WSOP Event #56: The Internet's Favorite

Event #56 is probably the event with the youngest average age. Walking around the Amazon area today, you could see all the young guns lined up next to each other. This is no surprise as many online players like the short-handed format, which fits a more aggressive style of play.

The turnout was much higher than expected. Instead of the anticipated 500 players, over 900 players signed up, making the prize pool approximately $4,361,000 after the rake deduction. This is good for a solid first prize of $1,003,218, making it to top 5 biggest first place payouts for the entire series.

The usual suspects at the start of the day were: Isaac Baron, Dario Minieri, Justin Bonomo, Shaun Deeb, Barry Greenstein, Phil Laak and many more.

For Team PokerStrategy.com Nazgul, Trader, Pokernoob and Allanon came into action today. Other PokerStrategy.com members that made their appereance were: Thorsten77, Bagger0405, Fabstinho, FA_Morgoth, and Tonding.

In the short-handed event things go fast. The blinds reach you quicker than in full ring games and so you have got to play. Early in level two, Nazgul (pictured left) was already forced to make a decision for his tourney life in a hand against Christian Harder:

"I am in seat 5 and he is in seat 4. Once again he opens the small blind to 450, with the blinds being 75-150. I looked at my hand and saw a nice pair, . I 3 bet him, like I already did twice before, to 1,325. Then he instantly moves all in on me and I had to go into the tank. After one or two minutes I decided to make the call for 80 big blinds, which is a lot. He shows to the dealer and I have him dominated."

The flop came , giving Christian Harder an open ended straight draw and outs for a set. The turn brought disaster upon Nazgul as it completed the straight for Christian with a . Nazgul had no outs left except hoping for a rigged deck to come off. As this happened yet in the WSOP so far and also didn't happen today, Nazgul had to hit the rail after the dealer counted the chips and said Christian had him covered. 

Trader (pictured right) came fresh to the Rio as he was already there at 11:15 to sign up, while the tournament starts at 12:00. This was was shown in his play, as he started the day very good by calling down a somewhat weird, but very aggressive play from his opponent.

At his table was one Chinese unknown who played a very maniac style. Two solid loose players were seated in between with one older player, who was playing very tight. To his left was Livb, an online Heads-Up Sit and Go specialist with whom Trader has played over 200 Sit and Go's.

Trader gets involved early on with the unknown Chinese opponent, when he opened with on the cut-off and got called by the button. Both blinds went out and the flop came down: . Trader fired out a half pot-size bet and the button only flats him. The turn brought a and Trader decided to check. The button then bet 1.5 times the pot, which Trader called off. The river was another and Trader checked again to his opponent, whom quickly replied by betting pot-size. After a short moment of deliberation, Trader makes the call and sees his opponent had for pure air.

His good start gets interrupted after a while when he picked up in the big blind. By now, Trader was by far the loosest player and has a pretty loose image as he 4-bet bluffed earlier with . A semi-loose player opened to 400 from the button and Trader decided to raise it up to 1,200. The button makes it about 3,600 and with only 12,000 behind, Trader decided to go all-in. Unfortunately for him, the button quickly called and showed . No help for Trader and he drops down to 5,000 in chips.

The day proved to be a real roller-coaster for Trader, though, as he found himself with a 15,000 chip stack just a couple orbits later, after he managed to double with against . Then just moments later he picked up against the unknown Chinese opponent, whom by now seemed to be a real maniac at the table. The flop came Jack high and Trader stacked off against pocket Queens.

The last hand of the for Trader was when he picked up in the small blind. He opened it to 600 and Livb quickly shoved it in. Trader had an easy call with a little less than 5,000 left and was shown for a classic race. Unfortunately Livb managed to spike the Jack on the river and that was all for Trader. As he was also the last man standing for Team PokerStrategy.com, the day ended quite early for everyone unfortunately.

384 players made it past Day 1 and one of them is PokerStrategy.com member Thorsten77. He has finished the first day of this event in 9th place, having a stack of 198,000 chips. Best of luck to him in the upcoming play day!
Bagger0405 has 25,100 chips left and will be returning to the tables tomorrow in 150th place.

All of Team PokerStrategy.com's players will participate in the Main Event, which will be the last for the World Series of Poker and takes place between the 3rd and 15th of July, so hang tight!

Here are the top 10 chip stacks at the end of Day 1:

World Series Of Poker Event #56 Standings
Rank	Name	Chips
1st	Rory Mathews	369,800
2nd	Sander Lylloff	360,000
3rd	Rui Cao	354,900
4th	Faraz Jaka	294,500
5th	Lars Bonding	288,300
6th	Lee Vlastaris	239,500
7th	David Peters	237,400
8th	Eugene Katchalov	216,100
9th	Thorsten Thorsten77 Schaefer	198,000
10th	Taylor McFarland	190,700