Wow, what a weekend at the WSOP! All events have now wrapped up and The Main Event starts. Bracelets were won, Fedor Holz showed us why he is one of hottest players in the world right now, and one final table player went home with a different piece of jewellery altogether—Jason Mercier popped the question to long time love Natasha Barbour after she finished third in Event #59. Spoiler: she said yes!
Here we recap the rest of the weekend’s action:
Event #59: $5000 No-Limit Hold’em
Apart from the excitement of a marriage proposal, Yue (Alan) Du also had a memorable day as he scooped the top prize of $800,586 and became the first gold bracelet winner in WSOP history to take a bracelet back to China.
The 48 year old, an investor who usually plays cash games in Asia, won his first gold bracelet in his first ever WSOP event. Quite the achievement.
Michael Gentili from Canada cashed for the second time at this year’s series, finishing second—taking home $494,586 in prize winnings.
Barbour ended up in third place, getting the biggest cash of her career with $348,374 in prize money.
Du beat 863 entrants to win the title and bracelet.
Event #61: $1,000 Tag Team No-Limit Hold’em
Polk and Ryan Fee continue their upswing to collect bracelets and $153,358 in prize money. This is the second gold bracelet of Polk in his career and first for Fee.
This was the first tag-team style tournament at the WSOP for 34 years. 863 other teams registered to play in the event, equally over 2,000 players. Up to four players were allowed to participate per entry.
On winning Fee said: “We entered this tournament because we thought it would be a good way to promote our new coaching site, upswingpoker.com. We thought it would be a cool way to promote the website, especially if we won!”
“Two weeks ago, we were making fun of the format, that you could just play a round of blinds, and we went on a (podcast) and really made fun of the whole concept,” Fee went on to say. “Then, we won! Hooray!”
Hooray indeed!
Second place went to the team made up of Niel Mittelman, Adam Greenberg and Gabriel Paul who won $94,748 between them.
Ryan Laplante cashed for 12th time at this year’s series—making this the highest number of cashes in one WSOP summer series by a player.
Event #62: $25,000 High Roller Pot-Limit Omaha (8-Handed)
Jens Kyllonen from Finland became a millionaire over the weekend as he won $1,127,035 in Event #62 winning the third gold bracelet of this career.
Kyllonen, who has been playing in high stakes cash games for the past six years, has reportedly won and lost seven figures within the course of a single day—let’s just hope he manages to hold onto this win for a bit longer.
“I can’t remember having a rush like I had today,” Kyllonen said shortly after his victory. “I had some big wins online and back in 2011 I won a million in a single day. But other than that, this is the biggest one.
The 26 year old professional poker player from Helsinki went on to say: “I don’t want to get into other people’s mistakes at the table in this tournament, but online I play against tougher opposition.”
Although Tommy Le was chip leader on and off throughout the day he couldn’t break Kyllonen’s hot streak and ended up as runner up. Third place went to Dan Smith and fourth to Ryan D’Angelo who won Event #7 back at the start of the series.
Robert Mizrachi’s finished in ninth place with his brother Michael Mizrachi busting out in 12th.
Event #64: $3000 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Split 8 or Better
Kyle Bowker from Walton, NY won the first gold bracelet of his career after grinding it out over ten years at the WSOP—having cashed 34 times in that time. He walked away with $294,960 in prize money and the coveted gold bracelet.
“I had a really great rail,” Bowker said, referring to his many friends who showed up wearing specially made t-shirts for the occasion. “They had fun, that’s for sure. And so did I.”
Kate Hoang finished as runner up, narrowly missing out on becoming the third female player to win an event this year. It is the third time she has cashed at the WSOP.
Bowker beat 473 entrants to win the title.
Event #65: $10,000 Ladies No-Limit Hold’em Championship
The honor of third female bracelet winner went to Detroit casino dealer Courtney Kennedy, who won the top prize of $149,108 of Event #65 and the first bracelet of her career. It was the sixth time she had entered the event.
“I had to be careful about having the chip lead,” Kennedy said in her winner’s interview. “I didn’t want to get carried away, especially with my rail cheering for me and all,” Kennedy said. “I just wanted to play my strong game and pick my spots.”
Amanda Baker from San Diego came second and Michelle Deng (a.k.a. Xiu Deng) came third.
Vanessa Selbst busted out in 23rd as she was hoping to catch the fourth gold bracelet of her career.
Event #67: $111,111 High Roller for One Drop No-Limit Hold’em
As if we needed any more proof that Fedor Holz is one to top players in the world right now—he only just went and won Event #67 and over $4 million in the process. IT is the first WSOP gold bracelet of his career.
Dan Smith came runner up and bagged himself over $3 million in prize money.
What now? The $10,000 Main Event.
The Main Event has begun with the first of three starting flights having started. Over the course of the next seven days the flights will whittle the field down to nine players who will return on October 30 as part of the November Nine to battle it out for title.
