The World Poker Tour Championship at the Bellagio is a $25k buyin and brings out most of the big names in poker, both from the live and online realms. By the time play was down to the final 6 Cory “UGOTPZD” Carroll was the leading representative of online poker and Gus Hansen led the way for the live pros.

The tournament ended up having 545 entrants, a smaller field than last year but not bad numbers considering the large buyin and the volume of other large buyin tournaments going on around the same time. Once the field reaches 400 the payouts go to the top 100 and the high percentage of players making the money and deep starting stacks add another new element to play. Some players look to take advantage of the $40k money bubble while others figure it best to do what they can to secure the $40k and then go from there.

The first payout level was $39,570 and Thayer “THAY3R” Rasmussen, Jared “TheWacoKidd” Hamby, and Richard “Lee Nickel” Fohrenbach all fell in that group, finishing 58th, 59th, and 60th respectively.

Hamby (right) took a particularly bad beat at the hands of a hot Gus Hansen. With the blinds at 5k / 10k Gus had opened for 33k and Jared had called from the big blind. On the 4-2-2 flop Jared checked and Hansen just moved in, a huge overbet into the pot that put Jared to a decision for his last 280k or so. Hamby made the call with pocket eights and was in great shape to jump to around 600k chips if he could fade Hansen’s two outs with pocket sixes. A six on the turn left Hamby looking for a 2 outer, but it wasn’t there and instead of gaining chips and being in position for a deep run in the tournament he was ousted in brutal fashion.

Cory Carroll (left) was also eliminated by Gus after getting his chips in ahead. After Hansen had mowed down the first two players at the final table he and Cory were left as the two big stacks in 4 handed play. With the blinds at 80k / 160k Gus opened for 480k and Cory raised to 1.65 million, leaving over 6.5 million behind. Hansen called the raise and the flop came QcJd6d. Carroll checked to Hansen and, much like he did against Hamby, Gus moved all in.

The difference in finishing 4th and 3rd was around $400k and the jumps only got larger after that. Carroll thought for a long time, wondering aloud if Gus could have a queen. He made the comment “Do you have a big draw Gus?” before finally deciding that Hansen likely did and Cory called with AJ for middle pair. He was right. Gus had the 7d5d for a flush draw, but his hot run continues and he hit the flush on the river to eliminate Carroll in 4th place for $593,645.

Gus wasn’t the only player to make hands though. Carroll had eliminated Tom “durrrr” Dwan in 9th place when the two were all in preflop with Carroll’s AJ against Dwan’s pocket kings. Cory turned an ace to send the pink flamingo hat wearing Dwan to the payout cage just short of his second WPT televised final table but still taking home $184,670.

Why was Tom wearing a pink flamingo hat? Well, on day 1 he had a hat best described as a fruit basket made by the Chiquita Banana Company, on other days he had a pink feather cap and a bowling pin hat. The hat wearing was the result of a lost bet to Alan Sass, and Tom took his loss with a smile on his face, alternately seeming to forget he was wearing ridiculous headgear and enjoying the attention it brought. The bet itself was nothing special. A notoriously late Tom bet he could be on time – turned out he couldn’t.

Peter “#1Pen” Neff, Matt “Plattsburgh” Vengrin, and Joe Sebok all had hopes of going deep in the tournament, but ended up being eliminated in the second level of payouts. They finished 44th, 47th and 48th all earning $52,765. Steve “MrSmokey1” Billirakis busted Sebok, but saw his tournament in soon after in a 23rd place finish for $79,145.

The final table wrapped up in dramatic fashion. After Hansen rolled to a massive chip lead by hitting draw after draw he found himself heads up with David Chiu, who had basically just been sitting back watching the chaos and folding his way to second place. It took Gus just 22 hands to get the field from 6 players down to 2, but his hot streak wore off just before he could close the deal.

Going into heads up play Gus had a 23 million to 4 million chip lead and it looked like it was almost surely going to be the 4th WPT title for Gus. Chiu (left) chipped away though, picking up chips here and there and doubling a time or two. After a long heads up battle Chiu had climbed to the chip lead and ended up calling Hansen’s all in with top pair and a flush draw on the turn. Gus had flopped two pair but this time it was another player’s turn to hit a draw and the river and with the Ah on the river Chiu made trips to take the title in one of the best final table comebacks in the modern poker era.

First place brought a hefty $3,389,140 for Chiu while a shocked Gus Hansen was left with 2nd place and $1,714,800.

Next up for PocketFivesLive is the World Series of Poker at the Rio in Las Vegas starting on May 30th and going all the way through the end of the Main Even in mid-July. P5s is bringing on additional staff to help with the coverage for all the WSOP events, so make sure to stop by PocketFivesLive regularly throughout the summer to keep track of what is going on in Vegas.

For those of you playing events we will have a registration page up soon so you can let us know what events you are playing.