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October 19th 2006
First ever WPT Festa Al Lago: 415 down, 18 to go
The latest addition to the WPT circuit, the “Festa al Lago” tournament, kicked off in the Bellagio on Monday. 433 of the world’s most talented poker players crammed themselves into the casino’s world famous poker room (as well as its nearby Fontana Bar); all attracted by the double stack format and the $1 million+ first prize.
Day One saw more early eliminations than is customary for a deep stack event (where players start with $20,000 chips), and John Juanda, “Miami” John Cernuto and 2006 WSOP champ Jamie Gold all hit the rail before many players had finished stacking their chips, Gold noticeably unable to repeat his WSOP performance which he proclaimed to be “the greatest display in the history of poker”. By the end of the day he was in good company however, with Daniel Negreanu, Jordan Morgan, Doyle Brunson, David Williams, Gavin Smith and T.J. Cloutier all joining him on the rail.
Despite these high profile casualties the starting field on Day Two was still packed with poker superstars. But it was the unknown Brandi Hawbaker who ended Day Two at the top of the leaderboard; she won a huge pot early in the day when she flopped a full house against Tony Lacastro’s trip kings, and successfully built on it for the remainder of the day. Not so successful were Jeff Madsen, Phil Ivey, Barry Greenstein, Mike Matusow, Scotty Nguyen, Erick Lindgren and Phil Hellmuth (whose WPT curse continues).
64 players began Day Three and still the filed was packed with stars. Indeed of the top five chip stacks at the start of the day, four were big name pros: 2006 WSOP bracelet winner Brandon Cantu was in second, James Van Alstyne occupied third spot, WPT winner Victor Ramdin was in fourth, and Alex Jacob, winner of the recent US Poker Championship held fifth.
Given his position at the start of the day, and his obvious poker pedigree, it was a huge surprise when Alex Jacob became one of the first players eliminated. He went out with QQ against Joe Tehan’s AA, but Jacob had already lost most of his stack in earlier exchanges, perhaps guilty of overplaying his big stack into trouble. He was however, not the only big stack to bow out before the end of the day, with Brandon Cantu the only one of the top five to survive to Day Four.
Chip leader Hawbaker saw her stack decimated after she called Chris Loveland’s all-in with AK (for top pair) on a board showing K-Q-T-3. Loveland had AJ for the nut straight and delivered a blow from which Hawbaker never recovered. Similarly, WPT Foxwoods champion Victor Ramdin doubled up James Van Alstyne early on and then fell to a bad beat when Joe Pelton called Ramdin’s all-in raise and his T-9 overcame Ramdin A-T after nines fell on the flop and river.
Fresh from that victory Pelton then delivered the bad beat of the tournament against Nick “The Takeover” Schulman. In his online journal Pelton describes it with the line: “Nick Schulman is my pappy and should have all my chips,” and it’s not hard to see why. The hand began with Pelton making a play: raising to $26k preflop with Jh-8h. Schulman then re-raised to $85k with J-J and Pelton, presumably reading Schulman for weakness, pushed all-in. When the cards were on their backs the gravity of Pelton’s misread was severe: “The Takeover” was an 84 percent favourite to win. Crushingly though, the flop came down all hearts and there was no re-suckout for Schulman, with Pelton’s flush holding up to give him the chip lead. Schulman was crippled, and exited shortly afterwards.
It’s been a good month for Pelton, who won the last WPT event (the Legends of Poker at the Bike), and after surviving that scare he went on to carry his chip lead through to the end of the day. He ended a fraction ahead of Chris Loveland but a good $400k in front of third and fourth placed Loi Phan and Brandon Cantu.
There are still plenty of other big names left in the 18 strong field, with Player of the Year leader Michael Mizrachi in 8th, “Captain” Tom Franklin in 10th, Joe Tehan in 13th and Juan Carlos Mortensen in 16th. A cracking Day Four awaits.
Play begins tomorrow at 12pm PDT.
Below are the top ten chip counts and the payout structure:
1 Joe Pelton - $1,288,000
2 Chris Loveland - $1,122,000
3 Loi Phan - $799,000
4 Brandon Cantu - $770,000
5 Can Kim Hua - $695,000
6 Steve Wong - $621,000
7 Stan Wasserkrug - $525,000
8 Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi - $378,000
9 David Baker - $367,000
10 “Captain” Tom Franklin - $336,000
Payout Structure:
1st $1,090,025
2nd $542,700
3rd $292,220
4th $187,745
5th $125,240
6th $83,490
7th $75,145
8th $66,795
9th $58,445
10th $50,095
11th to 15th $41,745
16th to 20th $33,395
21st to 30th $25,050
31st to 40th $20,875
41st to 50th $16,700
51st to 100th $12,525
Submitted: 19/10/2006 12:03:24
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