WPT Championship results - ElkY wins WPT POTY

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Pindarots Netherlands. Apr 26 2009 12:29. Posts 802

<img align="right" src=http://www.liquidpoker.net/staff/Pindarots/09April/timoshenko.jpg style="margin:5px; border: 1px solid black;">The final table of the World Poker Tour Championship had one clear favorite at the start: Yevgeniy Timoshenko started with almost twice as much chips as the number 2 on the chipcounts. But with players like Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Scotty Nguyen and Shannon Shorr on the tables, having the chips alone isn't enough. Unknown Ran Azor was clearly the outsider, while Christian Harder with his 2nd biggest chipcount and position on Timoshenko was in the second most favorable spot.

This is how they started the day:

Shannon Shorr was in no mood to bust out, as he put pressure on his opponents, raising and squeezing a lot and when he got all-in with Scotty Nguyen he was well ahead with pocket tens against pocket sixes. No help from the board and he doubled up, leaving Nguyen with just a few big blinds. Nguyen was eliminated not much later when he moved all-in with A4o. Shorr and Harder called him, two aces on the board, Harder bets the river and Shorr folds. Harder shows A-8 and wins the hand, and Nguyen's chance of beating Jamie Gold as biggest winner from live tournaments is gone for now.

Shorr however kept pushing his chips around, but when Timoshenko called him with pocket 4's his is coinflipping for his tournament life. Nothing changes when the 5 cards hit the table and Shorr is out. This meant for Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier that he just won the WPT Player of the Year award! He had to finish at least 4th to beat John Phan and he has just done that to become the successor of Howard Lederer, Erick Lindgren, D<A name="cutnews"></A>aniel Negreanu, Gavin Smith, J.C. Tran and Jonathan Little (in this order, season 1 to 6). Another trophy for an already filled trophy cabinet.

Still, the final table didn't quite go as he hoped. With Timoshenko working his big stack flawlessly, ElkY could actually never get anything going last night. His starting stack of 6 million had gone down to 2.8 when the 63th and decisive hand played out. Christian harder pushed all-in for about 1.9 million, and Ran Azor calls in the small blind, after which ElkY shoves over for his 2.8 million stack (so about 900k more for Azor). Azor thinks for a minute and makes the call with . Harder holds and has him dominated, but ElkY has Harder dominated with . The board however brings a on the flop and no help on turn and river, and the worst hand wins the pot worth 7.5 million. ElkY and Christian Harder are both knocked out in the same hand, and because ElkY started the hand with a bigger stack, he gets 3rd place worth $776,245 .

Heads-up starts with a 2.3:1 chiplead for Timoshenko, who had already dominated all of the final table and continues to do so in the heads-up stage. Azor seems to have no answer to Timoshenko's small ball poker, and when he gets to under 3 million chips (with his opponent holding 30 mln) he wins an all-in hand with kings against deuces. However, after this hand it continues the way it was before, with Timoshenko dominating and playing lots of small pots. In hand 144, Azor raises and Timoshenko shoves over for Azor to call quickly: for Azor against Timoshenko's . The flop brings for top pair for Azor, but the means both players get a straightdraw: a ten would bring Timoshenko the title, an ace or any other card on the river and Azor would double up and we'd continue as usual. The river brings the and Yevgeniy Timoshenko wins the WPT Championship for over 2 million dollar, and becomes only the second youngest player after Nick Schulman to win a WPT event with his age of 21 years, 2 months and 15 days.

Final results: