WSOP Day 24 recap: Rousso falls short in final 4, Juanda continues hot run

Event #34: Seniors $1,000 No Limit Holdem Championship

Who says tournament poker is a young man’s game! After three long days of play it was 78 year-old Harold Angle who captured his first WSOP bracelet in the Seniors Championship. Angle was able to outlast the most accomplished poker player at the final table during heads-up play, sending Mike Minnetti to the rail in second place.

Event #35: $10,000 Heads-Up No Limit Holdem Championship

The 8 players that came back for the final day of the tournament included some really big names; Vanessa Rousso, Faraz Jaka, Alexander Kostritsyn, Jason Somerville, Kido Pham, and Ludovic Lacay. But it was the two relatively anonymous players who ended making it to the final match, Ayaz Mahmood and Ernst Schmejkal -who I’m quite certain advanced only to make me write his name multiple times.

Schmejkal defeated Rousso in the opening match in the Elite 8, dashing her hopes of a first WSOP bracelet.

As I’m writing this, Schmejkal and Mahmood are in a marathon match  –the finals is played best of 3-with Mahmood up 1-to-0 after a horrific beat where he held K-7 to Schmejkal’s Q-J on a board of Q-7-X; a King on the turn gave Mahmood a massive chip lead and he finished Schmejkal off two hands later.

Event #36: $1,000 No limit Holdem

After two Day 1’s 455 players will return to the Rio today to take part in the official Day 2 of the $1k tournament. A very lackluster turnout of 3,106 players registered for the tournament over the two days; a number that fails to beat the 3,142 that registered for the Seniors Championship in just a single day!

Event #37: $3,000 HORSE

With three final tables under his belt John Juanda has already had a pretty successful WSOP even by his high-standards, but his torrid run seems to be far from over as he sits atop the chip counts in the $3k HORSE tournament with just 25 players remaining.

Juanda still has a lot of work to do with players like David Baker, Phil Ivey, Jeff Lisandro, Dan Heimiller, Bill Chen, David Benyamine, Chad Brown, Scott Seiver, Farzad Bonyadi and David Singer still in the mix.

Event #38: $10,000 Pot Limit Holdem World Championship

A very impressive 268 entrants registered for the Pot Limit Holdem Championship, possibly suggesting resurgence in my favorite format of poker. At the conclusion of play about half the field had been eliminated, leaving 135 players with chips to bag up for Day 2.

Out in front of the field is Tom “KingofCards” Marchese with 334k in chips -over 131,000 more than his nearest competitor. Some other players who had a good start on Day 1 were Dani “Ansky” Stern, John Duthie, Blair Rodman, Mike Matusow, Shaun Deeb, Annie Duke, Amit Makhija, Hoyt Corkins and Daniel Negreanu. There was also a “Neverwin” sighting, as Dustin Woolf finished the day in 21^st place.

Results courtesy of WSOP.com