The World Poker Tour is headed back to Vegas for another stop at the Bellagio for the second of four stops there during Season 8 of the WPT. The Festa al Lago Main Event is a $15,000 buy-in tournament, making it one of the highest entry fee events of the WPT season, with only the WPT Championship $25,000 event, also at the Bellagio, coming in with a larger entry fee. The 2008 version of the tournament was among the many recent notches on the belt of Bertrand ElkY Grospellier. For his victory, Grospellier earned over $1.4 million defeating a field of 368 entrants and perennial threat Nam Le in heads up play.
Adam Roothlus Levy also made and appearance at the televised final table, finishing in 5th place for $266k. JoeSebok just missed the final table, finishing in 9th place for $85k in a hand against Grospellier which was a key turning point of the tournament and ended up being a much discussed hand. With blinds at 50k/100k, Grospellier and Sebok both had around 2 million chips with the final 9 all bunched reasonably close to the same amount. ElkY raised to 275k from the small blind and Sebok then moved all-in from the big blind with K9. After some thought Grospellier made the call with his A9 suited and went on to win the 4 million chip pot, eliminate Sebok and take a chip lead that he would use to propel himself to the victory. The hand was analyzed throughout the forums, bringing into play many late tournament theories along with the assigning of ranges and math involved in the situation.This year the Festa al Lago is already getting some attention even before the tournament starts. It has been reported that players will be allowed to register through the 8th level of play, which will be well into the second day. There are a multitude of issues with allowing such late registration, and the general consensus so far seems to be that this is bad policy that gets away from what tournament poker is supposed to be all about. The fields have been smaller during recent Bellagio tournaments and the schedule has been cut to only one starting day, so the extended late registration is likely an effort to build the field size, but could backfire as players that would likely play could decide to sit out Day 1 and see who comes through the first day of play with a large chip stack. If certain people end up with the chips, game selection theory comes into play as to whether or not a player should enter a tournament while knowing certain tough opponents have already accumulated a large chip stack.
Anyone that does decide to play, whether they start with the first hand of the first day or come in at the last possible moment, is welcome to sign up for coverage at www.PocketFivesLive.com. The coverage will begin with Day 1 play on October 21st and go through the completion of the final table the night of October 26th. To register, use the “Let Us Cover You” link in the left toolbar on the PocketFiveLive.com homepage, making sure to select the Festa Al Lago tournament from the dropdown box.
Best of luck to everyone playing!
Canada
United Kingdom
Costa Rica
Australia
Mexico
Denmark
Russian Federation
Sweden
Brazil
Germany
