29 year old Canadian, Kristen Bicknell took down Event #46: $1500 BOUNTY No-Limit Hold’em becoming the first women to win an event at this year’s Series. Shaun Deeb won Event #49: $1500 Seven Card Stud winning the second gold bracelet of his career.
Recap: Event #46: $1500 BOUNTY No-Limit Hold’em
Bicknell won her second career World Series of Poker bracelet on Thursday, her first coming in 2013.
“It all feels so surreal” she said on winning. “But it almost doesn’t feel true. It’s the dream you always had. When you bust from a tournament, you feel so bad. But when you win it’s such a weird feeling.”
The part time student and poker player beat 2,157 other players to take the title, beating Norbert Szecsi from Hungary heads up. Bicknell took home $290,768 in prize winnings—the biggest win of her career.
“I beat out a lot of good players, in both the tournaments I won,” Bicknell said referring to her win back in 2013. “Yes, this is still a validation. But there are a lot of great female poker players, too. There’s lots of them.”
Other in the money finishers included Jeff Gross, Dan O’Brien and 888poker ambassador Chris Moorman.
Recap: Event #49: $1500 Seven Card Stud
In what ended up being one of the quickest Seven Card Stud final tables in memory, Shaun Deeb made victory look easy as he took the title, bracelet and $111,101 in prize money in Event #49.
“I was just happy to have some chips going into Day Three and it obviously was a super tough final table with a lot of great players who have been playing for over a decade,” said Deeb.
Deeb now has close to $1.3 million in WSOP earnings in 35 cashes.
“There’s a lot of run good in Stud and I had seen all the updates” he went on the say. “I had all the big hands and all the 3 way pots and I ran one big bluff and it got through and with the time it just had value so it was really easy to play. I didn’t really have to outplay anyone. Anyone would’ve won with my cards in that tournament.”
Adam Friedman finished as runner up and is one of the few players who has WSOP cashes in sequential order running from 1st to 8th place. Max Pescatori finished in third and Eugene Katchalov in fifth, who parted company with PokerStars at the end of May following five years as one of their sponsored pros.
Benny Glaser from the UK busted out in 25th as he was searching for this third gold bracelet of the series.
Events Finishing Today
Event #50: $1500 Shootout No-Limit Hold’em concludes today as the final twelve will battle it out. Vanessa Selbst and Safiya Umerova are the last two women standing in the event, with Umerova as chip leader. Selbst will be searching for her fourth gold bracelet of her career.
Event #51: $10,000 8-Handed Pot-Limit Omaha Championship also finishes up today with Tommy Le leading the final 28 into the last day of play. Brandon Shack-Harris, James Obst, Loren Klein, Peter Eichhardt, Jesper Hougaard, Scott Seiver, Gary Benson and Aubin Cazals also return.
