Nineteen players came into the penultimate day of the World Poker Tour's annual jaunt to Amneville hoping to secure a final table berth. The man at the top of the chip counts was Scott Baumstein, who had been leading them all since the end of Day Two. At the end of the day the final six selected themselves and Baumstein was still at the top with 3,910,000 chips. It was an impressive feat to lead all the way from day two, but what was even more impressive was the style in which he did it. There is no other way to describe it other than sexy poker, and in fact he was that good we can just call it the Scott Baumstein show!
The day started off disastrously for anyone dreaming of a final table littered with superstar names, especially after Arnaud Mattern and Joseph Cheong both found early exits. Mattern continued his woeful run of luck when he got all of his money in the middle of the table holding [10h] [10s] on a board of [10c] [3h] [2h] - three-way. Jean Phillipe Rohr was holding [Jh] [Js] and Adrien Allain was holding [Ah] [As]. Then just as Mattern was thinking of a second placed berth, an ace on the turn handed Allain an unlikely victory, whilst simultaneously eliminating the luckless Mattern and Rohr. The hand turned Allain into the tables chip leader and he played the big stack amazingly well after that.
Nesrine Kourdourli was trying to reach back-to-back WPT Amneville final tables, but her chances were slim after Adrien Allain won that three-way all-in. After that hand, Allain made Kourdourli's life hell with a series of mind numbing three and four bets. After the Allain battering, Arnaud Trouer eliminated Kourdourli in 12th place and that meant six fresh new faces for our final table.
Arnaud Morel was eliminated in 11th place and we were reduced to one table of ten players. The two chip leaders were Scott Baumstein and Adrien Allain and they were seated next to each other; Allain had the dominating position. Was Allain going to hammer down on Baumstein in the same way that he did with Kourdourli? Allain certainly tried but Baumstein was ready and waiting.
Baumstein raised to 38,000 from early position and Adrien Allain three-bet to 100,000. The action folded around to Baumstein and he immediately four-bet to 250,000. All eyes were on Allain who was sat behind towers of chips stacked in piles of forty. The super-cool young Frenchman slowly moved a tower of yellow chips into the middle making it 500,000 to play. "One million," said Baumstein.
Allain mucked instantly. "You can get away with three betting those people over there… but not me," said Baumstein before showing the whole casino [Ks] [10d].
That hand was the making of Baumstein and apart from one pot he lost to PartyPoker qualifier Jordan Ouin in the final stages of the day, Baumstein ran the show. As we approached the middle of level 24, PartyPoker qualifier Anders Bisgaard woke up with pocket jacks and moved all-in only for Adrien Allain to find pocket aces. Bisgaard was disposed of and we had our final table of six.
Voici le classement final :
1st - Scott Baumstein - 3,910,000
2nd - Adrien Allain - 2,675,000
3rd - Jordane Ouin - 1,915,000
4th - Thibaud Guenegou - 1,500,000
5th - Arnaud Trouer - 1,005,000
6th - Michel Konieczny - 295,000
Join us tomorrow at the later time of 15.00 (CET) for the WPT final table here at WPT.com.