Shannon Shorr Leads PLO WSOPE Event 3

American poker player, Shannon Shorr, leads the WSOPE Pot Limit Omaha Championship after Day 1, from a field packed with international stars of the poker world.

Just one look at the list of names of those who will not be competing on Day 2 gives an idea of the quality of player who paid the €5,300 buy-in for this bracelet event – James Bord, Will Failla, Ben Lamb and Richard Ashby were among the early departures on Day 1, and none of the forty nine remaining players (from a total entry of 180) will be confident of reaching the top 18 places and receiving a cash reward for their efforts.

Phil Hellmuth Gets Hot in the House …

One player who everybody will be keeping an eye on is Phil Hellmuth. Having three times narrowly failed to collect a record twelfth WSOP bracelet in Las Vegas in June/July, and due to be passed by Ben Lamb in the WSOP Player of the Year standings, Phil started the week well with a deep run in the 6 Max NL Hold´em Championship. At one point yesterday, he was up amongst the chip leaders with 78,000 chips and having a good time according to his tweets.

Then he ran into Russian WPT winner, Alexander Kuzmin, who infuriated “The Brat” with his loose betting patterns to the point where Hellmuth started to lose his cool. After Kuzmin had shoved his stack into the pot pre-flop against Michel Abecassis with Q♣ Q♠ J♦ 7♦, Hellmuth folded K♦ K♣ 2♠ 7♠ and went ballistic when he saw the flop of 2♥ 7♣ 7♥. Once Hellmuth had cooled down, Abecassis had the last laugh when his 5♣ 6♦ 7♦ 9♣ caught the 6♥ on the turn to give him a full house – one better than Hellmuth would have had!

… While Kollmann Escapes

Erich Kollmann has a Pot Limit Omaha record which stretches back over a decade, but has only once won an open event outside of his native Austria – and that was in 2004! His chances of success took a significant upturn in the biggest pot of the day, when he found himself all-in pre-flop with A♠ A♥ Q♠ 9♥ against Vladimir Shchemelev (A♣ 8♥ 7♣ 4♥) and Bruno Benveniste (K♥ K♣ 10♥ 4♣).

Although being marginally ahead, the flop of 4♦ 9♣ 7♦ gave Shchemelev two pairs and Kollmann´s tournament life was in danger. However the turn card of Q♥ gave the advantage back to Kollmann, who escaped with the 2♥ river to collect a pot of 108,000 and shoot the Austrian into fifth place on the overnight leaderboard.

Further Down the Field

Those queuing up behind the leaders include July´s WSOP bracelet winners Oleksii Kovalchuk, Sam Stein and Jason Mercier (Mercier for the 6 handed PLO Championship), Epic Poker League Main Event winner Mike “Timex” McDonald, November Niner Eoghan O´Dea and top UK poker players Sam Trickett, Jerome Bradpiece and Niall Charlton. In theory, the 49 players will be playing down to a final table of nine when play resumes this afternoon, but it is likely to get slow going around the time of the bubble – so it could be a late, late night!

Leading Chip Counts for WSOPE 3