Michigan based player wins Event 5 at the World Series to pick up his first bracelet
Friday 6th June 2008
Michael Banducci has joined Erick Lindgren and David Singer as recent recipients of a WSOP bracelet. Banducci took down Event #5, the $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em with Rebuys, maintaining his overnight chip lead from start to finish, winning $636,736.
The Michigan pro came third in last year’s WPT Borgata Poker Open, and cashed four times in last year’s World Series. This is his biggest win to date though.
The chip counts going into the final table looked like this:
Seat 1: Michael Banducci - 1,655,000
Seat 2: Jonathan Aguiar - 361,000
Seat 3: Michael Binger - 186,000
Seat 4: Steve Gross - 112,000
Seat 5: Jamie Rosen - 475,000
Seat 6: Jeff Williams - 683,000
Seat 7: Alan Jaffray - 1,222,000
Seat 8: Peter Gould - 702,000
Seat 9: Lyric Duveyoung - 659,000
The fifth hand of play brought two casualties as the pocket Queens of Duveyoung eliminated both Jamie Rosen and Steve Gross, who ended up finishing eighth and ninth respectively.
It only took three more hands before we lost Michael Binger. The Main Event final tablist from two years ago moved all in from the small blind for 156,000. He moved all in with AJ and was called by the K8 of Jeff Williams, who proceeded to hit his top pair on the flop. There was no reversal of fortunes for Binger, who collected $101,293 for his seventh place finish.
With the remaining six players evenly stacked, and plenty of big blinds each, play slowed down considerably. Eventually Peter Gould’s pocket fives made a full house to cripple Jonathon Aguiar, who was finally eliminated on the very next hand.
Eliminations for Alan Jaffray (5th, $164,963), Duveyoung (4th, $201,139), and Peter Gould (3rd, $245,993) left Banducci with a big chip leader over Williams. After several small pots being traded, Williams decided to make his move with A-5, but was dominated when called by Banducci’s A-J. A jack on the flop put Banducci in control, and the turn and river didn’t change matters.
