Barry Shulman had to outlast 8 world class poker players on this exiting final table Betfair WSOPE won by Barry Shulman. After a fantastic final WSOPE table where the chip lead changed from Jason Mercier to Daniel Negreanu the WSOPE finished on day 5 after 17 hours of play with Barry Shulman being able to lift the Trophy, receive the bracelet and the cash prize of $1.275.000 as the WSOPE 2009 champion.

Before he secured the victory beating Daniel Negreanu heads up. It was not an easy task and Daniel Negreanu was several times in a strong position to take home all the glory and fame but the cards was not on his side in the final stages of the tournament. After having knocked out 6 of the 7 final table contestants Daniel entered into the heads up play against Shulman with a little more than 60% of the total tournament chips in play.

Daniel Negreanu did manage to get all his chips in the middle holding two black aces against Shulman’s nut-flush draw. The turn however completed the flush and Daniel was drawing dead. The hand gave Shulman a strong chip lead leaving Daniel with only 2 million chips left but the Canadian climbed back in the match and regained momentum for a short while until he took another blow to his stack in a hand he will remember many years ahead.

On a J85 flop all the chips once again went into the middle this time Barry Shulman holding aces against Daniels QJ. When the turn exposed the third J giving Daniel trips Barry was left with only two outs and Daniel Negreanu very close to one of the biggest wins in a poker career that already had brought him tournament winnings of an astonishing $11.610.000. The river put an end to the celebration for Daniel Negreanu as one of the two remaining aces in the deck hit the felt and once again Daniel was trailing Barry Shulman in the match. Finally the two combatants ended all in pre flop each holding pocket pairs but Daniels pair of 4s never improved against Schulman’s pocket tens and the Shulman WSOPE victory was a fact.

Congratulations to WSOPE main event winner Barry Shulman who will look to see his son Jeff Shulman repeat the victory when he is playing at the WSOP 2009 final table next month in Las Vegas.

Day 4 at WSOPE began with 36 players and ended with the 9 final table poker players. Remarkable is it to find two of the WSOP 2009 finalists at yet another World Series final table. James Akenhead and Antoine Saout both survived day four and will get a fantastic training in final table play before they head to Vegas in early November to battle for the WSOP 2009 bracelet. At the WSOP final table they are 8th and 9th in chips whereas they will begin day 5 in London in better positions with Akenhead second in chips.

The final table at WSOPE 2009 will be spectacular as it is one of the strongest final tables ever. Jason Mercier will begin the final table as major chip leader. In the pack hunting him we see Daniel Negreanu and Matt “Hoss_TBF” Hawrilenko who both know how to play a medium stack against a big stack and it is guaranteed upfront that Jason Mercier will get to see the capabilities of those two players.

Praz Bansi who won a WSOP bracelet back in 2006 have cashe din 13 events this year so far and are in terrible good tournament form and he will do what is needed to try and secure his 2nd bracelet and become one of the few players having won both WSOPE and WSOP bracelets. With more than $1.000.000 in tournament winnings the English player is very experienced and know exactly how to play a final table.

Chris Bjorin from Sweden will also be a tough nut for Jason Mercier at the final table. Winning more than $4.000.000 in live tournaments makes him an interesting player with a lot of experience at this final table. Chris Bjorin already have two WSOP bracelets under his belt both won in No Limit Texas Hold’em in 1997 and 2000 and he is also looking to become famous for holding both a WSOPE and WSOP bracelet.

The final WSOPE 2009 table has 6 players in total that already holds a WSOP bracelet as Daniel Negreanu, Barry Schulman, Matt Hawrilenko and Jason Mercier also all are former bracelet winners together with the two aforementioned.

Notable is it that Teddy Sheringham made a tremendous effort and managed to keep on to his chips for a long period of time on day 4 and ended the tournament in 14th place cashing £40.481 which is his best poker result ever but with Teddy Sheringham getting the knowledge how to execute and accumulate chips in final stages of a tournament will most definitely make him a dangerous opponent in the future.

Who is going to take this one down will be known by tomorrow night but Jason Mercier is entering the final table as the favorite chased by some of the worlds best players.

The Betfair WSOPE Main Event 2009 saw a total of 334 players paying the £10.000 buy in creating a total prize pool of £3.340.000 with an astonish £801.603 to the event winner. 36 players in total will be paid with the first player in the money taking home a little more than double the buy in (£21.142).

The tournament saw one after another high profile poker player turn up at the registration area for both Day 1A and 1B and out of the remaining 186 players in the tournament tons of world class players are seen in the top 20.

Brian Powell 194600
Jason Mercier 189725
Sami Kelopuro 168925
Viktor Blom 163175
Jonathan Aguiar 160100
Steve Zolotow 160000
Martin Hansen 152775
Christian Harder 134125
Praz Bansi 130000
Antoine Saout 121000
Tommy Pavlicek 119825
Noah Boeken 118000
Richard Grace 116850
Ram Vaswani 110000
John Kabbaj 104500
John Tabatabai 85800
Daniel Negreanu 82450
Matt Hawrilenko 82000
Antonio Esfandiari 78000
Keith ‘The Camel’ … 76000

Sami “Lars Luzak” Kelopuro is one of the most famous cash game players in the world often playing the high stakes PLO tables at Full Tilt Poker. In live tournament poker he has still to get his break through but being third in chips and with a hyper aggressive style the WSOPE might be the time where Lars Luzak finally will be recoqnized in the poke rtournament world as well. However it is only day 1 who has been concluded and with very strong tournament professionals the Finnish high stakes player will need to find his best game to outlast players like Jason Mercier, Martin Bjerring Hansen, Betfair Poker sponsored player John Tabatabai and John Kabbaj who had a fantastic WSOP where he won $633.355 and a bracelet in Pot Limit Holdem outlasting a field of 275 players.

Another notable name remaining in the tournament is Viktor Blom who is known from online poker as Blom90 who also is known to play an extremely aggressive game. Kelopuro and Blom at the featured table is something railbirds would be delighted to have the chance to watch as this would create some real fireworks where it will be interesting to see the rest of the table’s response to a Scandinavian raising fight.

The stage is set for an interesting Day 2 at the World Series of Poker Europe when play commence tomorrow afternoon in London and we predict that the Danish tournament professional poker player Martin Bjerring Hansen and Antoine Saout, member of the November 9, will survive and be tough contestants for the bracelet, the prestigious title and £800.000.

Poker players who did not yet qualify for the main event at WSOPE London are given one last chance to secure a seat to this fantastic event. Betfair Poker currently run a promotion where the winner receive a full buy in to day 1b at the WSOPE taking place in London this coming week.

To qualify for the chance of winning your way into WSOPE Main Event 2009 the only thing you need to do is to play for real money between today and Saturday 5PM BST and earn one single Betfair poker point in the period. All new and old Betfair Poker players are eligible to participate in this giant promotion where all real players will have the same chance of winning the prize draw.

Earn 1 Betfair poker point and enter the prize draw that could be worth a lot more than £10.000 depending on how you will end in the WSOPE Main Event.

Get your chance to win live changing cash by playing at one of the best poker rooms in terms of player retention and loyalty bonuses.

Players should note that the package won is non transferrable and that WSOPE are running in the period Sunday September 27 until Thursday October 1. Players winning the prize draw need to be able to get to London the very next day and be able to stay for 5 days. Betfair will help with travel arrangements and pay up to $1000. Should the costs excess $1000 for transportation the winner will bear any additional cost.

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