Sep 23, 2007
Saturday was the last chance for players to win a $14,200 prize package to the WPT North American Poker Championship at Niagara Falls, Canada, but with a slight twist. Instead of running just one qualifier, PokerRoom.com gave players two chances to book their trip, with two different finals running on the day.

38 hopeful players turned out for the first finals qualifier of the day, including more than a few notable names who’d represented Team PokerRoom.com at major events in the past. Wieringen was back again, as well as nammer4life and Gutenburg1, both fresh off very strong showings at the World Series of Poker Europe inaugural event.

The pace was pretty quick, and nammer4life made a strong move early, sitting in the top ten at the first break and sitting in first or second all the way down to the final table. Once he picked up some chips he wasn’t shy about using them, steadily chipping up by winning lots of small pots and aggressively putting his opponents to the test.

Action was fast and furious at the final table, with knockouts happening left and right. Snowman-8- would go out in the first of the money spots, finishing 6th and winning a $650+$50 ticket when AcQc couldn’t hold up against cheech65’s Ad8d.

buildtrends was bounced in 5th place (winning $700 + a ticket) when his AsJs couldn’t outflip cheech65’s pair of nines.

cheech65 continued his final table rampage by bouncing yet another player, this time the unlucky woodysnake. woodysnake got all his chips in pre-flop with JJ and had to be happy to get a call from cheech65, who was holding Ac9c. Happy until the board came 9d 2c 5c Ad Qh that is, and woodysnake was done, finishing 4th and picking up $1,400 plus a ticket.

The final three of cheech65, nammer4life, and milapoul69 would joust around for quite awhile once it was three-handed, trading chips back and forth. cheech65 and milapoul69 finally tangled on a seemingly innocent flop of 2h 8c 10d, with all of the chips going in and cheech65 holding Kh 10h for top pair and milapoul69 Ad8d, for middle pair. milapoul69 would get no help and finish 3rd, collecting $2,100 plus a ticket.

cheech65 would have a slight chip lead when heads-up play started, with about 65,000 chips versus nammer4life’s 50,000. They jockeyed back and forth for awhile, feeling one another out, until the final, fateful hand occurred.

No raises pre-flop, and the flop came 4c Qh 5d. nammer4life had to be loving the flop, as he was holding Qs 5c, for a well-disguised top two pair. He check-raised cheech65’s 2,000 bet, popping it to 4,000, which cheech65 called. cheech65 was holding Kh4h, so while he did have bottom pair, he was way behind in the hand.

The turn was the 7h, and nammer4life led out for 11,000, which cheech65 (who had also picked up a flush draw on the turn) called. The river was the Kc, and suddenly nammer4life’s great hand was up in smoke, as cheech65 rivered a better two pair. nammer4life fired one last bullet of 19,000, which cheech65 called, taking down a huge pot and crippling nammer4life severely.

cheech65 finished him off shortly after, locking up the prize package to the WPT Canada event at Niagara Falls and a coveted spot on Team PokerRoom.com. While nammer4life couldn’t be happy coming so close to winning back to back trips, the $2,800 plus a ticket he collected for 2nd place likely eases the pain somewhat.

Latest comments for this news

• Discuss news in Pokah