WSOP Event #25: Mixing Things Up

The mixed events seem to become more and more trendy as this $2,500 Omaha/Stud tournament attracted a lot of known faces. Barry Greenstein, Jeff Lissandro, Eli Elezra, Steve Wong, Carlos Mortensen, Nikolay Evdakov, Katja Thater, Jennifer Harman, Andy Bloch, Jason Mercier, Vitaly Lunkin and Gavin Smith - all of them set out to try their luck in this interesting mixed game event.

With Allen Kessler, Sebastian Ruthenberg and Dario Minieri sitting down together, their table was one amongst the tougher ones to be found early on. And even though the field of over 300 participants was filled with big names, the tournament started out at a very slow pace - maybe due to the Hi-Lo nature of both played games, which naturally results in a lot of split pots.

Vitaly Lunkin was one of the first to hit the rail. In a Stud-8 hand, he got his chips all-in with  () before the pot turned out to be three-handed after a raise behind him. The player calling Eric Buchman's raise mucked his hand however when the latter turned over ()() for a straight and a low. Lunkin, who couldn't improve his two-pair, had to take his leave.

Another player who didn't make it past day one was Allen Kessler over on the table with Dario Minieri (pictured left). In an Omaha-8 game, his seemed to be good enough to get it all-in pre-flop, but when he failed to hit against , he had to exit the tournament area.

In another notable hand, John Cernuto bet the flop and the turn on the board when the action was checked to him. But when Justin Young suddenly bet out with the  on the river, he decided to open-fold his top set with - we will never know whether his instincts were correct as Justin Young didn't show his winning hand. Cernuto was left crippled and subsequently eliminated in a hand of Stud-8.

Last but not least, a pale Chad Brown - who was rumoured to have caught food poisoning - showed up after eight levels of play, only to fight through the pain and end the day with a remarkable stack of over 30,000. This effort deservedly put him right back into the game, and we can look forward to how the battle with his illness unfolds tomorrow.

World Series Of Poker Event #25 Standings
Rank	Name	Chips
1st	Can Hua	51,800
2nd	Dustion Sitar	46,600
3rd	Mark Scott	45,800
4th	Allie Prescott	44,900
5th	Jon Turner	43,300
6th	Jan Sorensen	42,300
7th	Stuart Spivack	39,800
8th	Ming Lee	39,200
9th	Kevin Iacofano	37,300
10th	Shirley Rosario	36,200