Bloggers / Dave Allan / 08 November 2009 / Leave a comment

James Akenhead's WSOP is over for another year as he is eliminated in 9th place, the first player to leave the final table.

The final table started very tightly as one would expect, taking 13 hands to see a flop and 28 hands to see a turn card, with nobody wanting to be the first person to be eliminated.

The players were happy with playing a preflop contest until hand 44 saw a flurry of action and two players all in. James Akenhead pushed his short-stack into the middle of the table and got a call from Steve Begleiter. The action folded to Eric Buchman, who stuck in a 12,000,000 raise, causing Begleiter to make a hesitant fold.

With the cards on their backs it appeared Akenhead was a massive underdog with his KcQh against Buchman's AhKs and his chances of survival were decimated when the board ran out 2s3sJdKh but a beautiful, for Akenhead and his fans anyway, Queen on the river saw the plucky Brit triple up to almost 13,000,000 in chips.

Just 10 hands later and he was almost back to where he started after being on the wrong side of an Aces versus Kings confrontation with Kevin Schaffel, with the money going all-in preflop. The Jd9c4c3dJh board helped neither player and the former train conductor was down to less than 6,000,000.

Five hands later the killer blow was delivered to Akenhead. In push or fold mode he decided 3d3c was strong enough to move all-in with when the action folded around to him, unfortunately Kevin Schaffel, his enemy in the AA vs KK hand, found a pair of nines in the hole and made the call.

The board ran out Tc2c7h2s9d, giving Schaffel a full house and eliminating James Akenhead from the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event. Mr Akenhead takes home $1,263,602 for his efforts, along with any interest that would have been earned during the three month break.

After knocking out Akenhead, Schaffel now has 19,250,000 chips and each of the remaining players is guaranteed $1,300,213.