2008 WSOP Day 33: Limited shootout action

Scheduled as a two day event, Event 53 will wrap on Wednesday, giving players plenty of time before the start of the first Day 1 of the 2008 WSOP Main Event.

Last year this event drew in 720 players to create a $983,800 prize pool. The lion’s share of that money went to Ram Vaswani, giving him his first WSOP bracelet win.

The London pro has several final tables at events around the world on his poker resume, including European Poker Tour events and cashes in World Poker Tour events. However, the WSOP bracelet win was his first major tournament win.

Vaswani has also already made some waves at the 2008 WSOP by making the final table of the $10,000 World Championship Omaha Hi-Lo Split Eight or Better event. He ended up in seventh place and may be looking for redemption and another bracelet win in the Limit Hold’em Shootout.

The event may not draw as many participants this year, though. Last year the final event just before the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event only drew 78 players. It was, however, an event with less popularity than Hold’em, a 2-7 Draw Lowball World Championship.

One who might make the effort to play one last event before the Main Event because it is a Limit event is Daniel Negreanu.

Negreanu already won a bracelet in a Limit event this year, plus two of his other three bracelets are in Limit Hold’em events as well. He commented after his win this year that he’s found that Limit Hold’em is a strong game for him.

“My track record, historically, is incredible in Limit Hold’em. I don’t get to play them a lot because the other events outside of here are not Limit,” Negreanu said.

“There’s something special about Limit Hold’em tournaments in that people can’t move in on me. [Laughs.] They got to see a flop, even if they three-bet me, every hand I play there’s going to be a flop and that’s really going to play into my strengths. That’s basically what the whole small-ball concept is based on - Limit Hold’em principles. That’s the core of the way that I think about poker: Limit Hold’em.”

Stay tuned to the 2008 WSOP Live Tournaments section for all the action in this and other events that will be counting down to a winner before the Main Event gets started on Thursday.