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Chiu overthrows Hansen to lift WPT title

April 25, 2008

David ChiuGus Hansen was left wondering what might have been as former restaurant owner David Chiu overturned a massive chip deficit to deny the Great Dane his fourth major WPT title and win the Season III WPT World Championship.

Hansen, one of the most successful players in WPT history, came to the final table as the chipleader and started off in explosive fashion. He eliminating nearly all who stood before him in just 22 hands. First Jeff King went to the rail and was quickly followed by Tommy Le, Cory Carroll and John Reveto. In record time, Hansen found himself in a heads-up situation with more than a 5-1 chip lead over his opponent.

In contrast, Chiu played those 22 hands very conservatively. He only found himself in two pots, and succeeded in winning just one of them, meaning that he faced Hansen with just 16% of the chips on the table.

Being such an underdog forced the former poker dealer to come out fighting, and he was able to double up early. This appeared to give Chiu the confidence he needed to start playing some solid heads-up poker and despite a little bit of luck in places, he began to steadily grow his stack.

After 33 hands Hansen came over the top of Chiu’s initial 505,000 raise to send the Chinese native all in. It didn’t take long for Chiu to push his remaining 3.79 million chips into the middle of the table with a pair of fives. He would have been delighted to find that he had Hansen dominated when the Dane showed a pair of deuces. The board offered no help to either player, and Chiu doubled up to just over 7.5million.

Hand #76 of the heads-up play saw the momentum shift away from Hansen yet further. Having seen his initial raise on the button re-raised to 1.85 million, Gus elected to call ensuring that 3.75million was in the middle of the table before the flop had even been dealt.

It duly came J63 which convinced Chiu to throw a further 1.6 million into the pot. This certainly got Hansen thinking as he retired for almost two minutes before making the call.

The turn card saw the board pairing sixes and Chiu moving all in for over 5 million chips. This was too much for Hansen who quickly folded, giving his opponent a huge pot and practically levelling the stacks of the two players.

From there things went downhill pretty quickly for the Great Dane. Two hands later, he had lost the chip lead and two hands after that the tournament was over.

With the flop of A-10-8, both players had contributed to a pot that was worth almost 3.5 million. With a 5 coming on the turn, Chiu bet 1.5 million and then was forced to think through his options when Hansen pushed all his chips into the middle of the table. He eventually made the call though, turning over A-9 spades. Gus showed 10-8 for two pair, but could do nothing as a second A came up on the river, giving the title to Chiu.

Hansen walked away from the tournament with a cheque for $1.7m having experienced the true roller-coaster nature of poker. However, it was Chiu’s steadier, calculated play that eventually saw him win the $3.39m first prize and the coveted WPT bracelet, in what has to go down as one of the most thrilling fight backs in WPT history.

Written by ShortStack · Filed Under Poker News 

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