Colorado's Chance Kornuth has become the World Series of Poker's latest three-time bracelet winner after taking down Event #29 of the 2021 WSOP, the $10,000 Short-Deck No-Limit Hold'em Championship. Kornuth, from Denver, earned $194,670 for winning this elite event, which drew one of the WSOP's smallest fields to date at just 66 entries.
Kornuth's win stretched his recorded career tournament earnings to more than $8.7 million. More than $2.2 million of that total has come at the WSOP, including his two previous bracelet wins. Kornuth claimed his first bracelet and over $508,000 in a PLO event in 2010. He added a second bracelet win in 2018 in an online NLH high-roller event.
In winning, Kornuth denied a Cinderalla story of sorts to eventual runner-up Chad Campbell. Campbell, of Seattle, Washington, had previously recorded only three small tourney cashes at the WSOP. Campbell, who battled with Kornuth for the lead throughout the final, earned $120,316 as the runner-up, a prize nearly double his previous recorded live tourney winnings before this event.
The six-player final also featured high-rolling poker player and commodities trader Dan Shak, who finished third, and Portugal's Joao Vieira, a prior WSOP bracelet winner and retired pro basketball player, who finished fifth.
Kornuth improves on 2019 form
Kornuth nearly claimed his third bracelet two years ago, when he finished fourth in this very same event. This time around, he out-aggressed most of his final-table foes, then closed out the win against Campbell. "It was really good to get a little redemption," he told reporters immediately after his win.
Campbell denied being a short-deck expert despite having a win and the 2019 fourth-place showing in this event, which was introduced in 2019. Yet he noted that there were many general poker principles he could apply in this event, especially given its no-limit format. That allowed him to calculate his own and his opponents' hand ranges and to apply stack-size pressure in numerous spots, especially later in the event.
Short-deck offer unique format and rules
Playing short-deck forces players to rethink many of their calculations on the fly. The variant's "short deck" name comes from the fact that it's played with a 36-card deck. All deuces, threes, fours, and fives are removed.
This also changes the frequencies at which certain hands appear, resulting in one key hand-rankings rule change: A flush is harder to make than a full house, and thus outranks it. Just to make matters even more complicated for the players, the tourney also includes a 30-second shot clock, in which a given player must act or have his hand declared dead.
2021 WSOP Event #29: $10,000 Short-Deck No-Limit Hold’em Championship Final-table Results
- Chance Kornuth (United States) $194,670
- Chad Campbell (United States) $120,316
- Dan Shak (United States) $82,678
- Moshe Gabay (Israel) $58,601
- Joao Vieira (Portugal) $42,885
- Thomas Kysar (United States) $32,437
Featured image source: PokerGO by Antonio Abrego
