Posts Tagged ‘Eoghan O’Dea’

Pius Heinz wins 2011 WSOP Main Event

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

Ben Lamb may have been the talk of this year’s WSOP, but it was Pius Heinz winning the 2011 WSOP Main Event title, along with the top prize of $8.7 million.

Heinz walked onto the final table with 108 million chips, which put him well ahead of the other two remaining players in Lamb (55.4 million) and Martin Staszko (42.7 million). However, it didn’t take long at all for Heinz to have competition since Staszko doubled up through Lamb on the first hand of the final day. It happened when Lamb tried to steal a pot from Staszko with K-J, only to see the 35-year-old Czech Republic native go all-in. Lamb felt that he was pot committed and called; Staszko flipped over pocket sevens, and won the hand after the board provided nothing for Lamb.

Just three hands later, Lamb desperately shoved his remaining chips in with Q-6(o), which didn’t hold up against Staszko’s pocket jacks. With the American now eliminated from the tournament in third place, Heinz and Staszko battled for the title, with the latter holding a 117.3 million-to-88.6 million chip lead.

This was definitely a heads-up match for the ages as both players went back and forth with the lead. At one point, Staszko looked like he was in firm control of the tournament since he’d maneuvered into a 4-1 chip advantage. However, the German Heinz never looked phased, and battled back to be in contention.

On one very critical play, Staszko called Heinz’s shove with Qc-9c because he didn’t think that the 22-year-old had anything. But Heinz held Ah-Qh, and when the board provided no help to either player, the German took a big lead over Staszko. Just a few hands later, Heinz was able to put Staszko away and win the 2011 WSOP Main Event title.

With the world’s biggest poker tournament now in the books, Heinz becomes the third richest winner ever with $8.7 million. Here is a look at how all of the final tablist fared:

1. Pius Heinz – $8,715,638
2. Martin Staszko – $5,433,086
3. Ben Lamb – $4,021,138
4. Matt Giannetti – $3,012,700
5. Phil Collins – $2,269,599
6. Eoghan O’Dea – $1,720,831
7. Bob Bounahra – $1,314,097
8. Anton Makiievskyi – $1,010,015
9. Sam Holden – $782,115

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Who will win 2011 WSOP?

Sunday, July 24th, 2011

Since there’s a long, boring wait until the November Nine meets to decide the 2011 WSOP Man Event champion, it’s worth taking some time to debate who will win the title. The first thing that sticks out about this year’s competition is how balanced the chip counts are heading into the final table (at least compared to previous years).

Martin Staszko leads all players with over 40 million chips, while Sam Holden is the short stack with just over 12 million. Now this might seem like quite a disparity, but considering how Jonathan Duhamel had 66 million chips compared to ninth place Jason Sentl’s 7.6 million chips in 2010, the 2011 gap isn’t so big. In any case, it looks like everybody has a shot at this point.

Getting into more details about the individual who will win, Bodog places 2011 November odds as follows:

Martin Staszko (40,175,000) – 4/1
Eoghan O’dea (33,925,000) – 9/2
Matt Giannetti (24,750,000) – 13/2
Phil Collins (23,875,000) – 13/2
Ben Lamb (20,875,000) – 7/1
Badih Bounahra (19,700,000) – 9/1
Pius Heinz (16,425,000) – 11/1
Anton Makievskyi (13,825,000) – 12/1
Samuel Holden (12,375,000) – 16/1

Basically, the odds don’t really predict much because they fall in line with each person’s chip count. However, you do have to consider that Staszko figures to hold the best chance since he’s got the chip lead, and has been a full-time pro for around a year now. Likewise, O’Dea is also a strong bet to win it all because he has plenty of live tournament experience, and isn’t far behind Staszko in chips.

The one wild card definitely has to be Ben Lamb because he’s running hotter than anybody in this year’s WSOP. In fact, Lamb is in the driver’s seat to win the 2011 WSOP Player of the Year, and has the most live tournament experience too. Both Phil Collins and Matt Giannetti are certainly strong bets to make a title run because they’ve won millions of dollars online, and are in the middle of the pack in terms of chips.

But even with all of this being said, it’s going to be extremely tough to pick a clear favorite from this group.

 

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2011 WSOP Final Table is True International Affair

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

Over the past decade, we’ve seen plenty of international players make deep runs in the WSOP Main Event. Joe Hachem (Australia, 2005), Peter Eastgate (Denmark, 2008) and Jonathan Duhamel (Canada, 2010) are all non-American Main Event winners who perfectly illustrate this fact. However, we have yet to see a WSOP Main Event that’s featured as many global participants as the 2011 Main Event. The non-US players involved include Martin Staszko (Czech Replublic), Eoghan O’Dea (Ireland), Badih Bou-Nahra (Belize), Anton Makiievskiy (Ukraine), Piuz Heinz (Germany), Samuel Holden (United Kingdom), while the Americans include Phil Collins, Matt Giannetti and Ben Lamb.

As you can see, a rare occurrence has happened where US players are outnumbered 2-1 on the Main Event final table. If you’re good at math, you can see that there’s a two-thirds chance that an international player will win the world’s biggest poker tournament this year. But no matter who wins, the number of people who’ve flown to Las Vegas from different countries is pretty impressive.

Looking at things from an even bigger perspective, the final table makeup perfectly exemplifies how global poker has become with six players joining the November Nine. After all, it’s not exactly cheap for pros to fly to Sin City for this poker extravaganza, and the buy-ins don’t make things any more affordable.

Even still, thousands of international players have anted up $1k, $3k, $5k and $10k buy-ins to play in the 2011 WSOP. And you can definitely count on this trend continuing – especialy in the Pot Limit Omaha sector, where Europeans seem to have claimed this game for their own. Getting back to the subject, it will be interesting to see if we have yet another non-American Main Event winner come November.

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