Congratulations to Tomer Berda, Event #56 Champion ($825,976)
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Tomer Berda played very solid throughout the day, but the road became very rocky once play was three-handed. Berda was one the shorter stacks at the time and after coming back from a break even he admitted his struggles.
"I am playing really bad," he told one of our reporters. "You can write that."
It all turned around from there. Berda eliminated our third place finisher Bryan Porter, and was headstrong entering heads up play with Vladimir Kochelaevskiy. The two passed the chip lead back and forth until Berda was fortunate enough to bink a giant double up right before our last break.
A few hands later, Berda finally eliminated Kochelaevskiy and his father greeted him with a giant bear hug.
Nothing can be taken from Kochelaevskiy however, the Russian proved today that he is a deadly No-Limit Hold'em player. His patience and timely aggression helped him amass a giant chip lead, but it just wasn't in the cards for him in the end.
This event, like many at the WSOP, attracted some of the best players in the world. Chris Moneymaker, Daniel Negreanu and Ivan Demidov are just a few of the 1,941 players who flooded the Pavilion Room three days ago with dreams of WSOP gold. The event took longer than expected, and a fourth day was added to the schedule for the final table.
Earlier today, nine players returned to fight for the bracelet. Alfonso Amendola was the first to go, and after falling very short Joseph Curcio followed him out the door. Ali Alawadhi missed a flush draw eliminating him in 7th place, Hungcheng Hung fell in 6th and although he began the day as our shortstack, Mike Wattel battled all the way to 5th place.
Salvatore Bonavena was eliminated on the very same hand as Wattel. Despite entering the day as a massive chip leader, Bonavena hit a rough patch and stalled in fourth place. Porter was the next to go and of course Berda bested Kochelaevskiy in their heads up match.
Congratulations to Tomer Berda for winning the 56th and final preliminary bracelet of the 2010 World Series of Poker!