WSOP Weekend Round-up

$ 10,000 World Championship Seven-Card Stud

In a real heartwarming story from the Amazon Room, 74-year old Freddie Ellis has won the Seven-card Stud World Championship in his first ever WSOP event. While Ellis is a regular in high limit Stud games in Atlantic City, he made his fortune in the New York real estate market.

The win was especially emotional for Ellis as his wife of many years died two years ago. Prior to that, she had travelled across the USA with him whenever he entered a poker tournament. A visibly moved Ellis had to fight back the tears as he spoke of her during the media Q&A after the event, ‘her name was Barbara Ellis. You can see that if I talk about her, I still haven’t got over it’.

Ellis beat out a tough final table including two-time WSOP bracelet winner Max Pescatori and Jeff Lisandro on his way to becoming the Seven-card Stud World Champion. Daniel Negreanu was unlucky not to make a final table as he finished in 10th.

1. Freddie Ellis, USA, $ 373,751 

2. Eric Drache, USA, $ 231,013
3. Ville Wahlbeck, Finland, $ 152,914

4. Max Pescatori, Italy, $ 107,958

5. Hasan Habib, USA, $ 80,968

6. Ivan Schertzer, USA, $ 64,297

7. Greg Mueller, Canada, $ 53,885

8. Thien ‘Tim’ Phan, USA, $ 47,532

9. Jeff Lisandro, Italy, $ 36,266

UK Players Come Close

As the final few tables of Event #10, $ 2,500 Pot-limit Hold’em/Pot-limit Omaha, were coming to a close it looked like this event may finally be a breakthrough one for the UK at the 2009 WSOP. High stakes PLO specialist Ben Grundy, John Kabbaj, Paul Parker and British legend Surinder Sunar were all alive and chipped up.

However, as the event came to a close the day after there was a definite sense of disappointment amongst the British contingent. Sunar fell away to finish 14th but the other three all made the final table. Kabbaj was the short stack and succumbed in 8th for $ 28,006 while Paul Parker made it to 6th place for a $ 39k payout.

All hopes then rested on Grundy, who was looking for his first WSOP bracelet. After a series of unfortunate walks whenever he held big hands, the Milky Bar Kid simply couldn’t get things going and faded away to finish in a heartbreaking 3rd place. With his immense PLO talent especially, Grundy will be back but this must go down as a missed opportunity for the UK to notch a bracelet onto the scoreboard.

American Rami Boukai finally outlasted the 453-strong field to win $ 244,862 and his first bracelet.