The Water Cooler: WSOPE Edition
by Bodog Poker | Sep 27 2010
Gus Hansen's winning a WSOP bracelet seemed a foregone conclusion; it wasn't a matter of "if" but "when," and The Great Dane finally reached that goal with victory in the £10,000 Limit Hold'em Heads-Up Championship, the fourth title event held this year at WSOP Europe in London. Hansen earned £288,409 ($451,880) for his victory. The 36-year-old player has gained what amounts of iconic status in poker despite not winning a bracelet prior to Sunday's event. It was a delayed finish to Event #4 in the World Series Of Poker Europe schedule due to the untimely interruption of the main event, in which both Hansen and his final opponent Jim Collopy were registered and wished to play. This is the first time that the WSOP has allowed a tournament to be put "on pause" in order to start another.
When asked about the play that he'd experienced on the way to his first bracelet, Hansen gave a lengthy response to reporters: "I've been around the block for a couple of years. But nowadays, there are a lot of younger people playing poker on the Internet. A lot of them are what I would call 'specialists.' They play one game only. They play multiple tables. They play it many hours and they get very good at it. Some of them, that's all they do is to play No-Limit Hold'em and some of them play nothing else but heads-up. They ram and jam and ram and jam -- and they see so many hands. So, I was a little bit surprised to do as well with such a tough field, including many Internet heads-up specialists. I certainly felt that I could hold my own. But, there are so many good players here, that I guess you could say I was happily surprised to win."
It says a lot about Hansen, the author of Every Hand Revealed that he was able to surpass a field that tough with his usual frankness about his own abilities as well as his opponents. Hansen's book was critically acclaimed and read throughout the poker community and the author has stated that it's made him harder to perform well at tournaments as it essentially offers a look inside of his thought process while at the tables.
Hansen was joined by several former WSOP gold bracelet winners who managed to cash in on this event, including Ram Vaswani, Daniel Negreanu, Huck Seed, Howard Lederer and Phil Ivey. This cash means that Negreanu now has 48 career in-the-money finishes at the World Series of Poker, ranking him #11 on the all-time list.
When Monday's play kicked off at the WSOPE Main Event, Sweden's Viktor Blom (who has reportedly been identified as the high-stakes cash game player known as “Isildur1”) was in the chip lead, but that was a short-lived reign at the top as both Blom and Phil Ivey found themselves hitting the sidelines. Blom was knocked out in 16th place, earning a respectable £33,285. Of course, in the type of games that Blom is reportedly playing online, that amounts to a few big blinds. Ivey busted out in 19th place, getting £26,400 and a chance to relax a bit before his next major event gets underway.
