got a respectable second place along with $313,792.
The shiny WSOP bracelet and $508,090 went to the one who most deserved them, Chance Kornuth who successfully defeated many strong contenders to become a part of WSOP's history!
And the WSOP action isn’t over yet. www.sportsbook.com has the lines for the final table even held in November. The current longshot is Jason Senti at +2000. Are you ready to take a shot at the longshot, or maybe the favorite John Dolan at +250? Head over to Sportsbook.com today and get into the action!