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April 27th 2006
Nick Shulman wins WPT Battle of the Champions IV
With the conclusion of the WPT Championship on Monday night Season IV of the WPT was almost at an end. There was however one more thing to left to decide – who was the champion of champions?
With all but one of the seasons 16 WPT winners showing up to compete (Steve-Paul Ambrose, winner of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, was absent) the first part of the WPT Battle of the Champions took place on the 17th April, whittling down the field from 15 to 5 (leaving one spot on the final TV table for whoever won the WPT Championship.)
Freddy Deeb, winner of the UltimateBet Aruba Classic, was able to squeeze into the last final table spot when his pocket queens held up against Al Ardebili’s flopped pair of jacks.
16 had become 6, with the final table line-up as follows:
Seat 1: Mike Simon (World Poker Challenge in Reno)
Seat 2: Nick Schulman (World Poker Finals at Foxwoods)
Seat 3: Freddy Deeb (UltimateBet.com Aruba Poker Classic)
Seat 4: Scotty Nguyen (Gold Strike World Poker Open in Tunica)
Seat 5: Michael Mizrachi (Borgata Winter Poker Open)
Seat 6: Joe Bartholdi (WPT World Championship)
With only pride and $25,000 at stake it was always unlikely that this would be an especially tense affair, but even so, the tournament began at a dizzying pace.
On just the second hand Scotty Nguyen, the only WSOP Champion at the table, found himself all-in with AK against Freddy Deeb’s pocket tens. There was no help for Nguyen and just like that, almost as soon as he had sat down, he was getting up again.
Time for a breather? Apparently not. Just five hands later we had our next casualty; Deeb, who had raised almost every hand since his double up, found himself stubborn opposition in Joe Bartholdi, who re-raised all-in with J-8os. Bartholdi thought Freddy was stealing, but this time he was wrong, and Deeb had no hesitation in calling with his pocket queens. Bartholdi was walking on hand number 7.
Believe it or not, the very next hand we lost another player; Mike Simon check-raised Nick Shulman on a flop of KQJ rainbow. Simon had top pair, but Shulman had AA and there was no stopping an all-in confrontation. The aces held, and Simon was out in the eighth hand.
Finally things slowed down a bit, and it took a relative eternity for the next casualty – a full 13 hands! This time a short-stacked Mizrachi raised pre-flop with A-7 suited and then called Schulman’s all-in raise. He would need an ace to beat Schulman’s pocket nines, but it never materialised and he left in third place.
So in a record 21 hands the final table of six had been reduced to a heads-up battle – between Deeb, a member of the old guard, and Shulman – the youngest ever winner of a WPT title.
The battle lasted a full 75 hands (more than three times the length of the tournament thus far) before Shulman applied the killer blow. He had been in control of the heads-up from the word go, winning nine of the first ten hands and not easing up at any time from then on.
Finally, when Deeb had just $110,000 in chips he called Schulman’s all-in move from the button. Deeb had 7-5 and was dominated by Schulman’s J-T. A ten on the flop was all that was required, and Nick Schulman was the Champion of Champions.
Submitted: 27/04/2006 11:49:52
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