It was a frenetic day on WSOP.com's virtual felt, with no fewer than seven tournaments from three distinct championship series sharing the stage.
The Fall Online Championships are comprised of 117 events running from now until November 14. Sunday saw OC#1 through OC#5 completed. Those with deeper pockets could compete for a WSOP gold ring and a bracelet.
Online Championships
The first event of the day was an $11 buy-in billed as the "$22,222 NLH Warmup." This was a genuine rebuy-and-add-on tournament rather than the more common re-entry format. 524 players and 1196 rebuys created a prize pool of $22,320, only just surpassing the guarantee. The heads-up tilt saw "evanb004" beat "3ofSpade" to take the $5,357 first prize.
OC#2 felt like the typical weekly Sunday tournament, particularly given its $215 buy-in, but in the context of this series was dubbed the "Sunday Special." It attracted 363 entrants who contributed an additional 289 rebuys to produce a prize pool of $130,400. The long heads-up battle began with both players around 40bb stacks, allowing the rare prospect of some postflop play. In the end it was a standard all-in preflop scenario that saw stephhub31's A5 hold up unimproved against Turbo1's KQ. The win paid stephhub31 a tidy $32,600.
The alliterative theme continued for OC#3 and "Sunday 6max," a 3x re-entry, $100 buy-in affair. This also attracted a solid field of 302 entrants. An additional 203 rebuys bloated the prize pool to $45,955, of which $11,719 went to first. "NikeNick" took that prize home, beating "SirPuntsALot" heads-up. A preflop all-in saw NikeNick in the dominating position of AQ versus A8, which the board converted to broadway.
There are a couple of unanswered questions surrounding OC#4, a PLO $1k high-roller event. We are unlikely ever to know who forgot to include a period of late registration in the client, so that the $50k guarantee went off with twelve entrants and stayed at that number. Everyone makes mistakes. Having made a whopper like this, however, why didn't WSOP avoid the ensuing fiasco by pausing the event to include a standard period of late registration? The event, along with a $25k first prize, was won by John "Macallan25" Riordan.
The final event from this series today was OC#5, the "$15,000 NLH Turbo Deepstack Re-entry." The $50 buy-in tournament was contested by 291 players, with 175 rebuys adding to a prize pool of $21,203. The first prize of $5,513 was earned by "auntieante" who took down "bulldog0113" in the heads-up portion of the contest.
Circuit Super Series Event #9
Another gold ring was in search of a finger today, in Event #9 of the ongoing Fall Super Series. Today's event was a $525 buy-in, $125k guarantee "Monster Stack." A field of 309 entrants (and 117 rebuys) created a $213k prize pool, with first worth $36,423.
The final table formed with John Riordan on it at about the time he was winning OC#4. He came up just short of a second title on the same day, ultimately being eliminated in third. This left Anna "PoFuk" Antimony to battle John "Relevancy" Ripnick to fight it out for the gold ring.
A critical hand saw Antimony make a polarized river overbet that sent Ripnick into the tank. He eventually called, and was shown the winning straight. Antimony's resulting large chip advantage quickly led to an all-in preflop, with AJs beating K2s when neither hand improved, giving Antimony the jewelry.
Online Bracelet Event #4
The catchy title for today's bracelet event was "WSOP OB Event #4: $888 PLO Crazy 8's 8-max." Arguably the event itself was only the third-craziest PLO-related occurrence on WSOP.com today. The first was the OC#4 described above. The second, according to some participants, is the fact WSOP.com would charge $88 rake on an $800 buy-in tournament.
A field of 295 entrants and a further 227 rebuys created a prize pool of $417,600, with $95,338 up top.
WSOP has declined to comment on why these events are still in late registration after midnight on the east coast. New Jersey players in particular don't like this setup, and even insomniacs in the Pacific time-zone go to bed before a winner can be announced.
Poker image source: Kat Martin.
