Event #66: $777 LUCKY SEVENS No-Limit Hold’em
Unsurprisingly, given the huge field of 4,422 players, the inaugural $777 LUCKY SEVENS event will go into a fourth day of play, with just 10 players remaining.
David Yu has the chip lead, but there is little separating the top three players. Fourth on the leaderboard is Matt Matros, the only former bracelet winner left in the event. He has three WSOP victories to his name, one each in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Faraz Jaka has almost $5 million in live tournament winnings, but as yet no WSOP bracelet. He is relatively short-stacked in 7th place.
The players who return to play for the bracelet will be looking at the possibility of some big payouts, despite the comparatively low buy-in for this event. First prize will be $487,784 and the top five finishers will all earn over $100,000.
Event #67: $10,000 Dealers Choice Championship
The only bracelet of the day went to Quinn Do, a Californian poker pro born in Vietnam. The win gave him his second gold bracelet and prize money of $319,792.
Do won the $10,000 Dealers Choice Championship against a final table absolutely packed with dangerous opponents. Two time bracelet winner Rep Porter finished in second place, and four-time bracelet winner Jeff Madsen was third.
Adam Friedman, David Benyamine and Paul Volpe were all at the final table looking to win a second WSOP bracelet, and David Chiu who finished 9th was attempting to win his fifth.
Quinn Do’s strategy for breaking through such a star-packed filed was not to choose his best games, but choose games at which he though his opponents played poorly.
“On Day One, I noticed that some of the players did not play some games very well, so I called those games,” Do said. “I kept with that strategy. It was working, so why change it?”
He was exhilarated by his win. “Winning this gold bracelet was better than the first,” Do said. “This one was for Mixed Games which is something I have worked on for a long time. I spent ten years playing these games so to come here and win for this event is really better for me.”
Event #68: No-Limit Hold’em MAIN EVENT
Sunday provided the first day of the WSOP 2015 Main Event, the one poker tournament each year that guarantees mainstream media coverage.
This year the prize structure has changed. Gone is the guaranteed $10 million for first place, replaced by a structure that should ensure that at least 1,000 players go home with a profit.
As long as there are more than 5,000 total entries, the top 1,000 finishers will all leave with at least $15,000 in prize money. The largest Main Event field of 8,773 was in 2006 when Jamie Gold won the bracelet and $12 million in first place winnings.
The first starting day of this year’s event attracted 741 players, 481 managing to keep enough chips to survive until Day 2. This year’s winner of event #11, William Kakon is on top of the leaderboard having acquired a stack of 152,325 chips.
The honor is a dubious one—the player at the top of the leaderboard on Day 1A is rarely able to sustain his position to reach the final table. Last year was a notable exception when Day 1A chip leader Martin Jacobson went on to win the most desirable title in poker.
The first starting day is usually the one which attracts the fewest entries, but even so, plenty of top name players were in attendance at the tables. Jonathan Duhamel won the Main Event in 2010, and finished the day with 82,700 chips, and last year’s Main Event third place finisher Jorryt van Hoof is running good with a stack of 90,650.
Play will continue until July 14, when the final table and the players who will form this year’s November Nine will be set.
