Day five at the 38th
World Series of Poker saw Italian Marco Traniello crash and burn at the first hurdle of the final table of the $1,500 pot limit hold'em. Marco, a former hairdresser who is married to Jennifer Harman, started the day with a more-than-average stack of $277,000 in chips.
However, towards the end of the third orbit of the table, he found himself with A
K
in the cutoff and, after a reraise from Jon Friedberg in the big blind, he moved all-in. His suited big slick did not hit the flop or further improve and Friedberg's jacks eliminated him.
Traniello's $14,925 payday was his 13th cash in the
WSOP since 2005, an impressive record that will surely extend over the course of this year's
Series. The event was won by Mike Spegal, who beat Gavin Smith heads up earning just over $252,000 in the process.
At the $2,500 Omaha/seven-card stud eight-or-better (event five) final table, David Benyamine picked up $29,708 for his sixth-place finish. The bracelet and first prize of $214,317 were won eventually won by Tom Schneider.
Rumours of a $1 million wager between Eli Elezra and Benyamine about the latter's ability to win a bracelet at this year's
WSOP remain unsubstantiated but the Amazon Room at the Rio was revelling in the speculation.
If it is true, Benyamine's "so near, yet so far" tale from this event will have set both men sweating!
Event six, the $1,500 limit hold'em, had, unsurprisingly, no European interest in the latter stages. Why the Americans are interested in limit is still one of life's great mysteries to Europe. (Skill be damned!)
Significantly less a mystery is the European assault on event seven, the $5,000 pot-limit Omaha with rebuys, a gambling man's game and the Euro contingent were revelling in it.
The day started with 51 players and over 10 percent of those were from the "old country."
Andrew Black ($207,500 in chips), Ben Grundy ($171,000), Rob Hollink ($119,500), Robin Keston ($117,500), Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott ($72,000), and Ram Vaswani ($8,600) were all in contention and Black took an early chip lead, jumping to over $360,000 in chips by busting Kirk Morrison.
Shortly afterwards, Rob Hollink was eliminated in 35th place and Ram Vaswani in 33rd.
Black continued to forge ahead, growing his stack to $420,000.
The Devilfish tangled with fellow countryman Keston and lost a big pot, severely damaging his stack. Almost immediately he pushed all in preflop, hit a full house on the turn, and returned to the upper reaches of the leaderboard.
Ben Grundy, "the Milky Bar Kid," hit the rail in 20th place, bubbling the bubble, and just after the bubble had burst ,Devilfish stole a march on the field hitting a full house against Black and jumping to $800,000 in chips.
Later, Devilfish busted Jeff Lissandro in 13th place and ,as play tightened up as the final table bubble approached, disaster struck for Black as he was eliminated by Humberto Brenes in 11th place for a cash of $43,365.
At the end of play, with the field whittled down to a final table of nine, Devilfish was second chip leader at around $1.1 million, and Keston was the short stack on $235,000.
Event eight, the $1,000 no-limit hold'em rebuy, saw Euro hopefuls Max Pescatori, Roland De Wolfe, Benyamine, and US-based Irishman Paul McCaffery compete.
With 844 players and 1,814 rebuys, the prize pool swelled to over $2.5 million but only McCaffery made the money, finishing the day on $60,000 in chips as in-form Canadian Sorrel Mizzi went to bed chip leader with around $240,000 in chips.
Pescatori, De Wolfe, and Benyamine soon joined Thor Hansen, and Thomas Wahlroos among the 700-odd field in event nine, $1,500 Omaha eight-or-better.
Pescatori busted minutes before the end of play and Hansen, Wahlroos, and De Wolfe made it through to day two, with 180 players resuming on Wednesday, 6 June
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