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August 30th 2006
WPT Legends of Poker
The first post-WSOP WPT event kicked off last weekend with the Legends of Poker’s $9,700 buy-in event at the Bicycle Club in L.A. As usual the event pulled in a strong crowd proving that the poker world has (almost) fully recovered from the WSOP hangover.
In fact among the 466 strong field was as big a collection of household names as you are likely to see in any event this year. Members of the old guard such as Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, Barry Greenstein, Scotty Nguyen, Huck Seed, T.J. Cloutier, Chip Reese and Erik Seidel joined WPT legends Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Michael “the Grinder” Mizrachi, Gavin Smith, John Juanda, Tuan Le, and Erick Lindgren. There was also a healthy contingent of the 2006 WSOP final table on show, with 2nd and 3rd place finishers Paul Wasicka and Michael Binger joined by Allen Cunnigham and 6th place finisher Richard Lee. Together they contributed to a prize pool in excess of $4.5 million and all had their sights set on the $1.57 million first prize.
For many of those the first day was as far as they went. Brunson, Ted Forrest, Chan, Smith, Reese, Negreanu, Ivey and WSOP wunderkind Jeff Madsen all hit the rail on Day One, with varying degrees of luck. Ivey could count himself particularly unfortunate after flopping a set of eights on a T-8-3 board. His opponent had pocket tens!
But despite these eliminations a good number of pros went deep in the tournament with Huck Seed (17th), James Van Alstyne (9th) and John Juanda (8th) finishing inside the top twenty. In fact the final table is one of the strongest in recent WPT history, featuring Scotty Nguyen, Hoyt “The Alabama Cowboy” Corkins, and Kevin O’Donnell (6th in last year’s Legend of Poker) alongside the lesser known Joe Pelton, Frankie O’Dell and Randy Holland.
Out in front, and extremely fortunate to be there, is Frankie O’Dell, who administered a horrible bad beat to Scotty Nguyen just minutes before play ended. After raising to $200,000 preflop and then calling a re-raise by Nguyen to $500,000 O’Dell check-raised Nguyen all-in on a flop of Q-8-2. It proved to be a poorly judged move as Nguyen called showing A-A, thoroughly dominating O’Dell’s J-J. It seemed O’Dell’s only hope lay in catching one of the two remaining jacks but instead he found an even flukier escape, catching a ten and a nine for a runner runner straight. The shell-shocked Nguyen was left with just $490,000 having started the hand with over $2 million.
A few minutes later and the elimination of David Daneshgar spelt the end of play for the night. He pushed his short stack all-in after with T-5 on a flop of T-9-8 and was called by Kevin O’Donnell with the much stronger T-7. The five Daneshgar needed didn’t materialise and he walked away with $110,910 for 7th place.
That means tomorrow’s final table will look as follows:
Frankie O’Dell - $3,880,000
Kevin O’Donnell - $2,335,000
Joe Pelton - $1,100,000
Hoyt Corkins - $1,030,000
Randy Holland - $615,000
Scotty Nguyen - $375,000
Submitted: 30/08/2006 12:13:16
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