One of the problems on looking back at poker events and tournaments that straddle the week into the weekend is that you often have to appraise performances before the final placings are announced. As we all know, a lot can happen before the final placings are announced and people who looked like sure-fire winners can often find themselves left with no money and a lot of disappointment. However, that is the nature of poker. The final table will always be the most important thing and the area that players should look to but if you can’t turn it on during the early days of an event, you’ll have no chance of making it through to the final places.
We are no nearer to finding out who the big winners at the WPT Venice event are but when the event made its way down to 36 players, a couple of British players were looking in a great position. This alone is something to be approved of, the more British players making the latter stages of poker tournaments the better but when you hear the names of the players who have battled through to the final 36, there shouldn’t be any surprise.
Cheering on the Scott!
Kara Scott may not be strictly British but anyone that spent 10 years of her life here and did a lot to help females rise to prominence in the UK poker scene is always going to be one to keep an eye on. Of the two British interest players in the final 46, Scott was the better placed. This is down to the fact that she held 113,400 chips, which was not a bad level to be at. It has been a busy time for Kara because she has recently been serving as the hostess at the recent PartyPoker.com Premier League VI event. Perhaps keeping an eye on eventual winner Dan Shak gave her some pointers.
Not that Kara Scott needs too many tips or advice about how to deliver the best poker performances as she has provided so many major poker highlights in her illustrious career. Any player that has picked up more than $570,000 in live tournaments is definitely a player of calibre but as of yet, Scott is yet to be a winner at a WPT Main Event. Hopefully Venice is the venue where she rips up that statistic but there is an awful lot of poker to be played before a winner steps forward.
Liv keeps on popping up
Scott was joined in the final 36 by Liv Boeree, the Team PokerStars professional and all-round poker star. Boeree went into the final 36 with a stack of 93,600 chips which she will need to build on if she wants to land a major cash prize. Boeree has been able to make it to the money spots before in a WPT event. She managed to earn herself over $40,000 for a money finish at the 2009 Seventh Annual Five Star World Poker Classic event. Sadly this was not a poker event commemorating the briefly successful and then non-existent pop career of the band Five Star.
The top five ranked players going into the final 36 saw Giuseppe Pastura sit in 5th place and he had 254,000 chips. In fourth place was Steve Behm who had 263,800 chips while Erion Islamay was in third place with 281,200 chips. Sitting in second was Lauri Pesonen who had 287,300 and the chip leader of the final 36 was Ludovic Lacay who had a stack of 351,400 chips.
The glamour and beauty of Venice clearly never impacted on the determination or focus of any of these players and this will have to remain the case until the event is over.