At the beginning of the final table in event 25 - $2,000 no-limit hold’em, hardly anyone outside friends and family had heard of any of the participants. When it was all over, Ben Ponzio ensured his name would be remembered. Elsewhere at the World Series of Poker yesterday;
- Ralph Schwartz outlasted a stellar field to win one of the more impressive titles at this year’s WSOP, the $5,000 HORSE. Schwartz defeated Bill Gazes in the final after they’d outlasted Phil Ivey’s start-of-day chip lead. The winner took home 4275,683 - Event 27’s leaderboard is about as no-name as it gets. Seth Weinger is the massive chip leader heading to the final table with T1.7 million, while no one else has more than T1.2 million. - Don’t look now, but Phil Hellmuth is at it again. He finished day 1 of event 28 - $3,000 no-limit hold’em in fourth place. Feng Chen is the chip leader, Ed Moncada is in second and Tilt Boy Perry Friedman is fifth. - In event 29, Mike Dreyer has 50% more chips than the rest of the field after the first day of play. Amongst the chip leaders are young gun Steve Sung, big gamer David Oppenheim and Men “The Master” Nguyen
They entered the finale almost even in chips, but Ponzio took control from the beginning. By the final hand, he had a T5.3 million-T1.2 million chip lead. Ponzio raised his small blind to T250,000 with Kh-Qh. Hewitt, needing to make a move soon, decided this was the time and moved in with 10h-3h. The flop came Jd-9s-6c, robbing Hewitt of his tens as outs. The turn 8s gave him hope, but Ad on the river was the nail in the coffin. Ponzio took home almost $600,000 for the win.
