On Thursday the remaining eight players in the $25k NLHE Heads-Up Championship at the 2011 World Series of Poker returned to the Rio with the knowledge that only four players would advance to Friday’s Final Four. On the line is the first official WSOP bracelet of 2011, as well as the $851,192 that will be awarded to the winner of the event.

Amongst the remaining players was Gus Hansen, who after years of being blanked in WSOP tournaments finally broke through with a win in the 2010 WSOP Europe tournament series, which like his potential bracelet run now, came in a Heads-Up tournament.

Here is a look at Thursday’s matchups:

* Jake Cody vs. Anthony Guetti

* Gus Hansen vs. Matt Marafioti

* Eric Froehlich vs. Nikolay Evdakov

* Yevgeniy Timoshenko vs. David Paredes

The odds on favorites in each of Thursday’s four Heads-Up matches at the 2011 WSOP would move on in the tournament, Jake Cody, Gus Hansen, Eric Froehlich, and Yevgeniy Timoshenko; while Guetti, Marafioti, Evdakov, and Paredes saw their run ended, but did pocket $138,852 for their performances.

In the Final Four matchups Hansen will take on Cody while Timoshenko is set to battle Froehlich, which will be followed by the Championship match involving the two winners.

The tournament has a unique format which allows each player to use two add-ons at any point during the match: For instance, during yesterday’s Elite Eight matches players had the option of starting with 400,000 (with 2 add-ons in reserve), 800,000 (with 1 add-on in reserve), or 1,200,000 chips (with 0 add-ons in reserve).

Tags: 192, 2011 WSOP, Chips, Elite Eight, Eric Froehlich, Europe, Final Four, Final Four Matchups, Gus, Gus Hansen, Heads Up Tournament, Knowledge, Match, Odds, Rio, Series Of Poker, world series, World Series of Poker, WSOP

This entry was posted on Friday, June 3rd, 2011 at 11:20 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.