Sandeep Pulusani Wins Event #44: $3,000 No-Limit Hold'em!
After 3 days of all ins, bad beats and aces on the river, Sandeep Pulusani took down Event #44: $3,000 No-Limit Hold'em for his first gold bracelet and $592,684. Pulusani started the day fourth in chips and remained relatively quiet. Even though he started heads up play with an 8:1 chip deficit, his game took on a new dimension and he dominated play throughout the battle until he claimed victory.
The road to the final table was littered with notables making the money including: Randy Lew (113th), Lauren Kling (112th), Sorel Mizzi (90th), Barth Hanson (88th), Eddy Sabat (39th) and Matt Marafioti (23rd).
It took about five hours to narrow the field from the 22 players that started the day to the official final table of nine. All eyes were on Jason Mercier when play began, as he chipped up early and was building a healthy stack. He ended up being eliminated 16th in one of the most memorable hands of the tournament. All the money went in on the turn when Mercier had a full house only to see it bettered when an ace fell on the river.
Just 12 hands into the final table, the first player, Phillippe Vert, was eliminated in 9th place, when for the second time during the day, a two-outer ace came on the river for a huge pot. The next player to go was Pedro Rios in 8th place. Rios spent the whole day as a short stack but had some double ups in key places to get to the final table.
Nam Le was eliminated in 7th place when a true cooler hand transpired. Action folded around to Le in the small blind who woke up to find kings and Niall Farrell looked down at aces from the big. Farrell was also responsible for the elimination of Mark Teltscher in 6th place, when Teltscher’s two overs couldn’t win a coin flip against the pair of Farrell.
The Day 1 chipleader, Zo Karim, was our 5th-place finisher. Karim accumulated a lot of chips early but wasn’t able to get momentum on his side later in the day, when it really mattered. Martin Hanowski lost a flip to Niall Farrell for over 2/3 of the chips in play and left him with less than 10 big blinds. That would set him up for a 4th-place finish just a few hands later.
Michael Rocco was the big stack for most of the day heading into the final table but he never seemed to get anything going while on the main stage. He was eliminated in 3rd place when his sixes failed to improve against Farrell’s kings. The final elimination of the night came when Niall Farrell lost a few key all ins and Pulusani paired his kicker on an ace versus ace hand.
Now that Pulusani has claimed his bracelet, our coverage here is complete. Keep your browser on PokerNews.com for all the latest news and tournament coverage from the 2013 World Series of Poker. Good night from Las Vegas!