It ended up being Daniel Idema, from Canada, who took home one of 2011's most prestigious tournaments: the $10,00 Limit Hold'em Championship. On the final table, Idema had to defeat players like Nick Schulman, who has numerous titles to his credit including a WSOP in 2009 $10k NL Deuce-to-Seven Draw event; PokerStars Pro and three-time bracelet winner Barry Greenstein; runner-up in the 2009 WSOP $40k NLHE tournament, Isaac Haxton; online sensation Justin "Boosted J" Smith. On top of that he was the only non-american on the final table.
Daniel Negreanu goes bananas
Even though it was a very thrilling final table with many good players - one man was missed by many: Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu. Negreanu had a monster chip lead for some time during Day 1 of the tournament, but his downfall came during day 2 when there were around 27 players left. After he lost a big hand to Steve Landfish on the river, Negreanu shot up, accidentally tipping his chair over, and slammed his headphones on the ground. Pieces from the headphones flew all over the room. It was clear that Negreanu was extremely frustrated with how he lost the hand. However, he sat back down at the table with his remaining stack of 27,000 without saying a word. But it didn't take long before it was time for another bad beat....
Daniel had dropped to just about 20,000 when he decided to commit most of his stack pre flop when Tam Hang had raised in early position. The flop came J
J
Q
, and Negreanu pushed in his remaining chips. Hang called.
Negreanu: QA
Hang: 109
Negreanu just needed to dodge a king or an eight. The turn card was the J, giving Negreanu the full house. Negreanu said "well that does it" before stopping himself, realizing that Hang still had straight flush draw. Negreanu couldn't believe his eyes when the K hit the river. He jumped out of his seat and nearly drop kicked the table. A frustrated Daniel Negreanu gave everyone a piece of his mind before leaving the tournament room.
