WSOP Event #2 - Hansen In Final Eight

32 players started the second day of the WSOP $25,000 Heads Up World Championship in the Rio Casino in Las Vegas. Since the best 16 players are paid, all of them needed only one heads-up victory to be in the money. However, this didn't seem too easy, the pairings were quite tough:

David Benyamine vs. Anthony Guetti
Chris Moorman vs. Richard Lyndaker
Dani Stern vs. Jake Cody
Isaac Haxton vs. Jonathan Jaffe
Ashton Griffin vs. Tom Dwan
Daniel Alaei vs. Gus Hansen
Steve Billirakis vs. Trevor Pope
Matt Marafioti vs. Maxim Lykov
Eric Froehlich vs. Steve Zolotow
John Duthie vs. Carlos Mortensen
Jason Smirnov vs. Darren Elias
Erik Cajelais vs. Nikolay Evdakov
Yevgeniy Timoshenko vs. Amritraj Singh
Oliver Busquet vs. Andrew Robl
Kunimaro Kojo vs. Nick Shulman
David Paredes vs. John Juanda

All players started with 100,000 chips plus they got an additional 200,000, which they could use whenever they liked.


European Poker Tour's owner, John Duthie was the first to get ITM. Not much later, Tom Dwan followed him, as he eliminated Ashton Griffin. The longest heads-up took place between David Benyamine and Anthony Guetti. Benyamine finally lost the majority of his stack on a coin flip.

The pairings of the semifinal:

Anthony Guetti vs. Richard Lyndaker
Jake Cody vs. Jonathan Jaffe
Tom Dwan vs. Gus Hansen
Steve Billirakis vs. Matt Marafioti
Eric Froehlich vs. John Duthie
Mikhail Smirnov vs. Nikolay Endakov
Yevgeniy Timoshenko vs. Olivier Busquet
Kunimaro Kojo vs. David Paredes

The biggest show of the day proved to be the Hansen vs. Dwan match, however. Durrrr appeared to be the favourite at first, but he soon had to use his add-on chips to stay alive: he bluffed on a 8 J 6 4 J board, Hansen called after a while with his pocket nines.

The Danish pro tried to outplay Dwan being very aggressive, which indeed worked out for him; by the 8th blind level (10.000/20.000) he already had 995,000 chips plus the 200,000 add-on against Dwan's 205,000. It's Tom Dwan, so of course he managed to double up, and eventually take control over, he took down a huge pot on when he went all-in on the J 7 9 flop. Hansen called.

Durrrr: Q T
Hansen: A J

Turn: K
River: 2

Durrrr's straight hit on the turn, which left Hansen with only 60,000. He added his 200,000. All the other players were done, when Hansen and Dwan were still playing, they made it to the 11th blind level (20.000/40.000). Even though nobody thought Hansen can win this, he doubled up soon, and entered the final hand being the chipleader. Hansen raised to $220,000, to which Dwan answered with an all-in. The Dane called.

Durrrr: Q T
Hansen: K 9

Board: 9 A 4 A 6

Hansen made it to the final 8 with two pairs.


Day starts today with the following pairs:

Anthony Guetti vs. Jake Cody
Gus Hansen vs. Matt Marafioti
Eric Froehlich vs. Nikolay Endakov
Yevgeniy Timoshenko vs. David Paredes

Prizes:

1. $851.192
2. $525.980
3-4. $283.966
5-8. $138.852
9-16. $67.436