Farha wins third WSOP bracelet

Poker News / Matthew Pitt / 16 June 2010 / Leave a Comment

Photo courtesy of www.worldseriesofpoker.com

Sammy Farha is widely regarded as the best Omaha player on the planet, with many going on record to say he is in fact the best Omaha player ever. If it were ever in doubt before Event #25 of the 2010 World Series of Poker it certainly is not now after he won the $10,000 Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better tournament.

Farha is not a big fan of tournaments as he says they take up too much time and prefers high-stakes cash games instead. However, he decided to enter Event #25, along with 211 others and after three days of play he had outlasted them all and claimed the $488,241 first prize, a buy-in in his usual cash game, and his third WSOP bracelet.

Some of Omaha poker's best tournament players and cash game specialists were on show for the World Championship event and a number of them, including Jeff Lisandro, Huck Seed, Mike Sexton and James Dempsey all made the money places.

It was Dempsey who was Farha's heads-up opponent and he put up one hell of a fight. Dempsey, who won his first bracelet two weeks ago in a $1,500 Pot-limit Hold'em event, had a mountain to climb against Farha but he battled valiantly for five hours before he suffered a sucker punch that took him for the vast majority of his chips.

Dempsey raised on the button, Farha three-bet and Dempsey called making the pot over 1,000,000 chips preflop. The flop came Qs9s3c, Farha lead out and Dempsey made the call. The Qc came on the turn and the betting action was the same, Farha betting and Dempsey calling. The river was the As and Farha once again bet out. Dempsey contemplated for a while and whilst he was doing so Farha said, "What you think you've got aces full?" Dempsey made the call and Farha announced, "Aces full!" before revealing AdAcKsKd for a rivered full house. Dempsey mucked his hand and was down to under 200,000 chips.

All of the British pro's chips went in the middle on the very next hand. His Jh8d6c5c was up against Farha's Jc9h7d4h and when the flop came down Td4s3s he fell behind to Farha's pair of fours but had plenty of redraws to help him out. The turn was the Th and the river a third ten, this time of clubs, and Farha initially thought it was a split pot before realising his jack-nine was a better hand than Dempsey's jack-eight. Upon realisation he shook his opponent's hand before sporting his trademark smile as the crowd burst into applause.

Farha's victory takes his live tournament career earning to $2,806,591 and he now has three WSOP bracelets to his name. He won his first back in 1996 in a $2,500 Pot-limit Omaha event, his second in 2006 in the $5,000 Omaha 8/b event and his third in this event.