Monday, July 13, 2009

WSOP Day 46 - Main Event Day 5: Rapido and The Rise of the DonkeyBomber

By Pauly
Las Vegas, NV

For a second day in a row, the action developed so fast in the Main Event, that there was not a chance for a series of stories to evolve. The tournament staff reduced the amount of playing time once again because players were busting out at an accelerated rate.

407 players started Day 5 and only 185 survived the cut. Warren Zackey, the plumber from South Africa, emerged as the chipleader when he took down a significant pot against an UB qualifier.

DonkeyBomber (born Tom Schneider) snagged the top spot for a brief moment after he won a monsterpotten against young gun Kevin Saul. The DonkeyBomber had a blah series in 2008 and a shitty 2009 compared to his magnificent run in 2007 when he won two bracelets and also collected WSOP Player of the Year honors. This might be his opportunity to demonstrate to the poker world why he's the best pro who never heard of.

On the flip side, there's still some well known talent left in the field. That Phil Ivey character continues to go deep and deep. Nothing would be better for a November Nine than to have Phil Ivey, Joe Sebok, and one of the former champions (Eastgate or Hachem) at the final table. Sweet Jesus, we'd all make shitloads of cash if that happened and the we, I meant the media and online gaming entities in the poker industry and their corporate sponsors.

Eight Frenchies are lurking five of note... the enigmatic David Benyamine, the dashing Fabrice Soulier, the ultra-relaxed Julien Brecard (manager of Team Winamax) from Paris, Elky the rockstar, and the always cagey Ludovic Lacay. The previous years were dubbed the Year of the Scandi or The Year of the Ruskies. Can this be the Year of the Frenchies? They have eight chances at snagging the spot light in the November Nine.

Missing the cut on Sunday included actor Lou Diamond Phillips. His run was remarkable against a field of established pros and amateur dreamers, yet LDP fell short when he busted out on the last hand of the day.... "Ritchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhie!"

And there are two females left... Nichoel Peppe and Leo Margets. They are vying for Wicked Chops Poker Last Woman Standing Cup.

Hijinks of the day? Here's a story from Nolan Dalla...
"As players bust out, tables are broken down and consolidated. This requires players to pick up their own chips and transfer to new tables. Deep into Level 18, a player was walking across the room and accidentally bumped into a camera crew. Two full racks of assorted chips crashed to the floor and rolled off in different directions. There was a mad dash by the player and tournament staff to recover the stray chips. After a few minutes, all chips were gathered and the player finally took his new seat. Mischievous-minded Jimmy Sommerfeld decided to have some fun at the player’s expense. As the player was re-stacking his chips into neat rows, Sommerfeld put on his best stone face. He informed the player that any chips that hit the floor would be ruled technically out of play. After a momentary expression of shock, the player quickly figured out he was the target of a gag and play resumed."
Anyway, the action on Day 6 should slow down a bit. There's three more days of poker left before the November Nine is set.

Here's some info...
Main Event Stats:
Players Remaining: 185
Avg. Stack: 1,053,081
Number of Entries: 6,494
TPrize Pool: $61,043,600
Places Paid: 648
1st Place Prize: $8,546,435

Top 10 Chip Counts:
1 Warrn Zackey (Honeydew, South Africa) - 4,872,000
2 Kasapr Cordes (Copenhagen, Denmark) - 4,352,000
3 Darvin Moon (Oakland, MD) - 3,218,000
4 Tom 'DonkeyBomber' Schneider (Scottsdale, AZ) - 3,168,000
5 Bernie Perner (Austria) - 3,022,000
6 Miika Puumalainen (Kuopip, Finland) - 2,894,000
7 Matt Affleck (Seattle, WA) - 2,882,000
8 Charlie Elias (Sydney, Australia) - 2,780,000
9 James Akenhead (London, United Kingdom) - 2,692,000
10 Steven Begleiter (Chappaqua, NY) - 2,621,000

Notables:
12 Noah Boeken, Noah 2,338,000
24 Ludocic Lacay 1,817,000
32 Fabrice Soulier 1,663,000
45 Phil Ivey 1,380,000
53 Hac Dang 1,286,000
54 Blair Hinkle 1,284,000
55 Steve Levy 1,278,000
56 Happy Shulman 1,266,000
58 Antonio Esfandiari 1,227,000
60 Julien Brecard 1,211,000
61 Theo Tran Theo 1,205,000
62 Jordan Morgan 1,202,000
76 Joe 'Not Sebock' Serock 1,014,000
78 Dennis Phillips 1,009,000
80 Joe Sebok 992,000
82 ELKY 973,000
83 Peter Eastgate 927,000
85 Blair Rodman 905,000
91 Sarne Lightman 889,000
101 David Benyamine 764,000
102 Kenny Tran 752,000
106 JC Tran 720,000
107 Prahlad Friedman 715,000
110 Chris Bjorin 693,000
123 Owen Crowe 640,000
124 Rosenkrantz, Jose 630,000
137 Joe Hachem 540,000
180 Cloutier, Eric 212,000
* * * * *


Bouncin Round the Room...

I was running around on Day 5 because of the Dream Team Poker event. I apologize for the lack of updates. That was the negative side of going deep into the Dream Team tournament. On a good note, both Michalski and I advanced to Day 2, as LJ busted out yesterday. You can read the recap for more details on that. Suffice to say, Team Tao of Pokerati has a shot at winning the overall first team prize for Dream Team Poker. Unreal, if you ask me, but pretty cool.

Original content written and provided by Pauly from Tao of Poker at www.taopoker.com. All rights reserved. RSS feeds are for non-commercial use only.

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