Event #41 of the WSOP brought a mixture of two games in Mixed Hold’em – Limit/No Limit. 731 people paid $1,500 to get into this tourney which featured a prize pool of $996,450.
The 731 number would be cut all the way down to 98 by the time things wrapped up on day 1. People like Greg Raymer, Tom Schneider, Carlos Mortensen, Barry Greenstein, Daniel Negreanu, and Kenny Tran were all hoping to make it past the first day.
Unfortunately for all of them, they were early exits from the tourney and others who would join them later included Chris Ferguson, John Juanda, Joe Hachem, and Andy Bloch.
Jonathan Tamayo shot to the top of the leaderboard when all was said and done. Here was the whole top 10 for day 1:
Rank/Player/Chips
1. Jonathan Tamayo — 98,100
2. Ricky Sanders — 88,000
3. Klein Bach — 65,600
4. Daniel Kraus — 49,975
5. Jose Tavares — 48,900
6. Alexander Borteh — 46,950
7. Peter Rho — 46,000
8. Otto Richard — 45,700
9. Benjamin Landowski — 44,425
10. Heung Yoon — 42,400
Day 2 would see a dramatic turnaround as far as the leaderboards went. Not really for Jonathan Tamayo who was the only one from the top 10 to score a seat at the final table. But for the other 9, it would be curtains for this tourney.
But at least the majority of them had the privilege of cashing whereas Bob Lauria made it all the way to 73rd place which was right outside of the money range.
Those that would be competing for big money at the final table included:
Seat/Player/Chips
Seat 1: Chris Rentes – 132,000
Seat 2: Michael Chu – 264,000
Seat 3: Alex Jalali – 204,000
Seat 4: Nick Binger – 339,000
Seat 5: David Machowsky – 147,500
Seat 6: Jonathan Tamayo – 238,500
Seat 7: Mats Gavatin – 405,000
Seat 8: Frank Gary – 332,000
Seat 9: David Sorger – 130,000
The beginning of this final table looked as if it would be all Nick Binger as he quickly busted out David Sorger and Michael Chu right away.
Then he set his sights on the Swede Mats Gavatin as he hit trip 7’s on the flop and Gavatin couldn’t get his flush draw. David Machowsky would be the next victim of Binger as he finished in 6th when Binger hit a set of aces on the flop.
5th place would belong to Alex Jalali when he couldn’t pair an ace against – you guessed it – Nick Binger. Binger would knock out Chris Rentes and his short stack next with a weird winner in 7-high.
But the tide would soon turn as Tamayo took big pot after big pot from Binger. In the end, things looked good for Binger to make a comeback as he held a straight only to see Frank Gary river a full house.
This left things down to heads-up play between day 1 leader Tamayo and Gary. Tamayo had lost some of his stack before heads-up play began and it would take long for Gary to win with a pair of aces after Jonathan’s all-in call.
The retired, RV traveling Gary had won his first WSOP bracelet and $219,217 as well. Here’s how the top 25 looked:
Rank/Player/Money
1. Frank Gary $219,562
2. Jonathan Tamayo $140,093
3. Nick Binger $84,814
4. Chris Rentes $69,348
5. Alex Jalali $56,875
6. David Machowsky $44,901
7. Mats Gavatin $34,923
8. Michael Chu $27,439
9. David Sorger $19,956
10. Todd Witteles $12,472
11. Justin St. John $12,472
12. Sam Hiatt $12,472
13. Elliot Smith $9,978
14. Hien Tran $9,978
15. Klein Bach $9,978
16. Daniel Kraus $7,483
17. Jeff Norman $7,483
18. Anh Van Nguyen $7,483
19. Michael Rosenthal $5,687
20. Alexander Borteh $5,687
21. Ricky Sanders $5,687
22. Peter Rho $5,687
23. Nicholas Ragot $5,687
24. Michele Guzzardi $5,687
25. Jason Ruffinelli $5,687