Roberto Romanello Could Win Live Poker's Triple Crown Tonight
The Triple Crown is an unofficial title given to poker players who manage to win a European Poker Tour main event, a World Poker Tour title and a WSOP bracelet. At time of writing Romanello has two of those in his possession
Event #36 of the 2012 World Series of Poker, the $3,000 No Limit Hold'em Shootout, has reached its ten-handed final table and it could be a historic one iof Roberto Romanello gets his way. By the time the final table has been completed Romanello could have become only the fifth poker player in history to have completed the Triple Crown if live titles.
The Triple Crown is an unofficial title given to poker players who manage to win a European Poker Tour main event, a World Poker Tour title and a WSOP bracelet. At time of writing Romanello has two of those in his possession after winning EPT Prague back in 2010 and WPT Bratislava in March of the following year. As yet a WSOP bracelet has eluded the Welshman but this could be his best chance yet of bagging some much sought after poker jewellery.
Unlike standard multi-table tournaments, the players at the final table of Event #36 will begin with the same number of chips. Actually that is a little lie because there are some slight variations in chip stacks due to some players playing Day 1 on a nine-handed table and some on ten-handed; but there are only 29,000 chips between first and tenth, which is nothing at all and makes this final table very much like a sit 'n' go - albeit it one with over $368,000 and a gold bracelet for a first place prize!
Joining Romanello in the quest for some poker bling is his fellow Brit Craig McCorkell who will be relishing the chance to enter the final table level pegging with everyone else. McCorkell is an online poker tournament specialist so he will be aware more than most about factors such as ICM when making his decisions and it should make for an interesting battle of wits against some of the live pros who have made it the finale, such as Antonio "The Magician" Esfandiari and Joe Tehan. And let's not forget they will be joined by an extremely talented individual in the shape of Athanasios Polychronopoulos. It really should be a very exciting spectacle when tournament director Jack Effel gives the orders to shuffle up and deal at around 14:00 Las Vegas time.
Each of the players enters the final table safe in the knowledge that they have locked up at least $22,899 for the efforts but by the time the last hand has taken place that prize money will have increased to $368,593. Who will be leaving the Rio with this in their back pocket? Check back tomorrow to find out!
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