WSOP Hand of the Day: Tom McCormick vs. Corrie Wunstel

World Series of Poker / Short-Stacked Shamus / 12 July 2011 / Leave a Comment

Day 2a at the 2011 WSOP Main Event (Photo credit: PokerNews / WSOP.com)

The first of the Day Twos played out yesterday at the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event, with the Russian Aleksandr Mozhnyakov ending the day bagging up the most chips of anyone with 478,600. As on Day 1, players played five more 120-minute levels yesterday, but with the blinds and antes going up the rate of attrition went up as well. On each of the Day Ones we saw about a third of those starting the day hit the rail, whereas on Day 2a only 822 of the 2,031 survived. It was one of the day's many elimination hands -- this one between Tom McCormick and Corrie Wunstel -- that serves as our WSOP Hand of the Day from Monday.

As Harley Stoffmaker reported for PokerNews, they had moved into the final level of the night -- Level 10 -- where the blinds were 600/1,200 with a 200 ante. McCormick had about 50,000 to start the hand, and Wunstel about 100,000. Jason Mercier opened with a minimum-raise to 2,400 from the cutoff seat, a raise which McCormick called from the button. It folded to Wunstel in the big blind who three-bet to 7,500, Mercier got out, and McCormick called.

The flop came 9d-8c-4c, and Wunstel kept the initiative by betting 8,600 (a little less than half the pot). McCormick raised to 18,600, leaving himself only about 24,000 behind. In response Wunstel reraised to 70,000, thereby forcing McCormick to make a decision whether or not he wished to put the rest of his chips -- and his tourney life -- at risk.

McCormick tanked for an especially long time, then made the call, turning over Jh-Jc for an overpair. He'd made the right choice, as Wunstel had but Kd-9s for top pair of nines.

With two cards to come, McCormick was about 4-to-1 to claim the pot and survive. The turn was the 8h, increasing his chances even further. But the river brought one of Wunstel's five remaining outs -- the 9c -- to knock out McCormick.

"How can you do that?" McCormick asked Wunstel after the hand, ostensibly referring to his decision to push his pair of nines. One obvious answer is the fact that Wunstel had McCormick outchipped and could pressure his opponent with the possibility of elimination while not risking the same for himself. Indeed, Wunstel's preflop three-bet was likely similarly motivated, given that he had the advantage over both McCormick and Mercier (who also had fewer chips than Wunstel to start the hand).

On the flop, an all-in raise from McCormick might well have won him the pot, but as his tanking following Wunstel's subsequent reraise showed, he preferred not to put his remaining stack at risk if he could avoid doing so. Meanwhile, from Wunstel's perspective, McCormick's decision only to raise 10,000 more may have suggested McCormick held a drawing hand (e.g., two clubs or J-10) and that his nines were in fact ahead.

In any event, as is generally the case in tourney play, having more chips gives one more choices, and in this instance Wunstel chose to pressure a shorter-stacked opponent. That pot pushed Wunstel up around 140,000, though by day's end he'd be back to about 103,500 -- still a relatively healthy stack with which to maneuver.

Today the 2,490 players who made it through Days 1b and 1d will combine to play Day 2b. If the eliminations come at the same frequency today as they did yesterday, just about 1,000 should survive today, meaning a combined field of 1,800-1,850 should be returning for Thursday's Day 3 after a day off tomorrow.

Check over at PokerNews' live reporting where there will surely be many more eliminations among the hands reported today.