There is no telling whether or not Phil Ivey would have gone on to win if he hadn’t been outdrawn on the 55^th hand of play, but it remains a very real possibility. As it happened his WPT final curse continued unbroken when he moved all-in with Qc-2c on a board showing 8c-8s-3c-Jc and was called by Jonathan Little holding A-8. An ace on the river cracked Ivey’s made flush and sent him crashing to the rail in fifth place, having started the final table as chip leader. His $129,684 prize will have been no consolation at all.

Still, Ivey’s elimination injected a does of much needed excitement into a final table that had hit the doldrums after a terrific start. It all began with Amnon Filippi’s elimination on the second hand of the day. He flopped the nuts with A-Q but fell victim to Cory Carroll’s nut flush draw when a third heart hit on the river.

That left the crowd in a state of high excitement, but they were gradually subdued by the dearth of flops and showdowns. Hand after hand went by taken down by a single preflop bet or the occasional re-raise, and it was some relief when Ivey’s elimination brought some adrenalin to proceedings, even if it was a shame to see the great man go.

It’s always the same isn’t it; you wait 54 hands for an elimination and then two come along at once! Well, almost. It was actually four hands until the next player hit the rail, but under the circumstances that felt like a nanosecond. Richard Kirsch was the man out, moving all-in preflop with A-T but running into Little’s A-J. The board helped neither player and Kirsch was out in fourth.

Now this was more like it! A few hands later Darrell Dicken flopped the nut straight with A-Q and took down a million dollar pot when Cory Carroll turned trip jacks. Then it was Carroll’s turn. He got in a preflop raising war with Little who rightly guessed that Carroll was weak but wrongly assumed he would lay down his hand to an all-in raise. Carroll called for his last $1.4 million chips with A-5o after Little had pushed in over the top his re-raise with Jh-8h. Amazingly the flop came A-5-5 rendering Little’s hand dead in the water and Carroll had doubled up to over $3 million.

That left Little in trouble, but he doubled through first Dicken and Carroll in the space of three hands to start an improbable comeback soon after the break. Dicken meanwhile was on the end of a couple of cold decks, mostly at the hands of Cory Carroll, before he was finally eliminated in third place after missing an open end straight draw against Carroll’s top pair.

The heads-up battle began with both players evenly matched in the chip counts but Cory Carroll quickly took control of the match and opened up a big chip lead with a sustained period of controlled aggression. The title seemed his for the taking but then lady luck intervened. First Little doubled up when his pocket fives held up in a coin toss against Carroll’s A-8. Then a few hands later he ended the match with a monster suck out, catching a 2 when all-in with A-2 against Carroll’s A-7.

It was a cruel blow for Carroll, whose performance in the heads-up stage alone meant he deserved the victory. Little won’t worry about that now though. He is a WPT title holder.

The final standings are as follows:

1^st – Jonathan Little - $1,066,295

2^nd – Cory Carroll - $561,369

3^rd – Darrell Dicken - $259,369

4^th – Richard Kirsch - $172,912

5^th – Phil Ivey - $129,684

6^th – Amnon Filippi - $100,865