In the first non-Hold’em event of this year’s WSOP, a $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo Split-8 or better tournament, we saw the largest field in an Omaha tournament ever assembled. 925 players showed up to play, greater than 100 players more than showed up for this event last year. This created a massive $1.2 million prizepool for the prize pool, one of the largest we will probably see in the non-Hold’em events this summer. 90 players earned cash in this tournament, the most players ever paid out in an Omaha 8/b tournament.
A min-cash netted the players just less than $3,000, as former November Niner Jeff Shulman found out. Other top pros, including Ted Lawson, Barry Greenstein, Erik Seidel (wait, he didn’t win?), Allen Cunningham, and Lex Veldhuis also profited from this tournament, but failed to make their way to the ever-important final table.
The final table was both entertaining and hard fought, with all players vying for the bracelet. Russian Vladimir Shchemelev, who put together a very hot run early in last year’s WSOP, was there, as was Costa Rican poker godfather Humberto Brenes, bringing his shark along with him. However, neither of them earned the bracelet this time, busting out in 8th and 6th place respectively.
The heads-up battle would be between two virtual unknowns in the poker world, Kostas ‘Gus’ Kalathakis and Francesco ‘Cheeck’ Barbaro. They were fighting for the ever-important bracelet and $262,283.
Honestly, and no offense to Gus, it wasn’t much of a fight. They entered heads-up play with Cheech 4,100,000 chips to Gus’s 150,000. However, they got it all in the middle in just the second hand of heads-up play, and Kalathakis doubled up to 300,000, trying to put a run together. His run, sadly, would not last much longer, as Barbaro’s commanding lead proved insurmountable, sending Gus home with a $161,675 consolation prize.
This tournament marks Barbaro’s first bracelet at the World Series. Who knows, will he find another along the way?