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October 19th 2006
First ever WPT Festa Al Lago: 415 down, 18 to go
The latest addition to the World Poker Tour circuit, the Festa al Lago tournament, kicked off at the Bellagio this Monday with a bang. 433 of the world’s most talented poker players crammed themselves into the Bellagio’s famous poker room (as well as the nearby Fontana Bar); all attracted by the double stack format and the $1 million + first prize.
Day One saw more eliminations than is customary for an event where each player starts with $20,000 chips, and John Juanda, “Miami” John Cernuto and 2006 WSOP champ Jamie Gold all hit the rail early, Gold unable to repeat his self proclaimed “greatest display in the history of poker” from the WSOP. By the end of the day they had been joined on the rail by Daniel Negreanu, Jordan Morgan, Doyle Brunson, David Williams, Gavin Smith and T.J. Cloutier.
Despite these high profile eliminations the starting field on Day Two was still overflowing with household names. But it was the unknown Brandi Hawbaker who ended Day Two at the top of the leaderboard, winning a huge early pot from Tony Lacastro when she flopped a full house against his trip kings and adding to it for the remainder of the day. Not so successful were Jeff Madsen, Barry Greenstein, Phil Ivey, Scotty Nguyen, Mike Matusow, Erick Lindgren and Phil Hellmuth, whose WPT curse continued.
64 players began Day Three with the top five spots (with the exception of Brandi Hawbaker) taken up by big name pros: 2006 WSOP bracelet winner Brandon Cantu was in second, James Van Alstyne occupied third spot, WPT winner Victor Ramdin was in fourth, and Alex Jacob, winner of the recent US Poker Championship held fifth.
Given his position at the start of the day it was a huge surprise when Alex Jacob became one of the early casualties. He went out with QQ against Joe Tehan’s AA, but Jacob had already lost most of his stack by then, perhaps guilty of overplaying his big stack early on. Jacob was not the only big stack who succumbed on Day Three however, with four of the five aforementioned players failing to make the cut.
Hawbaker saw her stack decimated after calling Chris Loveland’s all-in with AK on a board showing K-Q-T-3. Loveland had AJ and delivered a blow from which Hawbaker never recovered. Similarly Victor Ramdin doubled up James Van Alstyne, and then fell to a bad beat when Joe Pelton hit trip nines with T-9 to beat Ramdin’s AT after Ramdin had pushed all-in preflop.
Pelton then delivered the bad beat of the tournament against Nick Shulman. In his online journal Pelton describes it with the line: “Nick Shulman is my pappy and should have all my chips,” and here’s why. After Pelton made a play by raising to $26k preflop with Jh-8h Shulman re-raised to $85k with J-J. Pelton then pushed all-in and was horrified to see Schulman’s hand after “The Takeover” quickly called. Shulman was an 84 percent favourite to win but the flop came down all hearts and Pelton’s flush held up to give him the chip lead; Shulman, crippled, exited shortly afterwards.
Pelton, winner of the most recent WPT tournament, the Legends of Poker at the Bike, continued his good form by ending the day as chip leader, a fraction ahead of Chris Loveland but a good $400k ahead of third and fourth placed Loi Phan and Brandon Cantu.
There are plenty of other big names left in the 18 strong field, with Player of the Year leader Michael Mizrachi in 8th, “Captain” Tom Franklin in 10th, Joe Tehan in 13th and Juan Carlos Mortensen in 16th.
Play begins tomorrow at 12pm PDT.
Below are the top ten chip counts and the payout structure:
1 Joe Pelton - $1,288,000
2 Chris Loveland - $1,122,000
3 Loi Phan - $799,000
4 Brandon Cantu - $770,000
5 Can Kim Hua - $695,000
6 Steve Wong - $621,000
7 Stan Wasserkrug - $525,000
8 Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi - $378,000
9 David Baker - $367,000
10 “Captain” Tom Franklin - $336,000
Payout Structure:
1st $1,090,025
2nd $542,700
3rd $292,220
4th $187,745
5th $125,240
6th $83,490
7th $75,145
8th $66,795
9th $58,445
10th $50,095
11th to 15th $41,745
16th to 20th $33,395
21st to 30th $25,050
31st to 40th $20,875
41st to 50th $16,700
51st to 100th $12,525
Submitted: 19/10/2006 11:35:11
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