In any poker tournament you’ll ever play, the bubble matters. In the biggest live poker tournament of them all, the bubble matters more.
Nothing stings quite like the moment you exit the WSOP Main Event. The late, great poker writer Anthony Holden once described the moment as ‘a real physical pain, gradually giving way to a deep spiritual bruise’. Spare a thought then, for the player who - when they do bust the Main Event - is greeted not with silent indifference, but raucous cheers and celebration.
The moment the bubble bursts is a special one for everyone - except one person. This year, that person was actually two people. On the fourth hand of hand-for-hand play we ended up with six all-ins. Four players doubled but two were eliminated. And PokerOrg's Terrance Reid did the dirty in one of them. In the other, Lucas Reeves seven-bet kings preflop and ran into aces.
Bubble hand #1
It went down like it always does, with small stacks tanking, big stacks piling on the pressure and sweeping up the blinds, and all the while photographers and reporters scurrying around waiting to witness the kill. The scene is the same, it's the details that change.
Reid opened to 16,000 and picked up a shove for 57,000 from Christian Stratmeyer. Reid made the call and Stratmeyer was at risk.
Reid told us he had a "bad hand" and he wasn't lying. But bad hands can turn into good hands when Jack Effel turns up with the microphone.
- Christian Stratmeyer:
- Terrance Reid:
The 
flop was a disaster for Stratmeyer and the 
run-out improved Reid to a flush.
Bubble hand #2
The next bustout was more dramatic – and you can watch it play out at the top of this article.
Marcelo Tadeu Aziz Junior opened in the hijack and Lucas Reeves raised.
The action went four-bet, five-bet, six-bet and a seven-bet shove for 950,000 total from Reeves, with Aziz calling.
- Lucas Reeves:
- Marcelo Tadeu Aziz Junior:
Board: 
Reeves was eliminated from a big stack with kings. And, to make things worse, he lost the high-card draw for the $10K 2025 Main Event seat. He left with $7,500 after splitting the first payout, but torched a stack worth way, way more.
Let the celebrations begin
Among those who most gladly celebrated the bustouts were the shortest stacks in the room. And this year, those stacks include the likes of Daniel Negreanu, who cashed but busted shortly after.
Going out on the bubble is something Reeves and Stratmeyer will likely remember forever, but at least the world won’t remind them of it constantly, the way people might had Negreanu, for example, been the one to leave with nothing. Reeves busting from a stack of 1M will be extra painful.
Who was the bubble victim last year? It was actually a multi-way tie, as three players all bust on the same hand. As a result, the three shared the $30K prize money that two of them would have won, had the third bust alone. Money back: you can’t say fairer than that.
And what were their names? We could tell you, but what would it add? Let’s let bubbles burst and sleeping dogs lie. Poker is a famously zero-sum game, so we can only hope the joy of 1,517 players isn’t mirrored in the disappointment of one player alone. And anyway, while they may leave without a payout, but they don’t leave with nothing at all: they’ll always have a heck of a story to tell.
