2013 WSOP Event 26
Tuesday June 18,2013 : LIND TAKES THE SENIOR’S EVENT AT WORLD SERIES OF POKER
Record entry field and big money in this year's Event 26
A record entry field of 4,407 that included many top international players only sweetened the taste of success for 68-year-old Ken Lind this week as he took down the $1,000 buy-in Seniors No-Limit Hold’em Championship in event 26 at the World Series of Poker.
Lind won his first WSOP bracelet, the Golden Eagle trophy and a handsome first prize of $634,809 after successfully negotiating the gigantic field, a talented and competitive 224-hand final table and a tough heads up.
The record-breaking field again epitomised the popularity of the event, which for the last decade has shown bigger entry fields each year. And once again there was a good scattering of stars among the players, including former champions like JohnnyChan, T.J. Cloutier, Tom McEvoy and Robert Varkonyi.
By Day 3 just 34 players remained and business was brisk from the beginning, taking just two hours to define a final table that included Lind and Dana Ott, John Holley, Barry Bashist, Randy Spain, Michel Bouskila, James Miller, Jack Earnest Ward and Fernando Halac.
With Lind causing most of the casualties, the table eventually reached the heads up, with Lind vs. Dana Ott in the spotlight and a confrontation that took two hours to resolve.
The two players were well-matched in skill and experience and it was finally Lady Luck who intervened, with the fall of the cards the deciding factor. Lind was triumphant, and Dana Ott retired with a well-deserved runner up prize of $390.601.
In event 26, a $3,000 buy-in Mixed Max contest, Max Steinberg narrowly missed winning his second WSOP bracelet in a dramatic last-minute turn of the cards that saw his heads up opponent, a younger and less experienced Isaac Hagerling (26) from Cleveland, steal the game from under his nose.
Right up until the last hand it looked as if the game and that second bracelet were Steinberg's, but it was not to be as Hagerling hit a remarkable river card to dramatically change the balance and give him all but three or four percent of the chips in play. It did not take long after that for him to emerge as the winner despite a valiant attempt to fight back into the game by Steinberg.
Even Hagerling admitted after the game that he thought he was doomed to leave with the runner up prize, saying that it would still have been a handsome birthday present, whilst Steinberg's surprise and disappointment was obvious.
The event attracted an entry field of 593 which included a hefty weighting of professional aces. Seen in action were tough and talented pros like Jeremy Ausmus, Brandon Cantu and Yevgeniy Timoshenko, all of whom made the final table.
The final pay-outs on the event were:
Isaac Hagerling – $372,387
Max Steinberg – $231,501
Jeremy Ausmus – $132,748
Jason Koon – $132,748
Yevgeniy Timoshenko – $51,561
Dan Healey – $51,561
Chris Johnson – $51,561
Brandon Cantu – $51,561
