Yorky Pud

Event #8 of the World Series of Poker was the $1,000 No Limit Hold'em event that poker players and the poker media dubbed The Donkament due to the sheer number of people taking part in it. This particular tournament attracted 4,178 hopefuls but after five gruelling days of poker it is Sean Getzwiller who gets to call himself a champion.

Of the 4,178 players who entered over the course of two official Day 1s, 624 survived to make it through to Day 2. These players returned to the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino knowing that 200 of them would go home empty handed, whilst the rest of them would take home at least $1,880 and be in with a chance of the $611,185 on offer to the eventual winner. As is always the case in poker tournaments there was an unfortunate bubble boy and in this event it was 424th place finisher Nick Gibson. He raised to 2,700 preflop and then called when David Rood three-bet enough to put him all in. Gibson held a pair of nines, which was up against the Big Slick of Rood and the nines stayed ahead when the flop came down 6x-6x-2x but a king on both the turn and river burst the bubble and sent Gibson home empty handed.

Day 2 ended with 60 players and they returned to Day 3 where they were expected to play down to a winner but the action had to be paused when three-handed due to the new time rules put in place to aid the players, floorstaff and media. The final table was reached at around midnight on Wednesday and there was a real flurry of eliminations right from the off.

Just ten minutes into the nine-handed final a player was eliminated, this dubious honour going to Odette Tremblay who was the last woman standing. She was followed to the rail by Daniel Haglund arounf half hour later when his As5c fell foul of Max Weinberg's Ah4h when the latter spiked a four on the river. Ouch. Twenty minutes later and seven became six as Hunter Frey became the hunted and was sent packing when Jon “PearlJammer” Turner's KsJd out-flopped his AsTs, then 30 minutes later Turner was responsible for busting Lawrence Riley in sixth spot when Turner's jacks held against Riley's ace-king with the money going in preflop.

The action really slowed down after Riley's demise and it took two hours for the table to lose another player and it was one of Betfair Poker's loyal customers who was eliminated. Stefan Raffey raised preflop, Sadan Turker three-bet shoved and Raffey snap-called and proudly turned over QdQs, which were in fantastic shape against the 9s9h of his young, British opponent. That was until the flop came down 9c-9d-8s to leave him drawing to running queens. No such luck for the Dane as the turn and river were the Jd and 4h respectively to send out hero home in fifth place, a finish worth $149,392. We are hoping to catch up with Raffey in the next couple of days.

Just five minutes later and Weinberg three-bet shoved over the top of another Turker raise and when the latter called it was off to the races, Weinberg's KhQc needing to catch up against the Ad8c of Turker. The final board ran out 5s-Ah-Td-4d-9d and Weinberg's hopes of winning a WSOP bracelet laid in tatters. Play continued three-handed for a short period before the tournament director paused the tournament and the players returned to their seats at around 1600 Las Vegas time and all eyes were on Turner as he had been amongst the leaders in this tournament start to finish and was by far the most experienced player at the table but his quest to win a WSOP bracelet will have to wait until his next event as he was the first player of the three to head for the cashier's cage after play resumed.

Only ten minutes after the cards were back in the air was Turner eliminated. Getzwiller folded on the button, Turker moved all-in and the relatively short-stacked Turner made the call. Turker looked shocked and unhappy that he had to turn over Qs4d, especially when Turner flipped over 8h8s. The Ad-2c-Jc flop was safe for the online tournament specialist but the Qc spelled disaster for his as it left him drawing to two outs. The dealer put the 9d on the river, which busted Turner and took the tie to the heads up stage.

Going into the one-on-one battle the pair were almost even on chips, Turker holding a narrow 6,335,000 to 6,200,000 lead of Getzwiller but after a massive five hours of play Turker had almost 10,000,000 to his opponent's 2,500,000. However, the blinds had risen to a gargantuan 100,000/200,000 and the contest had become a push-or-fold one, and the poker gods shone down on Getzwiller. First he doubled up with As6h against Turker's Kc4c then a massive hand took place that saw Turker's AdKc flop top pair on a Ks-8d-Td flop only to be crushed by Getzwiller's set of tens. This left Turker with just 750,000 but he did managed to run this up to almost 4,000,000 before committing them preflop with Ah9s and was up against the 5h5d of Getzwiller. The final board read Jd-5c-4d-8c-Kh and with that the young Brit narrowly missed out on being the third British bracelet winner of the summer so far and Getzwiller had become champion of The Donkament.

Final table payouts

1st: Sean Getzwiller: $611,185
2nd: Sadan Turker: $377,411
3rd: Jon Turner: $274,005
4th: Max Weinberg: $201,433
5th: Stefan Raffey: $149,392
6th: Lawrence Riley: $111,753
7th: Hunter Frey: $84,341
8th: Daniel Haglund: $64,186
9th: Odette Tremblay: $49,258