The $1,500 Mixed Hold’em event also saw a winner on Tuesday, while the Seniors World Championship played down to a final table, and a $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Split Eight-or-Better event got under way.

Event 40

John Phan helped keep the multiple-bracelet streak of the World Series of Poker alive on Tuesday with his win in the $2,500 2-7 Triple-Draw Lowball event. The WSOP has had multiple event winners every single year since 1999 with players such as Tom Schnieder, Bill Chen, Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson and more racking up the wrist candy.

Phan picked up his first bracelet win in the $3,000 No-Limit Hold’em event just seven days before picking up another win in this event, and while the first victory was sweet, Phan seemed even more excited about this win.

“Going into the World Series I didn’t expect to win a bracelet so winning one was really nice. I’ve come second so many times so I’m used to that. The first one was nice but winning the second one was so hard it’s way bigger,” Phan said in his post-game interview.

“I like to do things that not everyone has done so getting Player of the Year and winning two bracelets is more important. I’ve been here so many times, so many final tables, but I’ve never played as well as I did in the last week. If I had played this well in the past my overall results would be a lot different.”

Phan made a good show of running over players at the final table, and in the end it came down to him and Shun Uchida.

On the final hand Phan raised from the button and Uchida reraised from the big blind. Phan made the call and Uchida drew two cards, while Phan took three. The next round of betting ended up with Uchida moving all-in and getting a call from Phan.

Uchida drew one card and Phan stood pat. Phan pushed his monster stack of chips over into one big pile and told his opponent to “Turn over your four.”

After Uchida turned over #8s#7h#5s#c, Phan told him he was drawing dead as he dug his cards out from under his chips to show #7d#6h#4s#3h#2c. That gives Phan another shiny new bracelet and some more money to send back to his family in Vietnam.

The final table played out as follows:

Check out more details of how the action happened through three days of play in the Event 40 live updates.

Event 41

Poker fans who haven’t tuned in to PL.com coverage since Tuesday’s second report from the 2008 WSOP may be expecting to see Nick Binger’s name come up as the winner of the $1,500 Mixed Hold’em event. He was on a tear, taking out the first four players at the final table to build a monster lead over the rest of the table.

However, all good things must come to an end, and unfortunately for Binger, his end didn’t come with a bracelet win. Instead, he was knocked out in third as Frank Gary and Jonathan Tamayo battled heads-up for the bracelet.

In the end it was Gary coming out on top. Tamayo chose to make a stand on the first hand as play switched to No-Limit after he’d been crippled on the last hand of the Limit part of the level.

He went all-in and got a call from Gary. Gary showed #As#3h to Tamayo’s #Qh#7s.

The board fell #Ac#6s#4c#8s#2s to give Gary the win and the gold bracelet.

The final-table results were:

For more details about how the tournament played out, visit the Event 41 live updates.

Event 42

The Rio was swimming with poker players age 50 and older for two days in the $1,000 Seniors No-Limit Hold’em World Championship and now the sea has parted to reveal the final nine players who will battle for the bracelet today.

They are:

They will resume play at 2 p.m. today to battle for the honor of being the Senior World Champion. Meanwhile, there were several pros in Day 2 who didn’t make the final table but didn’t walk away empty handed either.

Tom McEvoy, Marsha Waggoner, Men Nguyen and Amarillo Slim Preston made it into the top 198 to make some money in the event.

To find out who will take home the bracelet win today, keep an eye on all the action in the Event 42 live updates.

Event 43

The only event getting started on Tuesday was the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Split Eight-or-Better event. With 720 players showing up, the prize pool is up over $980,000, and the winner will be looking at a $216,200 payday.

After the first day of play, the playing field is already down to 68, who will return to the felt today, and all of them will walk away with some cash because the event pays out the top 72.

Ed Smith will have the advantage of the chip lead when play begins today, but right behind him is Shannon Shorr, who will be looking at his first WSOP cash in a non-Hold’em event. He talked about his success in Day 1 in his blog, and detailed one of his big hands of the day.

“It came just short of the money when I spiked huge on Layne Flack for my tournament life,” Shorr wrote. “A very weak player with lots of chips opened for $3,000, Layne called from the SB, and I called $2,000 more with #Kd#2d#6s#4s.”

The flop came #Ks#9s#2c. Flack checked, and Shorr led out for $7,000. He got a fold from the first guy, and then Flack moved in on him for his last $21,400.

“I thought for a long time, but getting 21:10 was too good of a price with Kings up and a flush draw. I thought Layne almost certainly had a draw because it’s def hard to smack a made hand in PLO8 when you defend from the SB on K92,” Shorr wrote.

“Layne showed me the absolute worst case scenario, #As#Ac#9s#9c, to have my flush draw dead along with his middle set. This is like one of the only hands he could show me where the price wouldn’t be right to call. I was dead to one of the case two kings, and miraculously I got there when I rivered a King.”

Shorr isn’t the only poker pro who will return to play on Day 2. The field is littered with players like Joe Hachem, Erik Seidel, Chip Jett and more, who will surely make today’s run toward the final table interesting.

Play will get started again at 2 p.m. and so will our live coverage to bring you the latest and greatest from the 2008 WSOP.

Event 44 and Event 45

The poker action that will start the day off at noon is the beginning of Event 44, a $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em with Rebuys event. Players will start with $2,000 in chips and can rebuy at any time during the first two hours if their chips dip below the $2,000 starting level.

This event also allows players to do a double rebuy/add-on at the end of the second level for another $4,000 in chips.

Last year this event drew more than 1,000 players who chipped in more than 2,300 rebuys.

The second event getting started today is the much-anticipated $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event. It gets started at 5 p.m. and poker fans can expect to see some of the biggest names in the game sitting down to battle.

For all the action, head to the 2008 WSOP Live Tournaments section, and for an addition treat, check out Hevad Khan’s thoughts on the game of poker in the latest video from Las Vegas.

Related Articles:

• 2008 WSOP Day 26: The Nick Binger show
• 2008 WSOP Day 26: Woo-ing a bracelet win

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Even though this will only be the third year for the event, the prestige of the H.O.R.S.E. event is nearly equal to that of the Main Event. Why?

For starters, the high buy-in virtually guarantees that the field will be composed of the best players in the world. Then there’s the fact that whoever wins the event has to be a master of five different varieties of poker, a difficult feat for even some of the more well-known players in poker.

Here’s a look at the brief history of the H.O.R.S.E. tournament.

2006: Chip Reese Wins $1,784,640

Thanks to a scheduling snafu, the 143 entrants in the WSOP’s first-ever $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. tourney had just two days to play five varieties of Limit poker on the way to setting the final table.

The slow nature of the game saw just 14 of those players eliminated on the first day of play, meaning an additional 120 players had to be knocked out on Day 2. Play went deep into the next morning, necessitating a late start to the final table.

The players who made that final table all had stellar reputations. Incoming chip leader Chip Reese, long considered one of the best players in the game, had to face down one of the single toughest final-table lineups ever assembled at the WSOP.

To make things even more difficult, the format of the final table switched from Limit H.O.R.S.E. to No-Limit Hold’em, all for the benefit of the ESPN cameras.

Right behind Reese in the standings was the legendary Doyle Brunson, followed by the highly accomplished Full Tilt Poker duo of Andy Bloch and Phil Ivey. Former Main Event champion Jim Bechtel, Stud specialist David Singer, three-time bracelet winner Dewey Tomko, two-time Main Event runner-up T.J. Cloutier, and young superstar Patrik Antonius rounded out the table.

In the end, Reese survived the minefield to enter heads-up play with a slight chip advantage over Bloch at 2 a.m. local time. Both men played with aggression, but they also avoided committing large stacks of chips, leading to a drawn-out confrontation.

On more than a handful of occasions Bloch was poised to deliver a knockout blow, but Reese caught good cards at opportune moments - he was saved on two different occasions by a flush and a gut-shot straight, and he slow-played a pair of kings to double up on another.

After 286 hands, the heads-up match ended when Bloch pushed in with 9-8 and Reese called with A-Q. The paint cards held up and Reese was the first-ever $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. champion.

The final table was one of the longest in WSOP history, and the 7.5-hour heads-up match became the longest of all time at the WSOP. Reese claimed his third career bracelet, and his first since 1982.

ESPN’s Norman Chad asked Reese in his post-victory interview whether he felt the win put a final stamp of approval on his reputation as the greatest all-around poker player in the world.

“Not really in my eyes,” said the legendary Reese. “It’s great to win a tournament, and there’s a lot of fanfare involved, but I think Doyle Brunson said it best when someone asked him who were the best superstars coming up in the world. Doyle said, ‘I don’t know, ask me in 20 years.’ That’s really what poker’s all about. Hopefully I’ve stood the test of time. That’s what it takes. It’s not just one day or two days, it’s every day.”

2007: Freddy Deeb wins $2,276,832

#img: kassem-freddy-deeb_19369.jpg: left: Deeb digs deep to win the second $50k H.O.R.S.E. event.#

The $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. tourney returned in 2007 after its successful first run, and drew a field of 148 players the second time around. Many of the complaints about the previous year’s structure were addressed by the WSOP staff; the tournament was lengthened to five days instead of three, and the final table was played out the same way as the rest of the tournament: in H.O.R.S.E. mode.

Just as in the previous year’s tournament, the $50,000 buy-in guaranteed that the field was stacked with the best players in the world. Only 16 players made the money, but they were some of the best-known players in all of poker.

Former Main Event champ Greg Raymer, Seven-Card Stud bracelet winner Chris Reslock, two-time bracelet winner Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, and High Stakes Poker co-host Gabe Kaplan all cashed but came up short of the final table. Dewey Tomko came close to repeating at the final table, but fell just two spots short in 10th place.

Where Tomko came up short, however, David Singer succeeded: he proved his mettle by making the final table for the second year running, ultimately finishing in sixth place.

The rest of the final-table lineup may not have racked up as much superstar name recognition as the previous year’s, but there was still a ton of poker talent on display. Two-time bracelet winner Thor Hansen, double-bracelet holder and cash-game monster Barry Greenstein, Stud specialist Amnon Filippi, and cash-game specialist Kenny Tran all made the final eight.

The wild card at the final table was New York stock trader John Hanson, who had just three prior career tournament cashes to his credit. He ultimately finished in third place, setting the stage for a heads-up match between bracelet holder Freddy Deeb and Aviation Club de Paris founder Bruno Fitoussi.

Deeb held a chip lead of more than 3-1, and kept control of the match virtually the entire way. Unlike the previous year’s No-Limit Hold’em final table, coming back from a huge chip deficit was much more unlikely in the Limit H.O.R.S.E. games. Fitoussi finally fell on the 341st hand of final-table play. That made the 2007 H.O.R.S.E. final table the fourth-longest in WSOP history.

“When I won my first bracelet, I was mostly a cash-game player so it didn’t really matter that much to me,” Deeb said after his win. “But this one - it means everything to me. They are the toughest players in the world. It has the highest buy-in. Except for the Main Event, this is the bracelet that means the most of any of them.”

2008: H.O.R.S.E. returns to the WSOP again

The popular H.O.R.S.E. tournament returns to the WSOP this year for a third run, and chances are good that both the final table and the winner will share the same pedigree as the last two years.

Unfortunately for the poker world, Chip Reese died suddenly last December at the age of 56 and thus won’t have a shot at becoming the first two-time champ in the event’s history. In honor of the poker legend, the WSOP has announced that the winner of the tournament will take home not only the bracelet and cash, but also a trophy known as the David “Chip” Reese Award.

This year’s $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event begins today at 5 p.m. and is scheduled to last five days. PokerListings.com will have its crack reporting staff on hand for the duration of the tournament, so be sure to check in and see who follows in the footsteps of two poker greats by claiming one of the world’s most prestigious titles.

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