2007 WSOP, Day 36: Part One -- Holy Schnike! Tommy Boy WSOP POY!

Was up late again last night as the penultimate event, the $5,000 Deuce-to-Seven w/Rebuys event (No. 54), did not finish until around five a.m. my time. Erik Seidel took his eighth bracelet, coming back from a huge deficit against Chad Brown to win.

There was a point during heads-up when Brown had about a 5-to-1 chip advantage against Seidel (2,625,000 to 440,000). Seidel went all-in, drew one card, and doubled up with an 8-low. Seidel won a few more small pots, chipping up to just over 1,000,000, then doubled through again on a hand where he pushed all in and Brown called. Seidel had stood pat with J-10-7-4-2; Brown had drawn one card but obviously missed as he mucked. That gave Seidel the chip advantage, and he’d finally win all the chips after drawing to an 8-low on the final hand. In just 20 hands, Seidel went from utter life support to bracelet winner.

There was also some drama early on as Tom Schneider went out in 16th place, thus opening the door for Jeffrey Lisandro to overtake him on the last lap for WSOP Player of the Year. Only the top seven finishers in last night’s event cashed; those seven were also the only players to receive any WSOP POY points. If Lisandro had finished seventh or above, he’d have beaten out Tom.

At the moment when Allen Cunningham’s 8-7-6-5-3 bested Tom’s 10-low and sent the Donkey Bomber to the rail, Lisandro had 128,000 chips, putting him in 11th out of the remaining 14 players. At the time, the average stack size was around 220,000, and the blinds 3,000/6,000 with a 1,500 ante. Lisandro had time to wait for a good hand, but sitting back and cruising into the money (and the POY title) wasn’t an option.

Lisandro took about a 40,000-chip hit right away when he lost a hand out of the big blind to Chris “Jesus” Ferguson. A few minutes later, Andrew Black min-raised and Lisandro (who was sitting to Black’s left) pushed his remaining chips in the middle. Black drew one card, and Lisandro stood pat. When they turned their hands over, Lisandro showed a J-7-6-5-2. However Black held a J-7-6-4-2, barely pipping Lisandro with the fourth card. Lisandro was out, and Schneider became WSOP Player of the Year.

Earlier in the week PokerWire Radio host Joe Stapleton mentioned wanting to get Tom on the show as a guest. Here’s hoping they manage that in the near future, perhaps even today.

Meanwhile, big congrats to Tom -- we’re all proud of you.

On to the Main Event! (More later today.)