WPT Bellagio, Day 4:
A Final Table for the Ages

Saturday, December 17th, 2005

by BJ Nemeth
CardPlayer.com

The five-day championship of Bellagio's Five Diamond World Poker Classic has been packed with drama. As different players rise and fall, so do their different storylines. But with day four representing the Final-Table-or-Bust period, these stories either gathered steam or came to a conclusion

Gracz Falls Short -- Barely

With 27 players returning for day four, Maciek "Michael" Gracz was tenth on the leaderboard with a fairly average chip stack. He would need to reach the final table (and finish fifth or higher) to win one of the highest honors in poker -- Card Player's prestigious Player of the Year award.

Gracz was the last threat in the field to the current POY points leader, Men "The Master" Nguyen. But he took a big hit during the second level when he was in a race situation with A-K against Jeff Littlefield's pocket queens. Littlefield flopped a full house on a board of Q-5-5, and Gracz lost over half a million in chips, leaving him with fewer than $200,000. He caught a break ten minutes later when he was on the other side of a race against Darrell Dicken, and his pocket jacks held up against Dicken's A-Q. But he was still fairly low in chips.

He continued to lose chips for the next half hour, until he moved all in with Kh-9h after an early position raise by James Van Alstyne. But when Dicken moved all in over the top of him, Gracz must have thought, "This can't be good." It only got worse when Patrik Antonius moved all in over the top of Dicken. "This really can't be good." Van Alstyne quickly folded to get out of the way, and the hands were revealed.

Gracz's Kh-9h was up against Antonius's Ah-Ks and Dicken's pocket aces (Ad-As). Well, with that much action preflop, you knew someone had to have aces.

Here are the chip counts headed to the final table:

1. Joanne "J.J." Liu - $3,630,000 (seat 4)
2. Darrell "Gigabet" Dicken - $3,510,000 (seat 1)
3. Rehne Pedersen - $3,225,000 (seat 3)
4. Phil "Unabomber" Laak - $2,505,000 (seat 5)
5. Doyle Brunson - $2,025,000 (seat 6)
6. Patrik Antonius - $1,755,000 (seat 2)

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