Canadian ace Mark Radoja completed the third day of World Series of Poker event 24: $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em Shootout with a convincing victory over heads up opponent Jeffrey Gross in the early hours of Friday morning, claiming his first WSOP bracelet and $436,568 in prize money.
The duo entered the heads up with the Canadian holding a 2 to 1 chip advantage which he held on to and developed into a win as the final moments of the competition ticked away.
It was a long, long day for the players, especially the five who survived beyond midnight Thursday – Radoja, Scott Baumstein, Adam Junglen, Jeffrey Gross and Nicolas Fierrogottner.
Five-handed play was protracted but eventually the field was thinned to just two as Radoja and Gross fought it out before the television cameras and a large contingent of noisy railbirds.
The win represents Radoja’s best WSOP achievement yet – last year his best performance was a third placing in the $5,000 Six-Handed Hold’em event.
Gross took home a well-earned $269 742.
23 players assembled for the third day of event 25: $1,500 Stud 8 or Better, and by the end of ten levels the event remained undecided, requiring officials to schedule a fourth day of play to decide the heads up which had developed between veteran Mike Sexton and internet poker ace Chris Viox.
On Friday the two returned to do battle once again – all that remained of a field of 606 after three exhausting days of play. Mercifully for both tired men it was a very short day, taking just under an hour for the winner to emerge.
Chris Viox held onto a 3 to 1 chip advantage to take his internationally famous opponent down and claim his first WSOP bracelet and the $200,459 main prize, leaving Sexton disappointed at not taking home a second bracelet, but with a consolation second placing prize of $123,925.
1,378 players started out in event 26: $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em Six Handed, but by the third day only 22 remained, led by Anthony Ruberto but with high calibre players like Chris Moorman, Davidi Kitai, Will Failla, Anthony Lellouche and Will Failla still in the mix.
The previous day had seen many aces bite the dust, including Jean-Robert Bellande, Jake Cody, Tuan Le, Jimmy Tran and Olivier Busquet.
Chip leader Ruberto had a disastrous day, and despite starting out as chip leader was the first busted out of the final table when he suffered a massive bad beat that crippled his stack and shocked the railbirds in a clash with the ultimate winner of the event.
By midnight Friday it was all over after Chris Moorman was eliminated in third place to set the scene for a heads up between Oleksii Kovalchuk and Ionel Anton, who were evenly matched and swapped the lead several times before Kovalchuk established dominance and the game was concluded in his favour.
The duo played a fast, aggressive and eminently exciting game that ended when Kovalchuk had pocket sevens against a weak ace that Kovalchuk turned into a full house.
Kovalchuk became the second Ukrainian this year to win the gold; he claimed his first bracelet and the main prize of $689,739, leaving his opponent with $428,140.
14 survivors from an original field of 153 reasembled for the third and final day of event 27: $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship, which had in the preceding two days seen many of the top players in the game eliminated.
Matthew Gallin held the chip lead, with names like Matt Hawrilenko, Daniel Idema, Richard Brodie, Hoyt Corkins, Nick Schulman, Isaac Haxton, Justin Smith, and Barry Greenstein still in contention.
By the early hours of Saturday morning the heads up had been decided after only five hands, hardly surprising given Daniel Idema’s 4 to 1 chip lead at the start with Matthew Gallin.
Gallin headed for the exit with a $233,944 runner-up’s check and Daniel Idema celebrated his victory, taking the bracelet and the main prize of $378,642. It was a memorable and satisfying win for Idema, who finished as the runner-up in this prestigious event last year.
Event 28: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em saw plenty of big names fall on the first day as a field of 2 500 was reduced to just 349. Headed for the rail on the first day of hectic action were Liv Boeree, Michael Mizrachi, Jonathan Duhamel, Faraz Jaka, Jeff Papola, Josh Brikis, Phil Laak, Jennifer Tilly, JP Kelly and many others.
Returning to the tables on Friday, the survivors soon got down to work, with the attacking style of poker much in evidence as the field was thinned out to around 39 by the early hours of Saturday morning Vegas time.
Adam Laskey was hanging on to a slender lead over Bret Hruby, and there was still plenty of firepower in the pack as the action approached level 20 around 2 a.m.
The second day of event 29: $2,500 10-Game Mix saw 161 players from an original field of 431 return to the felt Friday, led by 67-year-old professional poker player John Cernuto, chased by quality players like Greg Raymer, Freddy Deeb, Lyle Berman, Jeff Madsen, Robert and Michael Mizrachi, John Hennigan, Alexander Kostritsyn, Steve Zolotow, Mike Matusow, Alexander Kravchenko, John Juanda and Terrence Chan.
Well into the wee small hours of Saturday there were 19 survivors still in action at level 18, with the top ten as follows: Brian Haveson, David Benefield, Don McNamara, Roland Israelashvili, David Whitis, Travis Pearson, Shaun Deeb, Jason Stern, Septi Popescu and Tad Jurgens.
Only four more hands remained of second day play before the players will be told to bag up.
A massive field of 3,752 was welcomed for event 30: $1,000 Seniors No-Limit Hold?em Championship, a competition reserved for players age 50 and over.
Oklahoma Johnny Hale gave the ‘shuffle up and deal” call which triggered immediate action at the crowded tables, where respected poker names like Richard Lee, Amarillo Slim, Dennis Phillips, Bruce Buffer, T.J Cloutier, Lon McEachern, Thor Hansen, Tom Schneider, Shirley Williams, Charles Moore and Susie Isaacs were spotted in the thick of the action.
Those busted during the day’s action included 2010 champ in this event Harold Angle, Amarillo Slim, Dennis Phillips, Lon McEachern, T.J. Cloutier, Berry Johnston, Tony Ma and Charles “Woody” Moore.
By midnight Friday level 10 had been reached and the chips bagged, with just 529 player left, headed by John Bovin, with Charlie Sewell a way back, followed Rick Mombourquette.
There was a one hour delay in launching event 31: $3,000 Pot-Limit Omaha, but the cards eventually did hit the air late Friday afternoon PDT with some 685 registrations generating a prize pool of $1.87 million.
Predictably this was a competition with great appeal for the professionals, and the tables were crowded with too many big names to do everyone justice…it was pretty much a case of you name it, and they were somewhere in the Pavilion Room at the Rio.
Bracelet winners alone included Vanessa Selbst, Bertrand Grospellier, Mike Matusow, Jason Mercier, Erik Seidel, Phil Hellmuth, Scott Clements, Men Nguyen, David Chiu and Carlos Mortensen…and they all fell throughout the day, along with Jonathan Duhamel, Daniel Negreanu and Erica Schoenberg.
Early eliminations included Matt Glantz, Lex Veldhuis, JP Kelly, Noak Boeken and Jeff Williams.
When officials called a halt to the first day’s action at level 8 in the early hours of Saturday morning there were still 153 players left in contention, including many big guns. Chip leader Ben Lamb was comfortably ahead of his nearest rival, Paul Volpe, but the competition is still wide open.