2009 WSOP, Events 13,14: Dickinger, Cairns Take Early Leads
$2,500 No-Limit Hold’em Event #13, Day 1 – Dickinger Shoots to the Top
Day 1 of the $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em Event #13 kicked off WSOP action on Friday, as a smaller-than-expected field of 1,088 entries ambled into the various tournament rooms at the Rio in Las Vegas. Plenty of poker professionals were in attendance when the “Shuffle up and deal!” command was given to start the action, as Justin Bonomo, Joe Sebok, J.J. Liu, John Juanda, Carlos Mortensen, and Humberto Brenes were all spotted on the tournament floor. When action ended for the day after ten levels of play, Austrian Jochen Dickinger emerged as the Day 1 leader, with 176,400 in chips.
Players began the day with 7,500 in chips, but as usual in no-limit hold'em events, the eliminations started coming quickly, as J.C. Tran and Yevgeniy Timoshenko were both spotted leaving the tournament area in the second level. Following them out the door in the early period were Jerry Yang, Amnon Filippi, and Jordan Morgan.
As players have two hours to register for any given event so long as there is space available, many wait until the last minute to register. One person who had a good excuse for being a little late was Phil Ivey, who made his way to a table shortly after attending the bracelet ceremony for the WSOP bracelet he earned the day before in the $2,500 No-Limit Deuce-to-Seven Draw event. Ivey finished the day in the top half of the field with 75,600 in chips.
When the players entered the dinner break at the end of Level 6, Alan Goehring was the leader of the 422 remaining players with 67,000 in chips. Unfortunately for him, post-dinner play would see Goehring slip down the leaderboard to finish the night with 22,600. As the evening wore on, 2005 WSOP Main Event runner-up Steve Dannenmann was moving in the right direction as his A♦K♣ dominated his opponent's A♥Q♠, catching another king on the turn to move up to 58,000. Unfortunately for Dannenmann, he couldn’t hang onto those chips and found himself on the rail by the end of the evening.
Others were feeling the strain of the pressure. In one hand, three players faced off on the 6-6-5-10-3 board with about 30,000 in the pot. The big blind led out for a bet of 12,000, with Nikolay Evdakov making the call. The player in the cutoff then went into the tank, apparently pained at the decision he was trying to make. After a wait of nearly five minutes, another player at the table called for a clock. With time running out, the cutoff player folded pocket jacks face-up on the table. The big blind turned over pocket eights, while Evdakov turned over A-10 for the winning pair of tens. The player who had folded jacks stormed out of the room in disgust, as the rest of the table took delight at his misfortune. Evdakov would finish the day in the top ten with 112,400 in chips.
When play resumes at 2pm on Saturday, 175 players will be returning, but only 117 of them will make it into the money, with the champion taking home $506,786. Notable players returning for Day 2 include Carter King (88,100), Todd Terry (79,600), Lee Childs (70,800), Kirill Gerasimov (60,800), and Scott Clements (45,100).
$2,500 Six-Handed Limit Hold’em Event #14, Day 1 – Cairns Grabs Early Lead
Another tournament that took place Friday afternoon was making its WSOP debut: Event #14, $2,500 Six-Handed Limit Hold'em, which drew a field of 367 entrants. When play ended in the early morning hours after Level 8, Jordan Cairns (pictured) would be the Day 1 leader with 76,600. Helping to fill out the field were poker pros such as Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi, Ylon Schwartz, Chau Giang, Jean-Robert Bellande, Chip Jett, and Marco Traniello.
Since this was the first limit hold'em event of the WSOP, the eliminations were going to take a while. In fact, as one of the PokerNews reporters was looking through the field, a player announced, “Hey PokerNews guy, I'm about even!” in reference to his stack. One unfortunate player who did get eliminated in the early action would be rap star Nelly, who made his exit during the second level.
When the players returned after their one-hour break after Level 4, there were still 288 runners in the field, with another four levels of play left in the day. While only 36 players would make the money in this event, an enterprising player at one table found a way to pick up some quick cash. Ronnie “RoNasty” Bardah had been riding the chip roller-coaster all day, at one point plummeting down to just 2,000 chips from his starting stack of 7,500. However, a big pot with pocket rockets would bring Bardah to over 14,000 in chips, and give him an extra windfall of a few hundred dollars. The table had agreed that if someone picked up pocket aces and actually won with them, that player would collect $100 from each person at the table. Unfortunately for Bardah, that bonus money was all he'd collect from this event, as he was later eliminated.
The end of Level 8 brought out the chip bags for the 98 surviving players to deposit their chips and note their totals, and when all the figures were calculated it was Canadian Jordan Cairns who would see his name on top of the leaderboard with 76,600. Lex “RaSZi” Veldhuis was not far behind in fourth at 65,200, with other notables such as Matt Glantz (49,000), Jarred Solomon (39,300), Barry Greenstein (36,500), Maya Gellar (36,800), Daniel Alaei (26,400), and Evelyn Ng (26,100) returning Saturday at 2pm to play down to the final table. Follow all the action at PokerNews to see how it all turns out, as well as the other events during the World Series of Poker!
