Great Casino Gambling

Seiver and Hall make WPT Championship final table

The Bellagio was quite busy Wednesday with the debut of the World Poker Tour’s first Super High Roller event in Las Vegas. A field of 29 players put up the $100,000 buy-in to participate in the televised tournament that featured some of the biggest stars in the game. Only 17 of the 29 players survived Day 1 action and Justin Bonomo left for the night with the biggest chip stack and his eyes on the $1 million top prize.

Bonomo leads the second-place stack of Vivek Rajkumar by more than 20 big blinds. Rajkumar has a tiny lead over Erik Lindgren, and after those three, there’s nobody close. John Morgan, sitting in fourth place, is down nearly 60 big blinds to Lindgren and is up four big blinds on Randy Dorfman. The other 12 players are looking up at the average stack, showing just how top-heavy the chip counts currently are.

Almost every player in this event can be seen as a familiar name to poker fans across the world. Justin Smith, Abe Mosseri, Daniel Cates, Phil Laak, Tony G, Tom Marchese, Nicolay Evdakov and Phil Galfond were among the 12 eliminated during Day 1 action. Daniel Negreanu, Eugene Katchalov, Sam Trickett, Erik Seidel, Yevgeniy Timoshenko and Gabe Kaplan all survived, but will have some work to do in order to catch the top stacks.

Five players will make the money in this tournament and a champion will be crowned Thursday (or early Friday morning).

1. $1,092,780 2. $700,500 3. $448,320 4. $336,240 5. $224,160

WPT Championship final table set:

Galen Hall beat the masses at PCA, and now he’s in great shape to beat the best at the WPT Championship. The field of 15 was reduced to the final six early Thursday morning and Hall will enter the televised final table with a small chip lead over Scott Seiver. Hall, as I mentioned Wednesday, has had an incredible 2011 and could potentially earn a bid into the Federated league with at least a second-place finish in this event.

Seiver has been all over the poker world, but he’s never made a final table on the World Poker Tour. One who isn’t afraid to buy in to the highest events, Seiver will look to pad his bankroll with the $1.6 million first-place prize.

“I’m feeling great right now,” Seiver told the World Poker Tour after Day 4. “I’m basically tied for first with Galen Hall. It was an extremely tiring day today. We played for what felt like forever, but basically this whole tournament has gone on forever and I’m just really happy to make the final table and hopefully keep going to the end.”

Hall and Seiver are separated by less than a small blind (30,000). In third is Tony Gargano, a player whom Joe Cada recently predicted was primed for a big run. Gargano has the edge on Roger Teska, who hasn’t cashed on the WPT in five years.

Making his second final table and starting play in fifth place is veteran Freddy Bonyadi. After 62 events on the World Poker Tour, Bonyadi has 13 cashes, but never better than a fifth-place finish. The three-time WSOP bracelet winner has been on the tournament trail since the ’90s, and with at least a second-place finish, he could secure the biggest cash of his career.

The short stack at the table is Justin Young. Runner-up to Chino Rheem at the Five Diamond in December 2008, Young has more than $2.2 million in lifetime career earnings, including six WPT cashes and seven WSOP cashes. He’ll bring with him the shortest stack, but a ton of confidence and a huge cheering section filled with some of the game’s rising stars.

The six will play out the final table Friday and will be playing for a lot of money:

1. $1,618,344 2. $1,061,900 3. $589,355 4. $371,665 5. $278,749 6. $225,654

Jonathan Poche wins WSOPC main event in New Orleans

After three days of play and 381 eliminations, Jonathan Poche emerged with his first WSOP-related cash and major title. Poche began the final table in the middle of the pack, but worked his way through the final table thanks to a number of spots where his opponents moved in on his premium hands. With the victory, Poche pocketed $121,017 and a seat into the National Championship, which begins next week in Las Vegas.

The second automatic seat earned from the New Orleans stop was awarded to Brian Walsingham, who won two tournaments in just six days. Walsingham became the “Casino Champion” with those two victories and earned more than $100,000 for his accomplishments. Not a bad week for someone who had previously cashed for less than $50,000.

Here are the results from the WSOP Circuit main event in New Orleans:

1. Jonathan Poche ($121,017) 2. Bobby Toye ($74,783) 3. Josh Evans ($54,644) 4. Todd Wood ($40,573) 5. Scott Zakheim ($30,595) 6. Jake Bazeley ($23,416) 7. Billie Payne ($18,185) 8. Matt Waxman ($14,324) 9. James McBride ($11,441)

Small blinds: With the elimination of Sam El Sayed in eighth place at the World Poker Tour Championship, Andrew Frankenberger won the WPT Player of the Year title. The final WSOP Circuit Regional Championship begins Thursday. All players who make the final table will automatically earn their seats into the WSOP National Championship freeroll. Daniel Cates is giving away a free seat to the WSOP main event for those who follow him on Twitter. Cates will be tweeting his location and those who go to meet him will pick up raffle tickets. One fan will win the seat and with that comes free lessons from one of the game’s top players. PartyPoker announced that the final table of the WPT Spanish Championship will be streamed live with hole cards. Alexander Queen has dominated poker at the Borgata once again. The 2010 Spring Poker Open champ pocketed another $111,774 after winning the $1,000 Deep Stack Double Play event with 451 entries.