When you’ve bagged up for the night in a World Series of Poker event, it’s sensible to check out your opposition for the following day to get an idea of who you’ll be up against. A quick search online can be enough to match some faces to names, and help you figure out who’s pushing for another bracelet, and who’s pushing their luck.
In the $10K 2-7 Lowball Draw Championship, that’s going to be less of an issue. Among the final 16 players heading into the final day’s play, there are no fewer than 35 WSOP bracelets spread across the three-table field. And they’re in the hands of some instantly recognizable players:
- George Alexander (1st, 1.8M chips, 1x bracelet)
- Dan Smith (2nd, 1.7M, 1x bracelet)
- Daniel Negreanu (3rd, 1.6M, 7x bracelets)
- Nick Schulman (4th, 1.1M, 6x bracelets)
- Greg Mueller (5th, 1M, 3x bracelets)
- Chad Eveslage (8th, 800K, 3x bracelets)
- James Chen (9th, 760K, 1x bracelet)
- Brian Rast (10th, 540K, 6x bracelets)
- Ari Eslami (12th, 520K, 1x bracelet)
- Ben Yu (13th, 420K, 4x bracelets)
- Elior Sion (14th, 375K, 1x bracelet)
- Ben Diebold (16th, 195K, 1x bracelet)
Even for an event as stacked as the $50K Poker Players Championship, which starts June 24, this is a legendary line-up. If there's an event which crams more bracelets into its final day, we definitely want to see it.
Meanwhile, if you want to see this one, you can: Head on over when play resumes at 1pm, with blinds at 8K/16K with a big blind ante of 24K. The reward for swimming with these sharks without getting eaten is $497,356.
Brown sees red, then gold in color-up confrontation
In the $600 NLH/PLO mix there was something of a spat between Tyler Brown and tournament officials over a request to color-up Brown’s chips ahead of the rest of the field.
It seems Brown was asked to color-up a good chunk of his mountain of chips but didn’t want to — perhaps he was working on a chip sculpture and needed them for structural integrity? According to the tweet shared by Kevin Mathers, Brown suggested a compromise, which was dismissed, and the language got a little NSFW.
Brown got a one-round penalty, then came back and won the whole thing for $178,126. Mike Patrick was on the scene for PokerOrg, and reported that ‘Brown built a massive pyramid of chips at the final table’. Looks like the chip sculpture theory checks out.
Brown’s win was his second at the WSOP, after victory in the 2023 Mystery Millions.
‘Four or five moments, that's all it takes to be a hero’
The thing about a colossus is, it’s big. Originally — even before it was used for a character in X-Men (quoted above) — it referred to an enormous statue. Now, when we say ‘colossal’, we just mean absolutely massive. Like, for example, a live poker tournament with 16,301 entrants.
The $500 COLOSSUS at the WSOP is so big, it has to be spelled out using capital letters. But even the mightiest fields must fall and so this one has, all the way down to a final nine.
Among them there’s a UFC fighter (Antonio Trocoli, above), WSOP bracelet winners (David ‘The Dragon’ Pham and Ryan Leng), and a player with a good shot at becoming the first female bracelet winner of the year (Sigrid Dencker, below).
All nine return to play down to the $542,540 winner from noon, and will be hoping for four or five big hands to go their way at the right time to become heroes themselves.
Read our colossal update here and watch out for the PokerGO stream later on Tuesday.
Big O proves too big for 3 days
Another talent-stacked field played to a winner on Monday, with Chang Lee emerging victorious in the $25K NLH 8-Max High Roller for $1,949,044. As one ends, another begins: The $50K High Roller is up and running, with Viktor Blom among the early frontrunners.
Elsewhere, the $1,500 Big O event set out to play down to a winner, but could only make it as far as heads-up. Igor Zekster will carry a 3-to-1 chip lead over Paul Sincere into an unscheduled fourth day of play, with $297,285 awaiting the winner.
