The prestigious final table of the $10,000 world championship pot-limit Omaha event was a contrast in styles, experience, and generations.
Living-legend Doyle Brunson, chasing his 11th bracelet, sat down to compete against the youthful Danish hotshot Rene Mouritsen and Finnish big-game player Patrik Antonius, as well as Robert Mizrachi and Italian Marco Traniello.
In the end Brunson could only manage sixth - a hugely impressive feat given the stamina required for the event - and three Europeans were left among the five fighting for a place in history.
But victory was not to be. Traniello was eliminated in fifth for $156,435 and Antonius and Mouritsen got down to three-way action with Mizrachi.
Antonius was first to fade, eliminated in third for $311,394, when Mizrachi made his nut flush.
Despite doubling through several times, Moutisen was always trying to make up ground and was ultimately done when his nut-flush draw could not best Mizrachi's set of nines on the flop and he hit the rail as the runner-up with $464,877. Mizrachi took down $768,889.
The other final table of the day, the $1,000 S.H.O.E. event garnered significantly less interest but this did not detract from the focus of the two Europeans at the table, Imre Liebold from Estonia and Vladimir Shchemelev from Russia.
Hopes of another Euro bracelet were dashed when Shchemelev busted in sixth for $20,793 and Leibold in fifth for $26,572.
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Again Euro interest in the latter stages of the $1,000 no-limit hold'em rebuy tournament was sparse, but Hendon Mobster Barny Boatman made $16,133 for 36th place.
The $1,500 limit hold'em shootout was a different proposition as the Ladbrokes Poker Tour arrived in town. The English firm was using the event as a warmup for its myriad online qualifiers and there was a sponsored black or red shirt at virtually every table - sometimes two.
Others among the colourful array were Andreas Krause, John Magill, Pascal Perrault, Andy Black, Marty Smyth, Noah Boeken, Rob Taylor, John Magill, Alan Smurfit, Alexander Kravchenko, Ram Vaswani, Ian Woodley, and Juha Helppi.
With the $10,000 world championship no-limit hold'em on the horizon and the July 4 national holiday in full swing, activity in the Amazon Room is significantly reduced - only the final tables of the $1,000 no-limit hold'em rebuy and $1,500 limit hold'em tournaments continue to play out. The $5,000 world championship no-limit 2-7 draw lowball event starts.
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