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August 30th 2006
WPT Legends of Poker: FInal Table
The first post-WSOP World Poker Tour event kicked off on Saturday with the Legends of Poker $10,000 NL Hold’em event at the Bicycle Club in L.A. As usual the tournament pulled in a big crowd proving that the poker world has (almost) fully recovered from the annual World Series hangover.
In fact dotted among the 466 strong field was as big a collection of household names as you are likely to see in any event this year. So many were there that a table featuring Surindar Sunar, David Matthew, Harry Demetriou, Scotty Nguyen, Cyndy Violette, Steve Brechner and Toto Leonidas was not exceptional. The roll call was immense: Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, Barry Greenstein, Scotty Nguyen, Phil Hellmuth, Huck Seed, T.J. Cloutier, Chip Reese, Erik Seidel, Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Michael Mizrachi, Jennifer Harman, Gavin Smith, John Juanda, Tuan Le, Hoyt Corkins, Erick Lindgren and the 21-year-old Jeff Madsen were all present, along with a healthy contingent of the 2006 WSOP final table. Three of the top four in Paul Wasicka, Michael Binger and Allen Cunnigham were joined by 6th place finisher Richard Lee. Together they helped build a prize pool in excess of $4.5 million and a first prize of $1.57 million.
For many of these heavyweights a first day exit lay in store. The beauty of this game is that given the right circumstances even the mightiest pro can be slain by a rank amateur, and Brunson, Forrest, Chan, Smith, Reese, Negreanu, Ivey and WSOP wunderkind Jeff Madsen all fell to that logic on Day One, with varying degrees of bad luck. Ivey could count himself especially unfortunate after flopping a set of eights on a T-8-3 board. His opponent had pocket tens!
But despite these eliminations a sizeable number of pros went deep into the tournament; Huck Seed (17th), James Van Alstyne (9th) and John Juanda (8th) all finished inside the top twenty. The resulting final table is one of the strongest in recent WPT history, with Scotty Nguyen, Hoyt “The Alabama Cowboy” Corkins, and Kevin O’Donnell (6th in last year’s Legend of Poker) alongside the lesser known Joe Pelton, Frankie O’Dell and Randy Holland.
Out in front, and tremendously fortunate to be there, is Frankie O’Dell, who won his chip lead after administering a horrible bad beat to Scotty Nguyen just minutes before the end of play. O’Dell, holding pocket jacks, raised to $200,000 preflop and then called a $300,000 re-raise by Nguyen before check-raising the 1998 World Champion all-in on a flop of Q-8-2. It proved a badly judged move as Nguyen called in a flash showing pocket aces. O’Dell’s only hope seemed to lie in catching one of the two remaining jacks but instead he found an even flukier escape, catching a ten and a nine for a runner runner straight. A shell-shocked Nguyen was left with just $490,000 having started the hand with over $2 million.
A few minutes later and David Daneshgar hit the rail in seventh place, spelling the end of play for the night. He pushed his short stack all-in with T-5 on a flop of T-9-8 but was quickly called by Kevin O’Donnell who held the much stronger T-7. The turn and river blanked out Daneshgar’s tournament was over – he collected $110,910 for his efforts.
Tomorrow’s final table will start as follows:
Frankie O’Dell - $3,880,000
Kevin O’Donnell - $2,335,000
Joe Pelton - $1,100,000
Hoyt Corkins - $1,030,000
Randy Holland - $615,000
Scotty Nguyen - $375,000
Submitted: 30/08/2006 13:04:03
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