WSOP Day 37 recap: Poker tournaments come to a close as Main Event approaches

This will be another update that is a little bit all over the place since I’m writing this as tournaments are in progress on Sunday; most notably the Tournament of Champions which has seen Daniel Negreanu shoot out to 1^st place with 10 players left in contention. We also saw a huge win from Dan Kelly in the $25k NLHE tournament yesterday, all but assuring the young poker phenom a spot on the coveted Brunson 10.

Event #54: $1,000 No Limit Holdem

The final $1k NLHE event is now down to 47 players and the only name that is recognizable to me on the entire leader-board is Alex Jacob -although there may be a few top Internet poker players lurking in the field anonymously using their real names!

Event #55: $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha World Championship

The PLO tournament is down to the final table, and there were some fireworks going on last night -quite fitting on 4^th of July weekend. First there was the Dwan factor, with 25 players remaining durrrr was in the chip lead, but he didn’t last very long coming back after the break; flaming out in 17^th place.

Then there was the Hellmuth angle, but The Poker Brat soon followed durrrr to the rail, finishing in 15^th place. The next big name to hit the rail was Jason Mercier who just missed the final table finishing in 10^th place.

The remaining players will still face a very tough lineup at the final table with notable names like Daniel Alaei and Alexander Kravchenko still in the mix.

Event #56: $2,500 No Limit Holdem

The final open event before the WSOP Main Event was the $2,500 NLHE tourney, and poker player turned out in full force for the event! A total of 1,942 players registered for the poker tournament making this one of the biggest prize-pools of the entire WSOP. There are currently 75 players remaining including Poker Pros Mike Wattel, Dan Shak, Craig Marquis and David Baker.

Ante Up For Africa

This year’s Ante Up For Africa event saw a total of 81 players enter the $5k tournament including celebrities like Evander Holyfield, Matt Damon, Shannon Elizabeth, Jerome Bettis, Don Cheadle, and Montel Williams. In the end it was a showdown between Poker Pros and celebrities as Phil Gordon and Shannon Elizabeth went heads-up for the title… and the Poker Pros won, but more importantly the Darfur charity won, considering a number of people who cashed in the tournament donated a portion or all of their winnings to the charity, including winner Phil Gordon who donated 100% of his winnings, $129k.

Tournament of Champions

The Tournament of Champions is back underway and the 17 players that started the day at the early hour of 10am is already down to 10 -blame it on the early hour start I guess. The new chip-leader is Daniel Negreanu who is fresh off a deep-run in the $25k NLHE tournament, and seems to be getting hot at the right time, with the Main Event just a couple days away.

Results courtesy of WSOP.com