Three days wasn't enough to crown a champion in Event #4. The £10,000 High Roller Heads-Up event blew away expectations, drawing an overflow crowd of 103 players and generating a million-pound prize pool in the process. The action was proceeding smoothly enough until semifinal Day 3 when a couple of brutally long matches ate up all the hours on the clock. Gus Hansen and Jim Collopy eventually dispatched of Andrew Feldman and Ram Vaswani respectively, but they could not overcome each other so easily. They split the first two of the best-of-three final at one apiece, playing on into the early morning hours. That left the result up in the air, as both players wanted to come back and play Day 1b of the Main Event after a power nap. That ruled out a Saturday finish, and Collopy made it relatively deep into Day 2 today as well, so we still have a score left to settle.
Because of the difficulty in finding a vacant spot on the calendar this week, there was even some brief chatter about a change of scenery for the two players. The tournament staff considered bringing Hansen and Collopy out to Vegas in November to play out the Final as a sort of undercard to the Main Event final table. Obviously, there were a boatload of logistical hurdles to overcome, and the idea never fully got off the ground.
In the end, this stage is a much more fitting and logical place to play it out, anyway. Collopy lives right here in London, and he's in school this semester in an NYU exchange program. That means he has 11 hours of class on Monday, and it also makes the task of getting to Vegas and back without flunking out a little bit challenging. Hansen, a resident of Monaco, tends to stay away from Vegas unless he has to be there, and it's likely that wants to get home and get on with his life in the Nosebleeds come Monday.
So then, we have a fight card, and the date is inked. It's Gus Hansen vs. Jim Collopy in a one match, one-on-one battle for the greenbacks and the gold bracelet. Both of them are looking for their first WSOP title, and, if the previous two matches are any indication, the finale is going to be a good one. The ESPN cameras will be set up in the casino's center court to capture the action on film, but PokerNews is the only place where you can follow along with the action live!
We'll see you here on Sunday at 6:00 p.m. London time as we crown our penultimate bracelet winner of the 2010 WSOPE!
So, after 12 long hours, we have failed to find a winner.
Gus Hansen and Jim Collopy's first match of the final was a swift and largely one-sided affair for Hansen, and for a while it looked as though the second one was going to go his way too. But Collopy is good at working his way back from a short stack - he did it earlier today in his semi final against Ram Vaswani as well - and his patience paid off in the shape of a second shot at this bracelet.
Nobody expected today to take quite so long, and so tomorrow's final final, as it were, is still an unknown quantity. Both players want to play the Main Event, so the plan at the moment is for everyone to make it to the casino for noon, and then they'll figure it out as they go along.
Though it's been long, it hasn't had a moment of dullness. Believe us, you don't want to miss the final instalment of this heads-up show. We'll be back tomorrow at an as yet undetermined bat time, but as always, on the same bat channel. Until then, get some rest. We could have another long day ahead of us.
Gus Hansen's frustration is showing now, as he raised to 188,000 to a 63,000 bet from Jim "Mr_BigQueso" Collopy on the flop. Collopy called.
Collopy checked the turn and Hansen bet 333,000. Collopy called that, and he check-called another 556,000 on the river, turning over for a full house. Collopy's railers, now including Kevin MacPhee and Andrew Lichtenberger as well as the faithful Stephen Chidwick, cried out, "King nine!" in jubilation, remembering the double up that Collopy enjoyed with that hand earlier. Hansen meanwhile dropped to just 730,000, and is not happy at all.
By the by, it was decided some time ago that should Jim Collopy win this, making it one-all, they won't make the poor exhausted finalists play it out tonight, but instead they'll come back for the deciding round tomorrow. We understand that there's actually some sort of legal issue with them starting a heads-up match after 3am; but either way, we commend the WSOPE for making this excellent decision and sparing us the shame of still being here around lunchtime tomorrow.
All respect for the physical rail separating the final table from the plebs around it vanished as Jim Collopy made it 84,000, Gus Hansen re-popped to 186,000, Collopy said 584,000 and then called all in to Hansen's push. The sacred final table enclosure was suddenly full of slightly tipsy young men cheering for one side or the other, and the cards were on their backs.
Collopy:
Hansen:
Board: bang!
The pro-Queso end of the rail went wild. Hansen meanwhile is now on tilt - he became rather irritated when the dealer took a while to count the stacks, and he tossed his cards away in anger.
Collopy's all in was for 963,000, and the stacks are back to even. Extraordinary.
![[user66118]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
flop. Collopy called.
turn and Hansen bet 333,000. Collopy called that, and he check-called another 556,000 on the 
river, turning over 
for a full house. Collopy's railers, now including Kevin MacPhee and Andrew Lichtenberger as well as the faithful Stephen Chidwick, cried out, "King nine!" in jubilation, remembering the double up that Collopy enjoyed with that hand earlier. Hansen meanwhile dropped to just 730,000, and is not happy at all.
