Team Betfair at the WSOP: Day1a and 1b of the $10k Main Event

News / Matthew Pitt / 06 July 2009 / Leave a comment

The final event of the 2009 World Series of Poker, the $10,000 World Championship No-limit Hold'em Event started on Friday 3 July and Team Betfair were well represented with a host of online qualifiers and the Betfair Pros.

Day 1a attracted 1,196 entrants, down 181 players from last year's figures but most importantly the player count included four members of Team Betfair. Other members had opted for a later starting day in order to celebrate Independence Day Las Vegas style!

As would be expected from such a prestigious event, there were pro wherever the eye could see but one such pro would only last 35 minutes into the $10,000 event and that was John Phan.

After losing a large portion of his stack holding QhQc on a Ts4h5c6hQd board against his opponent's 8c7c he then proceeded to get the remainder of his stack in on a flop reading 8h7s9h with Aces and was in relatively good shape against the King-nine of his opponents, especially when the ten of hearts came on the turn but a king fell on the river to give him the dubious honour of first person out.

Meanwhile Betfair players TenderTrap and WillyWonky were busy adding to their stacks without any major hands of note, whilst PunkFloyd seemed to be struggling to find his zone early on.

Sorel Mizzi then lost a large pot when he raised preflop to 600 and got two callers. The button then put on a squeeze to 3,000 which promoted Mizzi to four-bet to 10,500, enough to put the button all-in. The button insta-called with AhAd and was way in front of Mizzi's JdJc and when the board ran out Qd8c2sKc4s, Mizzi was down to 16,200 chips from the 30,000 starting stack.

Day 1a ended with 820 players remaining including WillyWonky with 44,675, Sorel Mizzi with 41,375, PunkFloyd with 37,527 and TenderTrap down to 23,500, the latter having lost 36,500 towards the close of play.

Day 1b begins

Day 1b could have been called the Day of the former champions with no fewer than seven former World Champions taking their seats at the felt, including 2004 champion Greg Raymer, Doyle Brunson and Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson.

There were also another four Team Betfair players hoping to accumulate enough chips to see them through to the second day of play. They were the United Kingdom's hangman, Denmark's EL PEPE, Portugal's tcmoreira and Ireland's hedger43.

One player who failed to win enough chips was Kim Sherlin who last all of five minutes into the event! His entire 30,000 stack ended up in the middle of the table when he turned top two pair but his opponent, Dave D'Alesandro had flopped a straight. Vicky Coren commented on how efficient Sherin was because most people would spend three days playing and not win a sausage!

Three Brunson's, Doyle, Todd and Pam entered the event and hedger43 found himself on the feature table next to 'Texas Dolly' and seemed pretty pleased with the situation of being seated with one of the legends of poker.

None of Team Betfair's members seemed to be able to catch any cards and this became even more apparent when EL PEPE lost a 50,000 pot with middle pair against top-two of his opponents that knocked him down to just 6,000 but he battled back to end the Day with 25,100.

His three team-mates all survived also with hangman holding onto 14,675 chips, tcmoreira having 39,125 to play with and hedger43 bagging up an impressive 55,650 at the end of play.

Coming soon, updates on Team Betfair during Day 1c and 1d