Friday was a really busy day at the WSOP, as four different events were still running, including two playing down to a bracelet. There was a lot more action than usual because two of the events added on an extra 4th day, as there wasn't time to play down to a winner on the 3rd day.
The $10k 6-max No limit championship started the day heads up, between Gregory “Gregy20723” Merson and Keith Lehr. Amazingly, the day only lasted one hand! Greg came into the heads up yesterday with over double Keith's chips, and they all went in pre-flop. Greg shoved over Keith's 3bet with K9s, and Keith called with his AQo. It was not an easy win however, as the board ran out: 10,9,10...Q...J, and it was Greg walking away with the amazing first prize of $1,136,197 and the gold bracelet. Keith got over $700k for his second place, which should help ease the pain.
The other event that played down to a winner yesterday was Event 58: $3,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Low Split 8-or-Better. Friday started off 3-handed, and saw Chris Bell finish in third, before a very long heads up battle between Viacheslav Zhukov and Roch Cousineau. Eventually it was the Russian, Viacheslav Zhukov who ended up winning the gold bracelet and $330,277 for his first place. Cousineau received $204k for his troubles. This is actually a really impressive feat for the Russian, as this is his second bracelet, his first came last year in the 10k FL O8. So he now has bracelets in both the fixed limit and pot limit variants of the game.
Another event that was running yesterday was Day 2 of the $1k NL. The field size of this event was a huge 4620, but only 51 players bagged up chips at the end of day 2. Alex Cordero will come into day 3 - today - as the chip leader, with Jake Cody still in contention for the bracelet. For a buy-in of $1000, first prize will be a huge $654,797.
Also yesterday, the last open event before the main event reached its final 10 players. The $10k 2-7 No limit single-draw championship started with a stacked field of 101 players, and the 10 remaining players show that. There are two former champions of this event still left, Nick Schulman and John Juanda, who begin Day 3 second and third in chips respectively. Coming in to Day 3 as chip leader is Ashton "theASHMAN103" Griffin.
And finally, the finale of the World Series of Poker, the $10,000 Main Event, starts today. It will be interesting to see how the number of entrants compares to last year, as that normally seems to indicate how the poker world is doing as a whole. Early indications seem promising though, that we should still see around 6000 players or more,
Find more of the latest news and articles relating to the World Series of Poker in the 2012 WSOP-section.