It took more than 15 hours, including 4 hours of heads up play before the high stakes pro Sam Farha was finally able to put an end to James Dempsey's resistance at the WSOP $10k Omaha-8 World Championship event.


Farha started heads up in a clear lead and Dempsey's last chips were repeatedly in the middle, but everytime he managed to avoid defeat and even clawed back to lead a couple of times before the tide turned for the last time.

It was already 7am in Las Vegas and even Dempsey's very vocal (and very drunk) supporters had quietened down when the decisive hands came. Dempsey had just a few big bets left and the players saw a flop of Qs 9s 3c in a 3-bet pot. Farha bet, Dempsey called. Turn Qc, Farha bet again, another call. River As, meaning there was a pair and a possible flush on the board without a low. Farha quickly bet and Dempsey paused, munching a sausage sandwich for breakfast. "What do you think you have, aces full?" Farha asked, and finally Dempsey made the call. "Aces full," Farha announced tabling AAKK. Dempsey mucked his hand.

Dempsey was left with one big bet and it was in the middle on the next hand. Dempsey showed J865, Farha J974. Flop T43 gave Farha a pair but Dempsey had lots of outs. Turn was another ten, and on the river came a third ten. It took a few beats before even the players realised that Farha's J9 was good and the game was finally over.

Farha kept his cool throughout the long heads up, somewhat to his own surprise. "I didn't get a good night's sleep so I was surprised that I wasn't getting frustrated, which is good," he said.

The experienced pro won his third WSOP bracelet, all of them coming in Omaha. Remarkably, the cash game specialist has cashed only 8 times at the WSOP in his long career but 3 of them are wins and 3 more are from final tables, most famously at the Main Event in 2003 when he was runner-up to Chris Moneymaker.

James Dempsey is also having an excellent WSOP after already taking the bracelet at Event #9: $1.5k PL Hold'em.

WSOP Event #25: $10k Omaha Hi-Lo Split 8 or Better World Championship (212 players):

1. Sammy Farha $488,241
2. James Dempsey $301,789
3. Yueqi Zhu $225,325
4. Sergey Altbregin $169,368
5. Tony Merksick $128,097
6. Michael Chow $97,507
7. Eugene Katchalov $74,670
8. Abe Mosseri $57,552
9. Steve Wong $44,618

Mike Sexton busted in the final table bubble.

Source: WSOP.