WSOPE Main Event Down To Final 36 Players

Oct 01, 2009
Grand entrance, bad-tempered exit for Hellmuth Railbird excitement is building at the Empire Casino in London's Leicester Square as the main event of the 2009 World Series of Poker Europe approaches final table stage, with 36 players competing for one of the nine seats. After making his customary grand entrance, this time as a chariot-borne Roman emperor, earlier this week (see previous InfoPowa reports) Phil Hellmuth has been eliminated in a clash with Antonio Esfandiari. Reports from the casino claim that Hellmuth left in bad temper, criticising his opponent's moves which were nevertheless good enough to bundle him out of the competition. On the positive side, poker's respected veteran Doyle Brunson is still in the game after three tough days and could win his twelfth and record-breaking WSOP bracelet if he can stay the course. Another player attracting attention is at the other end of the age scale is 21-year-old Vitaly Timoshenko, who is maintaining a very successful tournament year that has seen him grow his career winnings to over $ 3 million. The remaining 36 players are all in the money bubble following the departure in 37th place of bubble boy John Tabatabai, who appeared to be in some discomfort from a spider bite earlier in the game. The current chip leader as InfoPowa went to press at the conclusion of Day 3 is Matt Hawrilenko, who won a WSOP bracelet earlier this year in Las Vegas. But he still has to beat the likes of Brunson, Men Nguyen, Praz Bansi, Arnaud Mattern, Eric Liu, John Kabbaj, Chris Bjorin, Ram Vaswani, James Akenhead, Dave Ulliot, Daniel Negreanu and other globally respected players to reach the final table and then prevail to win the event and the big moiney that goes with it.
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