SHOOTOUT STOPS AND RELOADS FOR THURSDAY HEADS-UP RESTART

Cannes, France (September 26, 2012) – It’s 5 am along the French Riviera.

And still – there’s no winner.

The 3,000-Euro buy-in No-Limit Hold’em Shootout is now down to the final two players who are locked down in the battle of their poker lives.  In fact, the two finalists are about as different as they can be in just about every way.

Dan O’Brien, an American professional poker player, is hoping to achieve what has been an elusive prize – winning a WSOP gold bracelet.  He’s come close a few times, finishing as high as third in an event in Las Vegas four years ago.  But this tournament has O’Brien as close as he’s ever been to joining the most prestigious fraternity in the game.

His opponent, the more reserved Giovanni Rosadoni is in his 60s and lives here in France.  He describes himself as an amateur player.  Rosadoni even joked that people like him “aren’t supposed to win gold bracelets.”  He runs his own business and has a dozen employees who depend on him.  In fact, Rosadoni revealed that the all-night poker marathon this evening caused him to lose a full night of sleep.  Nevertheless, Rosadoni insisted that he intended to go to work at 7 am – just two hours after play was suspended on the Day Two.

Indeed, after about three hours of heads-up play Rosadoni survived two all-in coin flips and then gradually seized the chip lead, to the point where he now enjoys a 787K to 490K chip advantage, play was stopped for the night due to the mandatory casino curfew of 5 am – when by law all gaming ends.  The two finalists shall resume play again at 3 pm on Thursday.

The conclusion of Event 4 will can be seen on a livestream at WSOP.com.

Seven gold bracelet winners have already cashed in this event -- including John Monnette, Oleksii Kovalchuk, Phillippe Boucher, Chance Kornuth, Dominik Nitsche, Phil Hellmuth, and Daniel Negreanu.

This was the fourth of seven gold bracelet events scheduled at Cannes. Officially listed as Event 4, the €3,000 (+250) buy-in No-Limit Hold’em Shootout tournament attracted 141 entrants. The total prize pool came to €406,080.  The top 20 finishers were awarded prize money.

The tournament began at noon on Tuesday.