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August 7th 2006
WSOP Championship: Day Five – speed poker leaves everyone in need of a rest
The World Series of Poker championship event has turned into a speed poker tournament, unbeknownst to those who designed it. Perhaps the rapid pace of Internet tournaments and the prevalence of such players in this year’s event have had a more profound effect than we anticipated, but we are well ahead of schedule and an impromptu day of rest is looming.
Day Four of the WSOP was supposed to see 600 players whittled down to 300. Day Five was then supposed to see 300 become 150. So much for well laid plans. Despite average chip stacks being plenty big enough in proportion to the blinds to see a traditionally sedate pace of knock outs, apparently no-one told the players.
By dinner break on Day Five we were already down to just 65 players and a well deserved meal did nothing to slow things down. In just one level after the diner break we lost a further 15 players and were almost two days ahead of schedule.
At that point WSOP commissioner Jeffrey Pollack decided to set the target at 45 for Day Five, a target which was reached with ease by 11:30 pm with the elimination of PokerStars.com qualifier Sean Johnson who received a monumental $164,932 payday.
Of the many casualties from Day Five the player who will be most sorely missed by the media and fans is Annie Duke, who started the day with an above average $900,000 chips, but had a bad run to be busted in 88th. That was worth $51,129 – more than she received for her 10th place finish in 2000.
That leaves just two household names fighting for a spot on the final table. The flamboyant Costa Rican professional Humberto Brenes is in big trouble with just $565,000 chips, fourth from bottom. Allen Cunningham is also nearer the bottom than the top of the leaderboard with $1.29 million in chips, although with the blinds at $15,000/$30,000 he has enough chips to work with. I wouldn’t bet against him making it two Day Seven.
Currently it is not clear whether Day Seven will be tomorrow or the day after. The new schedule is not yet clear although we are pretty certain that tomorrow’s play will stop once we are down to 27 players. We may then have a rest day or we may return the following day to play down to 9 before taking a rest day after that.
In the unpredictable world of tournament poker there are few things one can take for granted and betting on a player making it through to the next day is one such uncertainty. One bad beat and it can all go horribly wrong. However in the case of Jamie Gold I might just be willing to bet everything I own that he will make it to the final day. The Bodog qualifier is simply on fire having stormed from 35th place at the end of Day Three to take a commanding chip lead on Day Four. Day Five was no different for the rampant Californian, as he more than doubled his stack to over $7 million giving him a huge edge over second placed Eric Friberg. Gold has demonstrated he is an expert at using a big stack to dominate his table, and is a sure bet to further increase his lead tomorrow. We cold (I should say this under my breath) already be looking at our 2006 WSOP Champion.
For the rest of the players they can look forward to a minimum $247,000 payday when they return tomorrow, with the payouts moving up to $329,865 for 36th place and above. That should certainly help the shortstacks get a good nights sleep tonight, before we return at 12pm tomorrow for Day Six.
Until then here are the chip counts and eliminations for Day Five:
Jamie Gold $7,330,000
Erik Friberg $5,905,000
William Thorson $3,545,000
Rhett Butler $3,210,000
Kevin Aaronson $3,190,000
Ricki Nielsen $3,120,000
Siddharth Jain $3,090,000
Michael Binger $3,045,000
Jeffrey Lisandro $2,995,000
David Einhorn $2,840,000
Jim Routos $2,775,000
Richard Lee $2,350,000
Robert Betts $2,235,000
Andrew Schreibman $2,200,000
Dan Schmiech $2,155,000
Paul Wasicka $2,055,000
Lee Kort $2,005,000
John Magill $1,955,000
Eric Lynch $1,940,000
Rob Roseman $1,845,000
Mark Garner $1,810,000
Mitch Schock $1,785,000
Kevin O'Donnell $1,600,000
Prahlad Friedman $1,600,000
Paul Raeburn $1,385,000
Eric Molina $1,360,000
Douglas Kim $1,335,000
Marc Friedmann $1,315,000
Weikai Chang $1,295,000
Allen Cunningham $1,290,000
Brian Hansen $1,230,000
Mikael Thuritz $1,185,000
Rob Berryman $1,150,000
Cuong Do $1,115,000
Dustin Holmes $1,100,000
Fred Goldberg $1,080,000
Dan Nassif $1,035,000
Kyle Bowker $885,000
Sirous Jamshidi $845,000
John Lee $805,000
Richard Wyrick $800,000
Humberto Brenes $565,000
Luke Chung $560,000
Leif Force $510,000
Lowell Kim $350,000
Players Eliminated on Day Five, and their payouts.
46th place Sean Johnson $164,932
47th Raphael Doromal $164,932
48th David Murray $164,932
49th Cheng Yu $164,932
50th Richard Gryko $164,932
51st Nicolai Vivet $164,932
52nd Michael Bower $164,932
53rd Ricardo Velasco $164,932
54th Scotty O'Reilly $164,932
55th John Ma $123,699
56th Sabyl Cohen $123,699
57th Stefan Mattsson $123,699
58th Aki Ruuskanen $123,699
59th Max Reele $123,699
60th Shannon Westbrook $123,699
61st Chris Damick $123,699
62nd Ken Jacobs $123,699
63rd Bryan Micon $123,699
64th Noah Siegel $90,713
65th Reuben Peters $90,713
66th Clint Brotherton $90,713
67th Brian Nadell $90,713
68th Vipul Kothani $90,713
69th Alan Resh $90,713
70th James Flick $90,713
71st Chris Kealy $90,713
72nd Marcello Delgrosso $90,713
73rd John Kim $65,973
74th Aaron Baltzell $65,973
75th Daniel Kreitzman $65,973
76th Dmitri Nobles $65,973
77th Anthony Fagan $65,973
78th Paramjit Gill $65,973
79th Scott Malone $65,973
80th Jean Houle $65,973
81st Sebastian Zavarshy $65,973
82nd Paul Greim $51,129
83rd Matthew Morgan $51,129
84th Shram Ravindran $51,129
85th Lasse Ubostad $51,129
86th Rick Mombourquette $51,129
87th Benjamin Logan $51,129
88th Annie Duke $51,129
89th Pat Dattilo $51,129
90th Mihail Simonsen $51,129
91st Thomas Wahlroos $51,129
92nd Barry Goren $51,129
93rd Hossein-Khodaband $51,129
94th Tony Moretina $51,129
95th Matt Woodward $51,129
96th Alan Schein $51,129
97th Davis Huynh $51,129
98th Sam Khoueis $51,129
99th Paul Coles $51,129
100th Alex Balandin $51,129
101st Iago Lopez Gonzalez $51,129
102nd Carlos Lopez $51,129
103rd Dan Abouaf $51,129
104th Walt Schafer $51,129
105th Brady Shepard $51,129
106th Mark Shanta $51,129
107th Mack Lee $51,129
108th Virgil Beddingfield $51,129
109th Steven Guodemote $51,129
110th Justin Diamond $51,129
111th Tyler Teague $51,129
112th Matt Wilson $51,129
113th Mark Petersen $51,129
114th Eric Buchman $51,129
115th David Simon $51,129
116th Steiner Karlsen $51,129
117th Debra Lalor $51,129
118th Per Erik Loeff $51,129
119th Casey Kastle $51,129
120th Kevin Daly $51,129
121st Robby Robertson $51,129
122nd Derek S. Callon $51,129
123rd Chris Back $51,129
124th Tyler Pendleton $51,129
125th Glenn Karlsen $51,129
126th Brian Kornfeld $51,129
127th Arturo Moelas $47,006
128th James Petrillo $47,006
129th Robert Taylor $47,006
130th Hakan Sahl $47,006
131st Kevin Nathan $47,006
132nd David Woo $47,006
133rd Theodore Park $47,006
134th Bart Gilliom $47,006
135th Cory Butler $47,006
Submitted: 07/08/2006 23:49:21
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