JP Kelly fell ohsoclose of winning his 3rd WSOP bracelet in Event #3 – £1,000 + 75 NL Holdem, finishing 2nd to Scott Shelley, an employee at online poker site PKR, who won his seat in an office freeroll*. Shelley earned £133,857 for the win, while Kelly pocketed £82,854 for the runner-up finish. Full results available at WSOP.com.

* Credit to Chris Hall of PokerNews.

Day 1 of the £10,350 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller Heads-Up drew a field of 103 players, with the winner earning a coveted WSOPE gold bracelet along with £288,409. Round 2 action has concluded with 32 players returning with three more rounds of play starting Wednesday afternoon at 3pm. Among the players who made it to Wednesday action: Phil Ivey, Scott Fischman, Mori Eskandani, Andrew Feldman, Andrew Robl and Shawn Buchanan. The draw for round 3 is available at WSOP.com.

Elsewhere …

WPT Borgata Poker Open – Atlantic City :: Day 3 playing down to 27, defending champion Oliver Busquet leads the field. WPT Live Updates and Borgata Poker Blog

SportingBet, former home of Sportsbook.com and Paradise Poker, settles with US Department of Justice for $33,000,000. – EGR Magazine

Day 1a of the £1,075 NL Holdem event drew a field of 202 entrants Friday afternoon. After nine levels of play, 28 players return Monday afternoon to join the day 1b and 1c survivors. The day 1a chip leader is Denmark’s Jeppe Bisgaard with 49,000 in chips. Other day 1a notables: Keith “The Camel” Hawkins – 27,800, defending champion JP Kelly – 23,800 and November Niner Matthew Jarvis – 14,700. Chip counts available here as Day 1b gets underway at 12pm London time Saturday.

Day 3 of the £5,250 Pot-Limit Omaha event will resume at 3pm Saturday afternoon with 15 players remaining. November Niner John Racener will hold the chip lead, while Chris Bjorin and Willie Tann, final tablists in the £2,500 NL Holdem 6-max event, have also made the money. Here’s how the remaining players will be seated, with blinds at 1,500/3,000:

Table One:

Seat 1. Steve Jelinek – 56,500
Seat 2. Andrew Miles – 80,500
Seat 4. Sean Dempsey – 36,500
Seat 5. Jeff Kimber – 86,500
Seat 6. Chris Bjorin – 122,000
Seat 7. Samuel Stein – 119,500
Seat 8. Karl Mahrenholz – 211,000
Seat 9. Jeff Madsen – 126,500

Table Two:

Seat 1. Willie Tann – 154,000
Seat 2. John Racener – 276,000
Seat 3. Erik Friberg – 97,000
Seat 4. Joe Serock – 72,000
Seat 5. Filipe Ramos – 141,000
Seat 6. Jeff Lisandro – 131,000
Seat 9. Michael Schwartz – 66,000

Follow the updates at PokerNews and WSOP.com

Recapping Monday’s WSOP, with another bracelet winner awarded:

Yan Chen Lowball Winner

The $1,500 No-Limit 2-7 Lowball, Single Draw champion was Yan Chen, a cash game veteran defeated Mike Wattel heads-up to earn his first bracelet, along with $92,817. The full results and Nolan Dalla’s tournament report are online at wsop.com. Check out a brief documentary on Chen, which I believe appeared on Pokerati a while ago, here.

18 Left for Day 3 of 10k Stud 8

Day 2 of the $10,000 Seven Card Stud 8 or Better World Championship concluded with 18 players returning at 3:30 this afternoon, but only 16 will make the money. The current chip leader is Frank Kassela (515,000), followed by Sergey Altbregin (497,000) and Kirill Rabtsov (388,000). Other notables returning include John Juanda (368,000), Allen Kessler (316,000), Steve Zolotow (301,000) and Vladimir Schmelev (275,000). Here’s the full list of the remaining field.

Vance leads day 3 of $1,000 NL

Matt Vance (547,000) will lead the day 3 field of $1,000 No-Limit Holdem event with 56 players remaining. Other notables returning at 2:30 to maybe play down to a winner: Mats Gavatin (453,000), Carl Olson (325,000), Jared Hamby (217,000) and Ylon Schwartz (183,000). See the full list of chip counts here.

Teska Tops for Day 2 of $1,500 NL 6-max

The $1,500 No-Limit Holdem 6-Max event drew a field of 1,663 players, with the field making the money near the end of play. When the 146 players return at 2:30 this afternoon, Roger Teska (221,000) will start with the chip lead, with familiar names David Sands (117,800), JP Kelly (92,900), Mark Seif (70,300), and Bryan Micon (65,500). Event 16 chip counts here.

Tuesday’s Tournament

The only tournament starting today is at noon, the $5,000 No-Limit Holdem event should bring out a strong field of pros, both live and online. Last year’s event was won by Brian Lemke, cousin of Justin Shronk, for nearly $700,000. Follow all the action this afternoon at WSOP.com or PokerNews.

Recapping Wednesday night’s WSOP action, starting with the awarding of two more WSOP bracelets:

Daya Takes down $1,000 NL bracelet

The first $1,000 No-Limit Holdem bracelet of this year’s WSOP was awarded to Canadian Aadam Daya defeating Deepak Bhatti in heads-up play. Daya won the sixth-largest live poker tournament in history, besting a field of 4,345 players to earn $625,872. Bhatti picked up $385,106 for the runner-up finish. The full list of results and Nolan Dalla’s tournament report is available at WSOP.com.

Bansi’s Best for bracelet #2

Praz Bansi picked up his 2nd career WSOP bracelet, winning the $1,500 No-Limit Holdem bracelet, defeating Vincent Jacques heads-up to prevent a Canadian sweep of bracelets on Wednesday. Jacques earned $320,913 for falling just short of a bracelet, the full list of results and Dalla’s report are online here.

Channing, Levi headline Shootout Final Table

The final table of the $5,000 No-Limit Shootout gets underway at 2:30pm this afternoon with these six players, each with the same starting stack of 1,500,000:

Neil Channing
Stuart Rutter
Nicolas Levi
Brent Hanks
Joseph Elpayaa
Joshua Tieman

Triple Draw almost reaches their final table

Play at the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball ended earlier this morning with its final table just out of reach, returning at 4pm this afternoon to determine a winner. Among those who made the money: Team Pokerati’s Pat Poels (10th for $12,232), Ted Forrest (12th for $9,972), Jordan Seigel and Allen Kessler (16th and 17th for $7,663 each). The rest of the results can be found here. Here’s the eight players looking for a bracelet:

David Chiu 436,000
Peter Gelencser 400,000
Don Mcnamara 370,000
Raphael Zimmerman 262,000
Tad Jurgens 223,000
Leonard Martin 195,000
Shunjiro Uchida 173,000
Jameson Painter 127,000

Schlein Leads $1,500 NL for Day 2

Josh Schlein leads the remaining 270 players returning at 2:30pm for day 2 of the $1,500 No-Limit Holdem with 127,300 in chips. Other notables on the leaderboard: Jean-Robert Bellande (89,200), Phil Hellmuth (84,700), and Amnon Filippi (55,800). The full list of chip counts can be found at PokerNews.

Thursday’s Tournaments

The $1,500 Pot-Limit Holdem event starts at 12pm today, won last year by John Paul Kelly for over $190,000 in besting a field of 633. A compact field is expected at 5pm today for the $10,000 Seven-Card Stud World Championship won by Freddie Ellis last year, winning over $370,000 as the last man standing in a field of 142.

John Paul Kelly 2009: 2 bracelets, 2 continents.

The first event of the 2009 World Series of Poker Europe is completed and we have crowned the first champion. He ended Day 1 as the chipleader and finished the tournament in the same vein, step forward Mr JP Kelly.

The £1,000 entry-fee appealed to pros and amateurs alike, with Day 1a attracting 295 runners including the likes of Phil Hellmuth, Roland de Wolfe and Dave ‘Devilfish’ Ulliot with the former being eliminated very early on into proceedings.

After raising preflop, then calling a re-raise from Eddie Hearn, Hellmuth somehow managed to get all his chips in the middle holding 5h6h which gave him an open-ended straight draw. He definitely needed to hit as Hearn held pocket kings, but a 9s turn followed by a Qc river saw ‘The Poker Brat’ heading for the rail.

The action was thick and fast due to the shallow starting stacks and hour long blinds and by the end of play only 41 players still had chips remaining!

Day 1b showed no signs of slowing down either, despite it been a more pro-heavy day with Phil Ivey, Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson, Annette Obrestad and 2008 WSOPE Main Event winner John Juanda taking to the tables. Out of the 313 that started, only 58 would return for Day 2.

JP Kelly was the overnight chipleader with 99,000 chips but Richard Kellet, Ian Frazer andFabian Dunlop were all hot on his heels with stacks around the 65,000 mark. Of the 89 remaining players, only 63 would make the money, meaning 26 unlucky players would be going home empty handed.

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