2009 WSOP Update on Day 6 - Team Bodog Highlights

by Bodog Poker | Jul 14 2009

The WSOP Main Event is down to 71 players nearing completion of Day 6 action. Today we saw lots of big names getting sent to the rail, while poker pros Phil Ivey and Antonio Esfandiari made their way to the top spots on the chip stack leaderboard. Other notables still in the running include Tom Schneider and Dennis Phillips. Getting knocked out on Day 6 were reigning Main Event Champion Peter Eastgate, former Main Event Champion Joe Hachem, David Benyamine, and JC Tran.

Team Bodog was down to one player at the start of Day 6 of the WSOP Main Event. The remaining Team Bodog qualifier left was Turkish online player Alper "thunderfx" Sar. The young investment banker started Day 6 with a stack of 691K, which was slightly under the average chip stack size, but certainly enough to make him a contender and only one double through away from sitting amongst the bigger stacks remaining in the tournament.

Play went well for Sar for most of the day. He was able to build his chip stack up to 1.9 million late in the day and was certainly in contention get to the big money spots. But as time went on his chip stack began to dwindle down. By the late stages of the day he was down to his last 550K, and when he pushed it all-in with a pocket pair of 10's he ended up running into Ben Lamb's pocket kings. After board cards of 9h-8h-2s-Qc-3d came off he was gone in 85th place. The finish was worth $57,991 to Sar, who won his seat via a Bodog qualifying tournament and had little to no investment to recover.

Sar was able to go deeper than any other Team Bodog member, including the Bodog Pros. He displayed the skills that won him his WSOP seat, and has shown why he has had the success he's had playing online MT's. Sar will soon head back to Turkey to continue working as an investment banker, and will once again treat poker like a hobby instead of a profession. In an interview with Bodog Poker last April Alper expressed the importance, or lack of importance, of poker in his life.

"I wouldn't want to stop my job for poker. I like what I do and it pays me very well. Poker is for fun, I don't think I would want to play it all the time."

Alper may want to look at that way of thinking in a new light after his deep run in the 2009 Main Event. He has had success playing MTT's online, despite only playing poker a few limited hours per week. His job pays him very well, but he might have the talent to earn more money playing poker. We'll be looking for "thunderfx" back on the tables on Bodog.com next month, and will likely see him make an appearance in the WSOP Europe event later this summer. Congrats to Alper for becoming the last Team Bodog member remaining in this year's Main Event. We'll be watching his progress in the future.