Lind, Billirakis, Zhukov Set to Play Knockout
Welcome back to what we would hope would be the final day of Event #11, the $10,000 Omaha Hi-Lo Championship. We're here an extra day, and it actually figures to be a short one. With the limits going to 120,000/240,000, there are only about 25 big bets in play.
George Lind has the lion's share of those chips, sitting atop the counts with 2.86 million. He's looking for his first gold bracelet, and that's one less than the man with the short stack today. Steve Billirakis was the youngest player ever to win a WSOP title at the age of 18 years and a couple minutes. He took down the $5,000 Mixed Hold'em Championship in 2007, good for a half-million dollars and a spot in the history books. He's looking for bracelet number two today, but he's on the bottom of the pack with just 740,000 -- about three big bets -- to start the day. This is his 14th WSOP cash, and he'll move over $2 million in career earnings regardless of his finish today.
The third in the party is Russian Viacheslav Zhukov, a man with just one career cash to his credit. It was a good one, though, a victory in the €3,000 6-max NLHE event at EPT Kyiv. This is his first taste of a WSOP final table, and it's guaranteed to be his largest cash yet. Will it come with a bracelet? It may well; Zhukov is hot on Lind's heels with 2.465 million chips with which to finish the battle.
We're just about 10 minutes away from our starting time, and it shouldn't be too long before hand out another bracelet at the 2011 WSOP.
Don't wander off.