Mike Sexton has won Heat 6 of the World Open v becoming the fifth pro to make it to today’s showpiece final at the Palm Beach Casino in Mayfair.
It hadn’t always looked like the PartyPoker Global Ambassador would progress through this heat as time and time again he ran up against bigger hands leaving him short stacked. The WPT commentator had to dig deep into his vast reservoir of poker experience to claw his way back into contention.
In a field including such poker luminaries as reigning champion Marty Smyth, 2009 European Open V winner Roberto Romanello and Brazilian star Felipe ‘Mojave’ Ramos the game started of very cagily as the players sized up each other. It was no surprise to see the players acting warily as the new triple stacked format afforded them the time to gradually build their chip counts.
It was Romanello and Smyth who made the first breakaway from the pack amassing over 700,000 chips before the first break. As the blinds began to increase we saw our first players depart. First out was Bruno Fitoussi then Felipe and Dixie followed in quick succession.
As we came into a three-handed game online qualifier Daniel Drescher lead the way with 1.1m chips with Romanello and Sexton trailing way behind. But suddenly the wily Sexton stepped up a gear first doubling up against Romanello with A10 V A4 then delivering the final blow to knock the long time chip leader out of the tourney in third place.
That left Sexton up against the German Drescher. To say we were left with a gulf in experience at the table would be an understatement of the mightiest proportions. But as you will all know in a two-way fight it can be anybody’s game. However it wasn’t to be as unbelievably the heads-up battle lasted just one hand. Drescher had aggressively pushed all in with a flush draw but Sexton had hit two pair with two fours and two fives, Sexton made the call and hit the full house on the turn to leave Drescher drawing dead.
The rapidity of the finish had caught everyone by surprise but not the calm and composed Mike Sexton who has seen it all before. He now progresses into today’s final and Drescher moves into the runners-up heat.
Great news for the PartyPoker pro but that leaves us with one problem who are we going to get to commentate on the final now Mike’s taken his seat? Any takers out there?
