Online Poker

July 2, 2009

The 2009 World Series of Poker HORSE Championship tournament has been won by David Bach.

After 5-days of challenging competition over five different forms of poker, the HORSE Championships ended on a razz hand with Bach holding a 9/7/6/4/Ace hand against the second place winner John Hanson’s hand of 9/8/6/5/2. This gave David Bach his first WSOP bracelet, in one of the most difficult championship events, as well as a prize of $1,276,806.

It was a long road to the final table and the top prize, however, as the tournament was quite carefully played by the small field of 95 entrants who could put up the $50,000 entry fee. When the buy-in is that much, you can expect only top quality competition or else the rich and reckless. The former was indeed the case, with many famous poker names in the running, including previous HORSE World Championship winners Freddy Deeb and Scotty Nguyen.

Aside from world class play keeping the action at a measured pace, the 150,000 chip triple stacks used for the tournament made for some unique challenges. The first day only saw 4 players eliminated from the tournament, with the first elimination occurring after 5 levels had already passed. By the end of the day, Hasan Habib was ahead of the pack with 387,000 chips and the next highest chip stack 40,000 chips lower.

The second day saw the advantages that some players had picked up in the previous day’s play work for them. This meant the 91 players remaining at the last day’s end were reduced to 53 by the end of day two. David Bach began to show his talent, as well, pulling off a win of a significantly large pot by taking out John Juanda and doing some damage to Scotty Nguyen’s chip stack.

The seemingly unstoppable Jeff Lisandro, who has already won 3 bracelets this year, was also eliminated on day two of the HORSE World Championships. A truly incredible number of professional poker players were eliminated in the second day, which goes to show the level of competition that was on display. The end of the day had Gus Hansen in the lead with 686,000 chips, putting him well ahead of most of the remaining players.

On the third day, the field was reduced even further to just 19 players. Bad beats took out a number of talented poker pros, including previous HORSE World Championship winner Scotty Nguyen. With more high profile poker players falling to the wayside, Vitaly Lunkin took the lead late in the day to finish with 1,527,000 chips. David Bach was proving to be in it for the long run here as well, coming in fourth on the leaderboards for day three at 1,265,000 chips.

The fourth day opened with Todd Brunson and Brett Richley busting out early, with two further eliminations then leaving the field down to only those in the money. Play continued until the last 8 players remained, setting the final table with Erik Sagstrom in the lead with 3,675,000 chips, followed by Vitaly Lunkin with 2,490,000 chips, David Bach with 2,345,000 chips, John Hanson with 1,700,000 chips, Huck Seed with 1,380,000 chips, Chau Giang with 1,075,000 chips, Erik Seidel with 965,000 chips, and Ville Wahlbeck with 645,000 chips.

The final day of play was extremely long for a final table, dragging on from 2PM Tuesday and late Wednesday morning before David Bach was crowned the HORSE World Champion. Erik Seidel was the first out, followed by Chau Giang soon after. Later, Ville Wahlbeck finished, and then so did Huck Seed and Vitaly Lunkin. Erik Sagstrom busted out in third despite his lead coming into the final table, leaving John Hanson and David Bach to battle it out.

Battle they did, as they went heads up for more than seven hours until a fateful hand of razz that saw Hanson call all-in only to lose a close hand to Bach. The HORSE World Championship and Chip Reese Memorial Trophy both went to Bach, along with the top prize, leaving Johnson with a second place prize of $789,199.

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