News / Dave Allan / 09 November 2008 / Leave a comment

Crowd favourite, Kelly Kim, has been eliminated in eighth place, just one hand after Craig Marquis made his exit from the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event Final Table.

Having started to day with the shortest stack, Kim had amassed a group of fans on the rail, all of whom were rooting for the tournament's underdog. Kim's stack had dropped as low as 840,000 but on hand 35 he doubled up when his pocket Kings held against Ivan Demidov's Ks Td.

After Marquis' exit, Kim found all but 150,000 of his chips had been consumed by paying the big blind so it was mandatory for him to go all-in. Ylon Schwartz, Darus Suharto and Ivan Demidov all limped and then called the small raise from Kim's all-in, so four players saw a flop of 9h 6s 2s.

Demidov bet out 600,000, which was enough to make Schwartz fold but Suharto came along for the ride. The Ah fell on the turn and both players checked, and this was repeated when the Queen of diamonds arrived on the river.

Suharto showed 9c Tc, whilst Demidov tabled 9d 5s. Suharto's ten kicker was enough to edge the young Russian out of the side pot and when Kim mucked his hand, unable to beat a pair of nines, Suharto claimed the entire pot.

Kim exists in eighth place and takes home $1,288,217 for his troubles, over $387547 more than the bookmakers expected!