WSOP 2008 Event #51, $1,500 H.O.R.S.E., Final Results and ReportNumber of Entries: 803 Final Results
Tournament NotesThe $1,500 buy-in H.O.R.S.E. championship (Event #51) attracted 803 entries, creating a prize pool totaling $1,096,095. The top 80 finishers collected prize money. This is believed to be the largest major live H.O.R.S.E. tournament in history. H.O.R.S.E. is an acronym for the five most popular poker games played inside most poker rooms. H.O.R.S.E. tournaments include a rotation of the following games -- Texas Hold’em, Omaha High-Low Split, Razz, Seven-Card Stud, and Seven-Card Stud High-Low Split (also called Eight-or-Better). Many purists consider H.O.R.S.E. to be the ultimate test of poker skill, since it requires that players play all games well in order to win. The tournament was played over three consecutive days. The final table was played on the secondary stage. The main stage was used by ESPN for its broadcast of the Pot-Limit Omaha World Championship (Event #50) which took place at the same time. Due to the potential historic consequences of the finale, the crowd of spectators for this event was much larger than average. The rotation of games in this tournament goes for eight hands at a time. The format tends to favor stud specialists, since 3/5ths of the games are stud-based (Seven-Card Stud, Seven-Card Stud High-Low Split, and Razz). This is the third of three H.O.R.S.E. tournaments on the 2008 WSOP schedule. The $50,000 buy-in World Championship event (won by Scotty Nguyen) concluded two days earlier. Last year’s champion was Jens Voertmann. He entered this event but did not cash. So far, 50 of 51 defending champions at this year’s WSOP have failed to cash in their respective events. Blair Rodman was the lone exception. The $1,500 buy-in H.O.R.S.E. champion is James Schaaf, from Torrance, CA. He is a 36-year-old software engineer. Schaaf works for Alpine Electronics, which specializes in design and the manufacturing of automobile navigation systems. Prior to his victory, Schaff had never cashed in a WSOP event. He won $256,412 for first place. Schaaf accomplished one of poker’s most amazing all-time tournament comebacks. On Day One, after starting out with 3,000 in his stack – at one point he was down to just 200 in chips. He was all-in a few times during the critical orbit, but maintained his stack at less than 500 for several hands. Finally, Shaaf was all-in with Jack-Ten-Eight in the Razz round (normally a terrible hand in the lowball game) and somehow managed to triple up. He then went on a rush and made it to Day Two. The rest is history. Prior to this event, Schaaf played in very few tournaments. In fact, he felt a great amount of personal satisfaction after knocking out his first top pro. “When I knocked Todd Brunson out on the first day, that was a big deal for me,” he said. “I had never knocked out a pro before.” Schaaf’s hometown cardroom is the Hustler Casino in Gardena, CA. The second-place finisher was Tommy Hang, from Seattle WA. The third-place finisher was 1989 world champion Phil Hellmuth. The famous poker icon was aiming for his record 12th WSOP gold bracelet. Given the magnitude of the day, the final table area was flooded with spectators, cameras, and media interest. Hellmuth arrived at the final table second in chips and gained the chip lead at one point. That electrified the crowd. But his fortunes were eventually reversed and he played the final two hours as the shortest stack. Hellmuth finally busted out and took the defeat with uncharacteristic acceptance. “I know I played well,” Hellmuth said afterward. “All you can do is try to get it in with the best of it, and that’s what I did most of the time.” An Interesting Bit of Trivia: Hellmuth’s first WSOP cash was in Event #6 at the 1988 WSOP. Twenty years later he faced Esther Rossi at the final table, who’s first-ever WSOP cash came just one day after Hellmuth’s – in Event #7 at the 1988 WSOP. Hellmuth wore one of the 11 WSOP gold bracelets on his left wrist. It was from his first triumph, which occurred at the 1989 world championship. Hellmuth has reportedly given most of his other gold bracelets away to family members. Esther Rossi took fourth place. This was her tenth career WSOP cash and first since 2005 when she cashed in the Main Event that year. Victor Ramdin finished in seventh place. Ramdin gives a sizable percentage of his tournament winnings to charity. He pledged 50 percent of the top prize (if he won this event) to medical services in his native country of Guyana (South America). Day Two lasted 14 hours. In fact, 21 players returned for Day Three (instead of eight). It took another 12 hours to play down to the winner. Other former WSOP gold bracelet winners who cashed in this tournament included Joe Hachem (24th), Allen Cunningham (31st), John Juanda (35th), Mike Matusow (57th), Hasan Kamoei (58th), Tommy Hufnagle (61st), and Mickey Appleman (77th). Nikolay Evdakov not only broke a WSOP record. He shattered it. A few days ago, the Russian poker player tied, and then later broke the record for “Most WSOP Cashes in a Single Year.” The previous record was eight cashes. With his 28th-place finish in this tournament, Evdakov has now cashed ten times. Incredibly, he still has five more events remaining on the schedule to add to his tally (including the four events which will be played at WSOP-Europe). Phil Hellmuth was the chip leader at the End of Day One in this event. He finished in third place. Through Event #51, the End of Day One chip leaders have gone on to cash 78 percent of the time -- 38 of 49 occasions (the chip leader was not applicable on two events). Only thirteen of these same 49 chip leaders (27 percent) made it to the final table. Only one chip leader went on to win the event. That lone wire-to-wire winner was Vanessa Selbst in Event #19. Sam Silverman was the chip leader at the start of this final table. He ended up as sixth-place finisher. Through Event #51, eighteen of 49 chip leaders at the start of the final table (36 percent) went on to win the event. Twenty-nine of 49 chip leaders (59 percent) went on to finish in the top three spots. Two events did not have a chip leader (Heads-Up and Shootout tournaments). Winner James Schaaf is officially listed as being from Torrance, CA. Through the conclusion of Event #51, the gold bracelet count by nations and states reads as follows: Eleven different nations have produced a gold bracelet winner at this year’s WSOP. This list now includes Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Russia, and the United States. The Event #51 winner James Schaaf is to be classified as an amateur player. He holds a full-time job and plays poker recreationally. Accordingly, the “Pro-Am” gold bracelet scoreboard currently reads: Erick Lindgren now leads the “Player of the Year” race (through the end of Event #50). Barry Greenstein, Jacobo Fernandez, David Benyamine, and John Phan are close behind, For a complete updated points list, see: http://www.worldseriesofpoker.com/players/2008.asp?sort=poypts Scotty Nguyen is now the leader on the 2008 prize money list, having won the most money at the WSOP, to date. His accrued winnings total $2,039,628. Through the conclusion of Event #51, the total amount of prize money awarded at this year’s WSOP totals $111,115,333. This is more than last year’s prize pool at this same time last year. On this day, Harrahs Entertainment/WSOP and BetFair jointly announced the upcoming schedule for WSOP Europe. WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack presided over a short press conference at the Rio which provided details about the event. There will be four gold bracelet tournaments which will take place in London, England. The dates are September 19th through October 2nd, 2008. More details can be found at the official WSOP website: www.worldseriesofpoker.com |
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