Teddy Sheringham swaps goals for chips in Portugal

Poker News / Matthew Pitt / 01 September 2010 / Leave a Comment

He is still seen as a poker celebrity rather than a poker player despite winning $140,925 from live tournaments in his relatively short career, winnings helped by a 14th place finish at the 2009 WSOPE Main Event

Teddy Sheringham is better known for scoring goals than he is stacking poker chips but that could soon change as he finds himself down to final 24 players of the EPT Vilamoura Main Event.

Over the course of three days the 384 entrants have been whittled down to just 24, with those lucky enough to still have chips returning at noon today and playing down to the final table of eight players. Of the remaining players it is 44-year old Shrringham who is the surprise package. The former Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United striker has been a constant figure on the tournament circuit since hanging up his boots but is yet to receive the plaudits he deserves.

He is still seen as a poker celebrity rather than a poker player despite winning $140,925 from live tournaments in his relatively short career, winnings helped by a 14th place finish at the 2009 WSOPE Main Event and a 103rd place finish in the 2010 EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo.

At the start of Day 3 all eyes were on the overnight chip leader Brandon Cantu, who was looking to become only the third player, after Gavin Griffin and Roland de Wolfe, to win a WPT, WSOP and EPT title. Sadly, any hopes of achieving this feat and joining the exclusive club were dashed as he lost pot after pot, finally losing the last of his chips to Russian Dmitry Gromov who flopped a set of nines to best Cantu's Ace-king.

A number of British players gave good accounts of themselves in Portugal though Paul "BadPab" Foltyn will probably want to forget the tournament as quickly as possible after becoming the unfortunate bubble boy. He updated his Facebook status with the words, [sic] "Obv bubbled, JJ vs AK for 250k @ 2.5k/5k sighhhhhh Hopefully sam, JP or toby take it down," referring of course to British hopefuls Sam Trickett, Toby Lewis and two-time WSOP bracelet winner JP Kelly.

The first of those three players survived to make Day 4 but JP Kelly was not so lucky busting out in 29th place for €9,312 after getting it all in with AcQd against Martin Jacobson's AhKs. Kelly's camp were ecstatic as the flop came down 3d5dQs, though some groaned as the Js fell on the turn as it gave Jacobson additional outs. However, he did not need those as he managed to spike a king on the river to send Kelly hope and to give himself the chip lead.

Jacobson will return at noon today armed with 1,362,000, almost 500,000 more than his nearest competitor, Marco Leonzio. Swedish pro Jacobson has managed to win $933,690 from live poker tournaments since 2008, helped along the way by a third place finish in the 2008 EPT Budapest Main Event and a fourth place finish in a $1,500 No-limit Hold'em event at this year's World Series of Poker.

Third in chips is Spaniard Guillermo Garcia who usually plays much lower buy-in tournaments that this back in Spain and Sam Trickett, who would be the man I would put money on winning EPT Vilamoura. Trickett is a man on the top of his game, having cashed six times at this year's WSOP, including two final table appearances one of which was a runner-up finish, for a total of $693,837.