Players Cheer As Howard Lederer Busts
7 years ago
07 Jul
(Photo: Cardplayer.com)
It must hurt to be unpopular, even for someone like Howard Lederer who should be used to it by now as he has been pretty much reviled by the poker community since Black Friday and the Full Tilt scandal which emerged from it, but to have your fellow players celebrate when you bust out of a tournament has to be an all-time low of despair!
The $50K Poker Players Championship, event number 55 on the WSOP’s summer calendar at the Rio Casino, is considered by many to be a much truer test of ability and skill than almost any other event.
With 91 players - including the likes of Daniel Negreanu, Jason Mercier, Justin Bonomo, Phil Hellmuth, Joe Hachem, Erik Seidel, Eli Elezra, Dzmitry Urbanovich and a slew of other notables – including Howard ‘The Professor’ Lederer – this bracelet event is a veritable who’s-who of the poker world’s best, best-known, wealthiest and up-and-coming stars.
For Lederer, it looked like an almost certain cash as he reached the final 17 with 14 spots paid – until he ran into the man-of-the-moment Jason Mercier, who has already taken down 2 bracelets and a runners-up spot this year.
With the format of the Players Championship seeing consecutive rounds of NLHE, 7-Card Stud, Omaha Hi-Low/8, 7-Card Razz, PLO, LHE, 7-Card Stud Hi-Low/8 and 2-7 TripleDraw Lowball, the mixed specialists were having a field day – Lederer included until he ran into Mercier in the Razz round late on day 3 of the event.
As the WSOP updates reported from the table,
Howard Lederer is all in and at risk heading to fourth street against Jason Mercier and Ray Dehkharghani, who remain active in a side pot.”
The hand saw …
Jason Mercier - 7x 2x 4x 9x
Howard Lederer - 9x 2x Jx Ax
Ray Dehkharghani - 5x 8x Qx
Mercier has first action on fourth street and he checks. Dehkharghani follows suit and pulls paint on fifth street. Mercier bets and Dehkharghani lets his hand go. With Dehkharghani out of the way, Mercier and Lederer's hole cards are exposed.”
Mercier flips up 9x 3x for a made nine-seven low on fifth street.
"I'm going to need some help," says Lederer, showing 10x 5x for a jack.
Mercier pairs nines on sixth while Lederer draws an ace, giving him some hope to survive. Mercier draws a 7x on seventh street, keeping his nine-seven low as the hand to beat. Lederer squeezes out a two-across card, but it is not the four that he is looking for. Lederer flings a 5x on the table and makes a quick exit from the tournament area.”
Some players then apparently cheered Lederer’s departure – the thought that the disgraced former Full Tilt founder might take down the most prestigious event of the series being too much even for his most committed supporters.
Twitter feeds also exploded in an anti-Lederer frenzy of sorts, Remko Rinkema posting:
There is a god. pic.twitter.com/VNcRSG5oEp
— Remko Rinkema (@RemkoMedia) July 5, 2016
Lederer’s appearance at this year’s World Series was not quite so unexpected as that of Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson’s, given that the Professor had at least summoned up the effort to publicly apologise for his role in the $440million which basically went missing from the site’s player funds, leaving thousands out of pocket after the Department of Justice shut Full Tilt down.
It was Rinkema who also tweeted the history of the Players Championship, the 6 players left at the end of day 4 competing for the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy as well as the remaining $3.5million of the total prize-pool of $4,176,000.
Lederer’s conqueror Mercier, who has been on the most ridiculous heater this WSOP, surprisingly busted out just after Lederer, his set of queens falling to the nut flush of Justin Bonomo.
With Negreanu also busting out, the final table sees chip-leader Bonomo taking on Michael Mizrachi, Eric Wasserson, Brian Rast, Lamar Wilkinson and the short-stack Ray Dehkharghani.
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