Tuesday, November 8, 2011, three entered center stage at the Penn & Teller Theater in the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas. One emerged with the grand prize – Pius Heinz.
My personal favorite, 2011 WSOP Player of the Year Ben Lamb came in third – AND – it happened so fast, frankly, my head was still spinning 2/3 way through the 119-hand heads-up play between Heinz and Staszko.
On the first hand, Lamb (SB) went All In after a re-raise from Staszko (BB). Heinz had folded the button. You can imagine the noise in the Penn & Teller Theater. It was unbelieving frenzy. If Lamb won the hand, Staszko would be out and we would be down to heads up. If Staszko were to win the hand, he’d double up and Lamb’s stack would be decimated – and we’d be very close to heads up.
Lamb had KJo. Staszko had a pair 7s. Lamb was unable to improve and Staszko took the hand. Lamb had 12.7M left in his stack. On the fourth hand, holding Q6o, Lamb went all in for the rest of chips and Staszko snap-called with a pair of Js. Lamb was out in third place winning a little over $4M.
After Ben Lamb busted (6:13PM PST) , the chip counts were:
Pius Heinz 117.3M
Martin Staszko 88.6M
Heinz and Staszko went on to play another 119 hands over approx. 6 hours. From what I’ve read, it wasn’t all “the Heinz show” which some might have expect due to his past performance and his chip stack. Reports are that Heinz did a good job of chipping away at Staszko’s stack, then Staszko would win a monster, and win all his chips back. In fact, at 11:30 PM PST the stacks were within 15M of where they had been 5 hours before.
Staszko was busted November 9, 2011 at approx. 12:23 AM PST when he went all in for his remaining 39.5M chips. His 10 7 c were beat by Heinz’s AKo. Staszko takes home $5.4M and Heinz $8.7M
Play ended during level 43: 1.2M/2.4M; $300K ante