Slowly but surely, this year's World Series of Poker is heading towards its end, and while for many, the coronation of Main Event champion Koray Aldemir was the culmination of the series, the WSOP did not lose its quality and excitement even after that moment. There were still more than 10 more bracelets, which were taken by familiar names of poker world.
The thrilling finale over the past hours was brought by the 84th event, which was an omaha High Roller with a buy-in of $50,000. It was played by a total of 85 players, 34 of whom made it to the second and final day. There was a $4,069,375 prize pool waiting for the top 13 players, with $1,188,918 reserved for the champion along with a valuable bracelet.
From the list of 34 finalists, it was impossible to find a favorite - Dan Cates, Daniel Negreanu, Dan Smith, Ole Schemion, Scott Seiver, Chance Kornuth, Shaun Deeb, Anthony Zinno, Phil Hellmuth or Ben Lamb - this is just a selection of the quality of the playing field, which promised a great poker show. And after five hours of play, an interesting unofficial final table was formed, where you would count a total of 30 WSOP bracelets!
But the best was yet to start, as the final table brought more than an 8-hour marathon of great poker. After five hours of play, the tournament moved to the final three, where chip leader Jeremy Ausmus found himself between two poker legends - Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth.
The beggining of the 3-handed game belonged to Phil Hellmuth, who gradually pushed himself to the chip lead, but was soon replaced by Daniel Negreanu. This continued for more than 2 hours, during which the chips spilled from side to side, with Negreanu finding the closest to winning at one point with a 15m stack out of a total of 25m chipcount.
Fans have almost witnessed the dream heads-up, when at one point Negreanu had 12m, Hellmuth 10m and short Ausmus had only 3m, which represented 6bb. But here the home player took off, and after one double-up and several solid games, he rose to the overall chip lead. At that point, Hellmuth collided with Negreanu, and happier in this case was Hellmuth, who went heads-up, while Negreanu went to the counter for $519,764.
The long poker night did its thing, so right in the second hand of the heads-up we saw Hellmuth's shove with K 9 7 6 on the flop of 7 9 6, which Ausmus decided to call with A 8 5 2. Both the turn T and the river Q held Ausmus' straight, forbidding Hellmuth to achieve his 17th bracelet. PokerBrat's reward can at least be valuable POY leaderboards and $734,807.
The only undefeated in this event was Jeremy Ausmus, the home player for whom this triumph is the third WSOP title. In addition, he can boast of winning $1,188,918 and a story that just doesn't happen very often! "It was fun to play with these old-school poker legends. I watched them on TV 15 years ago and now I'm standing here, it's a really great feeling!”
Source: PokerNews.com, PokerGO.com
