November Nine Set

World Series of Poker / Matthew Pitt / 21 July 2011 / Leave a Comment

This excellent photograph of the November Nine was taken by PokerNews.com

This year's World Series of Poker Main Event was the third-largest in WSOP history, with a staggering 6,865 exchanging $10,000 for 30,000 and a dream of winning poker's "Big Dance." Over the past 12 days these players have been riffling chips, running bluffs and discussing bad beat stories but the dream is well and truly over for 6,856 of them. However, for a select nine men, from different corners of the globe, the dream is most certainly alive as they have made it through to the November Nine.

Day 8 saw 22 players return to their seats at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, each of them guaranteed to walk away with at least $302,005 but not one of them would have wanted that money at the start of the day as it would mean they no longer had a shot at becoming World Champion, winning the special edition WSOP bracelet and of course the $8,711,956 first place prize.

Lars Bonding was the first player to hit the rail getting his money in good with pocket aces against the pair of fours of Konstantinos Mamaliadis just 20 minutes after the restart only to see the latter flop a four. After Bonding's demise there was a slow but constant trickle of eliminations until the field had been reduced to just 10 players, at which point they were moved onto an unofficial final table. Here they played 10-handed for almost four and a half hours, nobody wanting to be the tenth place finisher and miss out on all of the hype surrounding the November Nine. But someone had to finish tenth and finish tenth they did.

John Hewitt will go down in the history books as the man who narrowly missed out on November Nine glory and many will say he threw away his chances. He first called Matt Giannetti's all in shove with AdTh and missed, then called another shove with KcQs against Badih Bounahra who held KhKs. He got the rest of his money in, 3,875,000 chips, three-betting all in after Eoghan O'Dea raised to 1,100,000 preflop. O'Dea called and his KsJd was up against Hewitt's pocket threes. The final board ran out Qc-Td-7s-Ah-Kd and with that Hewitt was eliminated in tenth place and the tournament is now on an extended break until November 5.

Leading the way when play resumes is Martin Staszko of the Czech Republic, his 40,175,000 chips making him the chipleader. This is Staszko's fifth cash of the 2011 WSOP but this is the one that really counts. Also making it to the final table is Samuel Holden, a young English pro and someone for people back in the UK to rail in their usual ferocious style. Another man sure to be well supported is the aforementioned O'Dea, son of Irish poker legend Donnacha O'Dea. He is almost certain to bring a huge following with him when the tournament resumes in a few months time. Over the next couple of weeks we should hear more and more about these nine players, as soon as we have information on them we will relay it to you fine people.

Seating plan for WSOP Final Table

Seat 1: Matt Giannetti: 24,750,000
Seat 2: Badih Bounahra: 19,700,000
Seat 3: Eoghan O'Dea: 33,925,000
Seat 4: Phil Collins: 23,875,000
Seat 5: Anton Makiievskyi: 13,825,000
Seat 6: Samuel Holden: 12,375,000
Seat 7: Pius Heinz: 16,425,000
Seat 8: Ben Lamb: 20,875,000
Seat 9: Martin Staszko: 40,175,000

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