Add Chris Brewer's name to the shortlist of players having a breakout summer at the World Series of Poker. Like Ike Haxton, high-roller regular Brewer was among the most notable pros to have never won WSOP gold. On Sunday, Brewer took down Event #69 of the 2023 WSOP, the $10,000 No-Limit 2-7 Lowball Draw Championship.
It was Brewer's second bracelet win this summer, making him and Chad Eveslage the only players to accomplish the double to date in this series, and it also vaulted him high on the WSOP's 2023 Player of the Year leaderboard. Brewer's win on Sunday also came with a $367,599 payout, though that pales compared to the $5,293,556 payday he collected two weeks ago when he took down Event #40, the $250,000 Super High Roller No-Limit Hold'em tourney.
That was the event in which Czech star Martin Kabrhel was accused of both real cheating and fake cheating by several other prominent pros in a multi-day conflagration that could even end up in a courtroom, based on public threats made by an attorney Kabrhel has retained. Brewer managed to avoid the spotlight in that messy situation, though he ended up walking away from that super-high-roller with the biggest payday of his career.
Brewer admitted after Sunday's win that the no-limit deuce-to-seven wasn't on the same scale. "The other one was a $250,000 tournament with $5 million on top," he told the WSOP. "I wanted to win the bracelet and it still means a lot, but the stakes were very different and it definitely was a lot less intense."
