WSOP Event #26 Recap – Tomas Alenius Wins $1,500 Limit Holdem Bracelet

Event #26 of the WSOP was the $1,500 Limit Holdem Event. Limit Holdem tournaments are beginning to become tough to find live, but the WSOP is one place you can find them year after year. Attendance for this event dropped by almost 27% from last year with only 643 players attending the event. Part of this may have been due to the event being the 26th event in this year’s schedule. Last year, the $1,500 was the 12th event and in 2006 and 2007 it was the 4th and 6th event respectively.

This event drew out many limit specialists, including several top pros. Among the players in the field were Daniel Negreanu, Al “Sugar Bear” Barbieri, Barry Greenstein, Mark Seif, and James Guill. Only 63 players would make the money in this event. Among the notables in the money were Soheil Samshedden in 63rd, Barry Greenstein in 53rd, Bryan Devonshire in 52nd, Victor Ramdin in 49th, Bill Chen in 35th, Justin Bonomo in 30th, and Richard Brodie in 10th.

Al “Sugar Bear” Barbieri was the headliner heading into the final table. Barbieri took the chip lead of almost 500,000 chips into the final. Cole Miller was first eliminated from the final when he bluffed off his stack with ace-high against a flopped pair of fives for Al Barbieri. Kim-Phong Duong was involved in a three-way pot all-in but his A-Q was not enough to beat the A-K of Glenn Engelbert. Rep Porter was all-in at the river in his last hand, but Demtrios Arvanetes held a flush and Porter was gone.

Dominik Kulicki decided to make a stand with Kh-Qd but ran into the pocket aces of Jason Tam to finish in 6th. Demetrios Arvanetes was all-in with Kc-9h against two players. Glenn Engelbert started with a pair of sevens and by the river finished with the same. The sevens were good and Arvanetes was eliminated. Glenn Engelbert would lose most of his chips to Al Barbieri and then move in the next hand with Qs-7s. Tomas Alenius woke up with pocket aces and put Engelbert to sleep permenately.

The three remaining players were relatively even in chips three handed but Al Barbieri would start going in the wrong direction. A series of lost pots left him with less than 300,000. He finally got all the chips in with Js-10d on a As-Jc-8s flop. Jason Tam held Ad-Ks and his pair of aces would hold to send Barbieri home in 3rd place.

At the start of heads-up play Tomas Alenius had a long road to hoe as he was behind Jason Tam 2,175 Million to 720,000. However, Alenius would take a series of pots to not only narrow the gap but take the chip lead. The turning point in the match was a pot where Tam turned a flush against Alenius, but Alenius would river a full house to take a 2.2 Million to 500,000 chip lead.

The final hand of the matchup saw Tam go in with Qs-5c against the As-4c of Alenius. The failed to pair up Tam, and Alenius became the champion. Tomas Alenius took the gold bracelet and 197,488 in prize money.

Event 26 started as another limit tournament and nearly became the crowing achievement in Al Barbieri’s career. However, it was not to be and Tomas Alenius would win his first bracelet and become another in a long list of relative unknown players to win a Limit Holdem bracelet.

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