blonde poker

 
With a WPT record that is second to none, Daniel Negreanu is regarded as one of the greatest players to play a WPT Event, and this week in the World Poker Open at the Gold Strike Hotel Casino in Robinsville, Mississippi, ‘Kid Poker’ came second to relative unknown Bryan Summer.

Hailing from Smirna, Tennessee, young gun Sumner snatched the title when his Pocket Eights held up against Negreanu’s A-3, all-in pre-flop, an emphatic 8 hitting the Flop. In addition to the silverware, Sumner earned a cool $913,986, a sum that dipped below the million mark for the first time in 12 months.

But although the $2,521,504 prizepool wasn’t quite up to the standards of 2006, the field remained strong with the likes of Phil Hellmuth, Chris Moneymaker, John Juanda, John Pham, Devilfish and Barry Greenstein all stumping up the $10,000 fee, the latter failing to build on a commanding Day 1 chip lead.

Although most of them fell by the wayside, two ‘name’ players did make it through to the latter stages – Amir Vahedi, an aggressive tournament player, and former WPT winner, Gavin Smith, who finished 16th and 19th for $22,850 and $17,137 respectively.

But with a final table involving Sumner, Young Cho, Gary Keiner, Thang Pham and JC Tran, all eyes were on the star of the show and regular High Stakes Poker legend, Daniel Negreanu, who looked set to take his first WPT title since 2004.

But battling uphill against a 4.3 to 1.5 million chip deficit was too much for even Negreanu to handle, thus resulting in his second place finish. Although just missing out on 1st, the $502,691 runner-up prize will be of grand consolation and make a nice addition to the millions accrued from his two wins in 2004 and his three final table finishes in 2006, including a third in this very event last year.

Next stop, the 2007 Winter Poker Open in Borgata, which has already kicked off with Matthew Casterella winning $375,100 in the $5,000 No Limit Hold’Em Freezeout.


[Ed Note: To view the results of this event, please click here]