The second half of the World Series of Poker seemed to keep its foot on the gas all the way through to the Main Event itself, bumping field numbers sky-high and bringing an influx of new players to Las Vegas who had their eyes on the big prize – the $10,000 No Limit Hold’em Championship event – but for whom perhaps two full months in the baking desert heat might have been a little too much.
Almost bang in the middle of the series, Hungary took another bracelet as Valdemar Kwaysser (left) won the $10,000 Pot Limit Hold’em Championship event for $617,214. This continued the Europeans’ standout performance in Las Vegas this year, and marked one of many final tables which would be characterised by a multinational rail. This really adds to the feeling that this truly is a World Series, with the hallways full of bad beat stories told in any number of languages – although it seems terms such as ‘check-raise’ and ‘threebet’ cross the barrier rather easily. Also making deep runs in this tough 268-runner field were Tom Marchese, Peter Jetten, Daniel Stern and Alexander Kuzmin, and this won’t be the last we see of any of them, in all likelihood. More Euro-success came at the hands of Sigurd Eskeland from Norway who beat Steve Sung heads up to secure his bracelet in the $2,500 Mixed Event, and Marcel Vonk, the surprise Dutch contender who took down over $500k for winning a huge 3844-entrant $1,000 No Limit tournament towards the end of the series.
Almost as many entrants as for the parallel PLHE tournament stumped up the $10k for the HORSE World 
Championship event – 241 – and the popularity of mixed game tournaments seems to be on the steady increase. This event was won by Ian Gordon (right) who took the devilish prize of $611,666, narrowly pipping runner up Richard Ashby to the bracelet (which would have made a total of six for the UK). The fifth one, incidentally, fell to Birmingham’s own Steve Jelinek, who won the $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha Eight-or-better event the previous week. Two other Brits – Joel Ettedgi and Darren Sprengers – also made a deep run in this event and it would be surprising if the UK didn’t up the number of Omaha events it schedules in the local calendar in 2011.
Omaha has often been said to be a strong game for the European contingent, and it’s also gaining in popularity stateside every year. Growing more prevalent online as the high stakes players have gotten their teeth into is as a cash game, the tournament form picked up a surprising number of entrants in almost every event. 460 players took a shot at the $5k PLO event, which fell to Chance Kornuth for just over half a million dollars, while the PLO World Championship event saw 346 runners compete for the $780,599 top prize. This eventually went to Daniel Alaei after a long, tough final table which featured a truly international lineup (Miguel Proulx, Ville Mattila, Ludovic Lacay, Trevor Uyesugi, Stephen Pierson, Dmitry Stelmak, Alexander Kravchenko and Matthew Wheat).
If the Pot Limit Omaha Championship gained a lot of attention this year, it was overshadowed only by the elite $25,000 No Limit Six-Handed event, which seems to be put on the calendar so that pretty much every table is guaranteed to be a tough one and the props for taking it down are that much bigger. This year they go to Dan Kelly (left) who won $1,315,518 along with his bracelet for beating some of the format’s most vigorous competitors. Finishing third in that event was Frank Kassela, bumping him up the giddy heights of the Player of the Year leaderboard. This is a great story in itself – Kassela had won two bracelets at the 2010 series already, and had only a few players behind him with any shot at taking POY glory away. With John Juanda, Vladimir Schchemelev, Dan Heimiller, and James Dempsey out of the running after the crucial Main Event got underway, it was only Michael ‘the Grinder’ Mizrachi who held the possibility of overtaking the leader. To do this, he’d have to go all the way. And, at the risk of ruining the surprise of the Main Event recap, he’s in with a shot!
Two tournaments drew a lot of attention without being numbered events in the series itself – the Tournament of Champions and the Ante Up for Africa Charity Tournament. The former was a 27-runner freeroll put on for the greatest of the great (as voted for by fans) and between them these players would have enough WSOP jewellery to sink a small ship. Despite being a three-table affair, the televised TOC dragged on for many days (players went deep in other events; only a couple of levels were played per session) giving the rail around the Feature Table plenty of time to watch their favourites in action. In the end, quietly proficient and hugely popular Huck Seed took the half million dollar top spot, with Howard Lederer coming second and Johnny Chan third. $25k apiece went to the other finalists, Joe Hachem, Barry Greenstein, Daniel Negreanu, Jennifer Harman, Annie Duke and TJ Cloutier.
Meanwhile the Ante Up for Africa crew put on a show yet again, with celebrities, sport stars and poker pros combining at the tables in aid of a worthy cause. Phil Gordon was the champion, winning $129,086, all of which he promptly donated to the charity. Runner up Shannon Elizabeth has been a prominent supporter of this event, along with co-organisers Annie Duke and Don Cheadle and famous names such as Montel Williams and Evander Holyfield.
With the red carpet rolled up until next year, there was just the matter of the twelve-day marathon which is the $10,000 No Limit Hold’em Main Event to come. This year even more tables were available for the flood of new faces and local veterans, qualifiers, sponsored pros and celebrities, all with their attention focused on the biggest poker game of the year. An astounding 7,319 players took their seats over four start days, combining over two Day Twos and finally working their way down to just nine who will spend the next four months fretting about their huge final table to come.
Economic crises be damned – the turnout for the Main Event was huge and scattered throughout the massive Pavilion Room were almost every big name in poker you could think of. Only 747 would see their efforts rewarded with a cash (minimum $19,263) however, and of those who made it that far, many leaders would rise and fall over the following four days. Among those notably Johnny Chan on Day Three had amassed an impressive stack, and Matt Affleck, who ran deep last year, did it once again but fell just shy of final table glory. Scandinavian hopes were dashed as Johnny Lodden scraped into the final day’s play but busted in 27th, while William Thorson who’d looked like a very strong contender throughout finished in 22nd. Theo Jorgensen, too, had held a giant stack earlier, but was out on the penultimate day, along with Peter Jetten, David Benyamine, Alexander Kostritsyn and Tony Dunst.
Possibly the most tense bubble of the whole series – when ten drop to nine – took an immense amount of time to burst, dragging the last table deep into the night on Day Eight. In the end Brandon Steven, who’d doggedly kept hold of his short stack throughout the six hours of play, lost it in a queens-vs.-AK flip to Matthew Jarvis to provide a final table which looks like this:
Jason Senti (7,625,000)
Joseph Cheong (23,525,000)
John Dolan (46,250,000)
Jonathan Duhamel (65,975,000)
Michael Mizrachi (14,450,000)
Matthew Jarvis (16,700,000)
John Racener (19,050,000)
Filippo Candio (16,400,000)
Soi Nguyen (9,650,000)
These players have all survived most of the war, but have one final battle left in November to decide who will take the most coveted bracelet of them all and the eye-opening $8,944,138 first prize. In the meantime they may choose to relax, prepare mentally and physically, or dive straight in to the horde of tournaments coming up in Autumn both stateside and in Europe. As circuit players return home and get over their jetlag, there’s always Unibet Open Prague just around the corner at the beginning of August to start the new season as the world of poker leaves Las Vegas – until next year.
