One of the busiest weekends of the 2023 World Series of Poker brought the twin WSOP venues of the Horseshoe and Paris casinos to full capacity on Friday. Action took place in ten different bracelet events on Friday, and gold bracelets went to winners in five separate events.
Friday's WSOP gold went to three Americans, one Brazilian, and one Austrian player. And in an odd twist of fate, all five of Friday's event champions were first-time bracelet winners. Here are the five players who wrote their names into WSOP history yesterday:
Event #61: $1,000 SUPER SENIORS No-Limit Hold’em
Winner: Klaus Ilk, Austria ($371,603)
Event #62: $1,500 Mixed No-Limit Hold'em, Pot-Limit Omaha
Winner: David Simon, Kilauea, HI ($410,659)
Event #63: $10,000 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship
Winner: Ryan Miller, Langhorne, PA ($344,677)
Event #66: $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better
Winner: William Kopp, Brecksville, IL ($259,549)
Event #68: $1,000 Super Turbo Bounty No-Limit Hold'em
Winner: Gabriel Schroder, Brazil ($228,632)
The debut bracelets by all five players was a sharp change of pace from the series' list of winners to date, which have been dominated by repeat bracelet winners. Not that there weren't great stories from the new winners' runs. Ryan Miller came back from a 9:1 deficit early in his heads-up duel against Bryn Kenney in the $10,000 Stud Hi-Low Championship, and William Kopp, perhaps the most accomplished of the new bracelet winners with two Circuit rings already to his credit, became one of just a select few brother-sister teams to have earned WSOP gold.
Massive turnout strains WSOP logistics
Part of the reason five bracelets were awarded on Friday was the need to push a couple of events to an extra day due to record-setting turnouts. That problem manifested itself in other ways on Friday as well.
Another record-serting turnout occurred in the ongoing Ladies Championship, and the extra tables needed to accomodate that event's Day 2 then, in turn, impacted the Day 1A of the weekend's massive-field event, the Colossus.
WSOP officials were forced to break Day 1A of the Colossus into two somewhat separate sub-flights. Due to a lack of available dealers, players assigned to the Horseshoe side of the Colossus were forced to wait an extra hour and 45 minutes to begin play, while the Paris half of the Colossus started on time, but was then given extended breaks throughout the day to bring the two sides into time sync late in the evening.
The Colossus Day 1A flight ended with 7,705 recorded entries, and 965 players survived into tomorrow's Day 2. Today's Day 1B flight may surpass the Friday numbers, if WSOP officials can find tables, seats, and dealers, and if the players themselves can endure the inevitable long registration lines that accompany such a massive event.
