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• WSOP 2008

If You Don’t Cash at the WSOP Just Win the August ChampionChip - By Seth Shafer

Aug 6, 2008 Sunday saw the August edition of the ChampionChip get underway, with a huge field of 1464 players turning out to take a shot at a piece of the $512,400 prize pool. Whoever emerged on top after a long, grueling day of poker would finish the day $115,290 richer, so players had plenty of incentive to hunker down and give it their all.

With the ChampionChip typically taking 8-10 hours to play down to its conclusion, it’s more a marathon than a sprint, with players making a move to the top of the leaderboard then falling back. Some of the leaders during the first 6-7 hours included Emolol, 01dryade, perryA6IB, pattypot, mutz3, WhamBamTySir , and pertje.

At the eight hour mark the field was down to 13 players, with HANZA007 leading the way. Other players of note left in the field included croywhale (who had plenty of support from Pokah railbirds) and sicilian17, who was part of Team PokerRoom for the 2008 WSOP (where he was knocked out at the very end of Day 1c action).

croywhale would eventually finish in 6th ($15,372) when his pocket aces were cracked by queens, but sicilian17 powered his way to the chip lead with just three players remaining:

Seat 3: mutz3 ($1,166,648 in chips)
Seat 5: sicilian17 ($2,634,132 in chips)
Seat 9: alestapi ($591,220 in chips)

Alestapi would eventually exit in 3rd ($) when he was short-stacked and forced to shove pre-flop with 3s 5c, hoping to steal. Mutz3 looked him up with Kd 10d and flopped a ten to take down the pot and eliminate alestapi.

Heads-up play began with sicilian17 holding a decent lead:

Seat 3: mutz3 ($1,637,868 in chips)
Seat 5: sicilian17 ($2,754,132 in chips)

They immediately tangled in a big pot of 1.4 million chips on the first hand of heads-up play, with sicilian17’s winning a big pot when he flopped trips from the BB with 2s 5c, and mutz3 paid him off on the river with third pair.

That left mutz3 with just 400,000 chips, and while he did manage a double up shortly after, the end came quickly.

With a board of 2h 6d Qh 5d 2c (and no pre-flop raises and just min-raises and calls on the flop and turn), mutz3 shoved all-in on the river for his last 800,000 or so chips. sicilian17 eventually made the call, tabling 8h 6s, with mutz3 holding just 5s 3h, giving sicilian17 the hand and the win.

Sicilian17 took down a woopping $115,290 for the victory, with mutz3 collecting a not-shabby-at-all $63,537 for his runner-up finish.


sicilian17 in action at the 2008 WSOP

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