The money bubble has popped in the historic city of Prague, the Czech Republic, as the World Poker Tour grinds its way along to its final table Monday afternoon.
218 players came back to the felt on Saturday at the Kings Casino in the Corinthian Hotel in Prague and, from appearances, it would be a long day. With the final table slated for play on Monday, over 70% of the field had to be dismissed on Saturday just to get to the money bubble. For their part, the players came in with every intention of making the money and wasted little time getting to business.
Casey Kastle was the chip leader at the start of the day, but several other players were ready to challenge him for the tournament lead. Steve O’Dwyer was one of the first to step up, eliminating Nikola Sears to knock Kastle off the top of the mountain early. Martins Adeniya, who has quietly had an excellent 2011 tournament poker season, also was an early challenger as he was responsible for knocking out Swedish pro Michael Tureniec.
O’Dwyer did his best to remain in the lead, taking a sizeable amount of chips from Tristan Clemencon, but he would eventually begin to falter. In what would be a humongous swing of chips, O’Dwyer went to battle against two Canadians, Mike “SirWatts” Watson and Mike “Timex” McDonald. After an initial raise by Watson, O’Dwyer would flat and McDonald would put the squeeze on by reraising. It was at this point that things got exciting.
Watson four bet McDonald to 51K and O’Dwyer ramped things up even more by moving all in for over 250K in chips. A shocked McDonald pushed his cards to the muck, but a game Watson made the call, commenting, “I guess you have aces but I call.” Surprisingly, O’Dwyer didn’t have the Aces; he turned up Big Slick against Watson’s pocket Kings. After the board ran without an Ace, O’Dwyer was decimated to only 75K; a few hands later, Watson would finish the job by eliminating O’Dwyer and seizing the chip lead.
O’Dwyer elimination came as the money bubble approached, with every player looking to garner as many chips as possible before the end of action for the night. By this point, Adeniya – who was the chip leader at the final table of the EPT London earlier this year – had assumed the chip lead and was looking for the end of the evening. It came when, on the money bubble, Yury Gulyy was knocked out of the tournament by Thomas Frandsen.
As play began this afternoon (Prague time), Adeniya had a host of players in pursuit of him. Watson, using the knockout of O’Dwyer, is in prime position to make a run at a second WPT championship. Other players such as France’s Benjamin Pollack, Sweden’s Bengt Sonnert and Russia’s Karen Sarkisyan also were well stacked for Sunday’s festivities.
With the herculean effort of going from 63 players to the six handed WPT final table, the players have been dropping from the field rapidly today. An extremely short stacked Eugene Katchalov cruelly had his pocket Kings cracked when Sarkisyan’s A-Q flopped the nuts, A-A-Q. The result knocked Katchalov out in 60th place, but it could have been worse; Mike McDonald proceeded to the cash out cage as the first elimination of the day in 63rd place.
Other notable names that have found the exit of the Kings Casino include Dimitar Danchev (54th), Kent Lundmark (52nd), Clemencon (43rd) and Kastle (38th).
At this moment, there are 27 players remaining from the original field of 571 and Adeniya is still holding court over the field:
1. Martins Adeniya, 1.3 million
2. Vojtech Ruzicka, 1.1 million
3. Stanislaw Kretz, 1.06 million
4. Thomas Frandsen, 1.02 million
5. Karen Sarkisyan, 750K
6. Paul Pires Trigo, 730K
Of interest on down the leaderboard (but still above average in chips) is Canadian Chris McClung, who is holding onto 670K in chips. Other top names still striving for the title are 2011 EPT San Remo champion Andrey Pateychuk (600K), Sonnert (576K), Watson (455K), Tobias Reinkemeier (225K) and Jan Bendik (212K).
Although the pace of eliminations has been quick to this point, expect a serious slowdown as play continues through this evening in Prague. It will not be until late this evening (early morning in the Czech Republic) that we learn who will play for the latest WPT championship on Monday.
