Two years of waiting and long months of speculations have finally come to an end, and the World Series of Poker is happening. However, the scarecrows in the form of various restrictions did not discourage poker players from all over the world from chasing their dream, and we can definitely evaluate the first week of this festival as successful.
There is a great mood among the players, we witness huge tournaments every day and winning a bracelet still brings with it an emotional bomb. Despite the limitations, the WSOP did not detract from the quality, as evidenced by the event with the serial number #4 - $500 The Reunion. 12,973 entries produced a massive $5,448,660 prizepool and after three days of playing, Long Ma won the bracelet, multiplying his buy-in by a thousand times up to $513.604.
While this may surprise many, Phil Hellmuth remains the most inflected name in this WSOP, silencing all critics and enemies with his performance so far. The fact that he has a record and hard-to-conquer 15 bracelets on his name is definitely not a coincidence, which PokerBrat proves with his game every day.
In the second event, which was $25,000 H.O.R.S.E. Hellmuth made it to the final table, eventually taking home $95,329 for sixth place. In Event #7, which was a mix of 19 games in the form of the $1,500 Dealers Choice event, he finished in 18th place for $4,429, and tonight, he will be at the next final table. It will be in $10,000 Omaha Hi-Lo Championship, where Phil has made it into the top five players, and as a short he will start the game with a 6.5bb stack.
Another flash news came just a short time ago, from $25,000 Heads-Up NLH Championship, which brought in a player pool full of best sharks. Stars such as Sam Soverel, Jason Koon, Ali Imsirovic, Cary Katz, Nick Petrangelo, Adrian Mateos, Joao Vieira, Mikita Badziakouski and David Peters jumped into the game, so during the three playing days the spectators definitely had great poker to watch.
The 32-member players pool gradually formulated the final heads-up, in which GG team member Jason Koon and Hungarian player Gabor Szabo played for a bracelet and $243,981. While Jason Koon is among the top 10 in the world's all-time money list with 32 million in live tournaments winnings, his opponent is not one of the well-known names in his home country. But even that didn't stop him from starting this challenging tournament, in which he managed to deal with players like David Peters or Mikita Badziakouski.
Despite these achievements, he did not add a third kill to the collection, as he was already too short for Jason Koon. The nearly 4-hour battle brought a lot of exciting moments, but in the end it was a Koon, who, after almost 15 years, can finally put down the label of a "professional who doesn't have a WSOP bracelet." In addition, he packed another 243,981 dollars at his cash desk, but it is clear that the money is only secondary in this case. Congratz!
Source: WSOP.com, PokerNews.com
