It has been an action-packed 3rd week so far at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino with the $1,500 Monster Stack drawing 7,192 players to vie for the top prize of $1,286,942 with the coveted bracelet. Meanwhile, several mixed and variation events like 2-7 Draw Lowball, H.O.R.S.E. and 7 Card Stud brought the best of the game to exhibit their skills.
Among the Indian contingents, Team PokerStars pro Aditya Agarwal finished 64th in the MONSTER STACK $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em taking home $16,408. Adda52 Team Spades pro Kunal Patni earned his first WSOP cash finishing 142nd in Event #30: $1,000 N-Limit Hold’em. Another Indian tournament reg Apoorva Goel also bagged the same cash amount $2,168 for 150th place finish.
Phil Galfond bested a small field of 77 runners in the Event #29: $10,000 No-Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball Championship winning his 2nd WSOP bracelet. Phil took home the top prize of $224,383 beating his fellow countryman Nick Schulman. 14 players were paid in this event with the minimum of $14,693.
The Event #28 MONSTER STACK which accumulated a prize pool of $9,709,200 has reached the Final 29 players who will return tomorrow at the Rio to battle out. Hoyt Corkins of USA leads the remaining field with 9,300,000 chips. 691 players already have taken home the cash prize from this event. Aditya Agarwal bagged $16,408 finishing 64th today. Team PokerStars pro Vanessa Selbst who has 3 WSOP bracelets kicked off his 2015 WSOP journey with this event. After gaining a huge chip stack, she failed to capitalize and finished 413rd for $4,563.
In the Event #27 – $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship, Brian Hasting won his 2nd WSOP bracelet beating Scott Clements in the heads up. Brian took home $239,518 in the top prize with the illustrious gold bracelet depriving Scott of his 3rd one. This was the 2nd final finish for Scott Clements as he placed 4th in the Event #21 $ 10,000 Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better Championship earlier.
Aaron Wallace of USA who had only one WSOP cash (circuit event) before entering the tournament won the Event #26: $1,000 Pot-Limit Omaha beating the German player Marko Neumann. Aaron turned the entry ticket through a satellite into the WSOP bracelet of the largest Non-Texas Hold’em tournament in history. Moreover, he took home $226,985 in top prize and Marko bagged $140,353.
Pocket Rockets did the trick in the last hand of the Event #25 – $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em 8-Handed for Jupiter, Florida resident Jeffrey Tomlinson. 51-year old Jeffrey had 4 WSOP cashes prior to this event in which he won his maiden gold bracelet. The top prize of $567,724 also is the highest cash earned by this high school teacher who also is a football coach. The French player Pierre Milan bagged $350,994 for his efforts to the runner-up place.
H.O.R.S.E. is regarded as one of the toughest mixed poker games tabled at Rio on June 10. Many pros including Phil Hellmuth, Jonathan Duhamel took a shot at the Event #24 – $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. and in the end it was Arash Ghaneian winning the bracelet with $239,750 in top prize. Rob Campbell finished 2nd while Phil Hellmuth who won his 14th WSOP bracelet last week placed 31st in this event. Adda52 Team Spades pro Aditya Sushant also took a shot at this event but, unfortunately couldn’t make it to the money-list.
The most predictable thing about WSOP events is that it’s almost unpredictable. The sentence characterized at Rio when Christian Pham registered for the Event #23: $1,500 No-Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball by mistake. He was surprised when cards were dealt on the table and asked the dealer about the event variant. The brave man decided to learn and play the game simultaneously and guess what, he went to win the bracelet. Surprising the 219-player field which had notables like Robert Mizrachi, he took home the top prize of $81,314. Making the best mistake of his life, Christian earned himself one of the most coveted prizes in the poker world. “Now, I love this game,” Pham said after receiving his bracelet.