2009 World Series of Poker Day 32 – Horses and other animals

Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail

Amazon Room prepares for $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. with more space, less tables

The turnout for yesterday’s $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. World Championship was well below the numbers previously seen in the event. Only 95 players dropped the big bucks to play with the best after averaging over 140 in other years (your humble blogger had a friendly wager, taking the over on 132. Cooler). There have been many discussions over the last 24 hours with all manner of excuses. The economy, the earlier $40k NLHE, no television coverage, broke poker players, etc. You name and I’ve heard it.

It certainly was an interesting day from a Full Tilt perspective, 30 of the 95 pros were sporting FTP patches. Unfortunately Steve Zolotow was the first player to hit the rail. Only four players would be shown the door on the first day of play, mostly as a result of the slow structure and triple stacks. David Benyamine, Andy Black and Chris Ferguson are right up there with the chip leaders as we begin day 2 of 5.

As mentioned yesterday, this event drew a huge crowd of fans and railbirds. They patiently waited out a delayed start to the tournament, lined the hallways between the Amazon and VIP rooms gathering autographs, few left during the breaks to save their “spot”. They were only admonished a few times about the prohibited flash photography and I didn’t see a single attempted autograph during play. The pictures below will give you an idea of what we saw.

Full Tilt has yet another chance to add a bracelet to the collection as Lee Watkinson made the Pot Limit Omaha/8 final table. He’s sitting third in chips but Brando Cantu has a monster stack going in. It will be a tough hill to climb but it’s not impossible.

It’s Saturday, so that means we have another $1,500 donkament filling the hallways and poker rooms. Today’s event sold out well before kickoff and many pros who like to buyin late were shutout. Others are wishing they were shutout when they make the walk of shame too early.

Less than a week til the Main Event kicks off, are you ready to sling some chips?

Restart chip counts after the jump:

Fans and railbirds were out in force for the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. Championship

Event #48 Pot Limit Omaha/8
Buyin: $1,500
Number of Entries: 762
Net Prize Pool:$1,040,130
First Place Prize: $228,867
Total Spots Paid Out: 72
Players Remaining: 9

1	Brandon Cantu	1,025,000
2	Mathieu Jacqmin	552,000
3	Lee Watkinson	412,000
4	Aaron Sias	353,000
5	Tommy Vedes	334,000
6	Steve Jelinek	260,000
7	Ted Weinstock	250,000
8	William McMahan	168,000
9	Ronnie Hofman	76,000

Event #49 H.O.R.S.E. World Championship
Buyin: $50,000
Number of Entries: 95
Net Prize Pool: $4,560,000
First Place Prize: $1,276,806
Total Spots Paid Out: 16
Players Remaining: 91

Top 50 chip stacks:

1	Habib, Hasan	387,000
2	Vallo, Martin	347,200
3	Glantz, Matt	300,000
4	Bueno, Patrick	289,500
5	Benyamine, David	282,200
6	Black, Andrew	264,700
7	Ferguson, Chris	259,600
8	Saltzburg, Michael	252,400
9	Smith, Justin	246,100
10	Bonyadi, Farzad	241,000
11	Kravchenko, Alex	238,400
12	Chan, Johnny	237,700
13	Bach, David	233,800
14	Brunson, Todd	229,900
15	Seidel, Erik	224,300
16	Billirakis, Steve	223,000
17	Monnette, John	218,100
18	Perry, Ralph	217,000
19	Kessler, Allen	213,100
20	Duke, Annie	210,200
21	Kassela, Frank	209,500
22	Chen, Bill	208,900
23	Negreanu, Daniel	204,100
24	Brunson, Doyle	202,800
25	Wahlbeck, Ville	198,100
26	Sointula, Jani	197,200
27	Lisandro, Jeff	188,600
28	Kirill, Rabtsov	187,900
29	Seed, Huckleberry	187,700
30	Fellows, Zac	187,000
31	Cremen, Frank	186,100
32	Antonius, Patrik	185,600
33	Hansen, Thor	179,300
34	Grey, David	177,200
35	Turner, Jon	170,600
36	Bloch, Andy	169,300
37	Mosseri, Abraham	168,900
38	Brown, Shad	165,000
39	Hansen, Gus	164,600
40	Bronshtein, Yuval	163,800
41	Evdakov, Nikolay	161,400
42	Hennigan, John	158,600
43	Hawrilenko, Matt	155,200
44	Nguyen, Scott	152,900
45	Chen, Yan	152,700
46	Kabbaj, John	152,100
47	Greenstein, Barry	151,500
48	Fitoussi, Bruno	149,700
49	Ivey, Phil	148,800
50	Tulchinskiy, Mikhail	146,800