Neil Channing Comes Close

The UK came close to its second WSOP bracelet in the early hours of this morning when Neil Channing finished as the runner-up to Joshua Tieman in event #6, $5,000 No Limit Hold’em Shootout. Channing collected $273,153 for the finish but missed out on what would have been his first WSOP bracelet, a prize that he has been chasing for years. Event champion Tieman collected $441,692.

Channing remained upbeat after the tournament had ended, stating on his Facebook page, ‘second is not so bad really. I was basically card dead and just sat there. Every now and then I shook someone’s hand and told them they played great, until I played heads-up with 2/3rds of my starting stack. $273k isn’t a bad three days work.’

Channing was facing a six-to-one chip deficit when heads-up play began and couldn’t turn it around, eventually going all-in with As-7h and getting called by Tieman’s dominating Ah-Jc which held up for the win.

Also making the final table was fellow Brit Stuart Rutter who finished 3rd for $179,617. This comes only a fortnight after Rutter won the Coventry GUKPT for £41,910, a player clearly in form.

The Shooutout structure was a series of deep-stacked sit-and-gos with the winner from each table advancing into the next round. PokerStars Pro Barry Greenstein claimed it would be one of the three toughest No Limit Hold’em events of the WSOP – alongside the $25k Six-max and $10k Heads-Up Championship events – and a host of big names made the cash including Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson, Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan and James Akenhead.