New Jersey players on WSOP.com thought they'd finally got their wish of an earlier start time on Sunday, when the company sent an email announcing the $3,200 high-roller event would commence at 5:30 ET. A tweet later in the day stated with equal confidence that the starting time was 5:30 PT, which turned out to be the time shown on the client.
With the WSOP Main Event at the Rio attracting a massive Day 1D field of 2,550 entrants, hopefuls in the online bracelet event may have anticipated a small field. The 78 players who were seated for the start of the tournament included Daniel Negreanu, who finished well out of the money in 286th.
After four hours of late registration, 319 players had entered, with an additional 115 re-entries. This produced a prize pool of $1,319,360. The first prize of $318,889 was claimed by "incel4life," along with the gold bracelet.
Attempting to find the real identity of a poker handle such as "incel4life" leads to paths nobody should tread. However, Poker.org can reveal that the player is not featured on the annual WSOP.com leaderboard. Given that any cash places a player on this list, it seems likely this is a new account created by someone in Las Vegas for the WSOP.
Josh Arieh runs deep
With two tables remaining, the familiar name of "Nitbuster" was third in chips. Josh Arieh used this handle back in the 2000s, and a quick check of his Twitter feed revealed he was the man behind the avatar. Arieh is having a spectacular WSOP, with two live bracelets already in his jewelry box. A third seemed in reach when the eight-handed final table was formed in dramatic fashion.
Facing a shove and a reshove from two short stacks, Chad "Alienprobed" Eveslage looked down at 88 in the big blind. Eveslage went into the tank before finally calling, and was rewarded with a flopped set that won the pot. This vaulted Eveslage into third, behind Dylan "Sobchak67" Linde and incel4life.
Arieh's run came to an end at the hands of incel4life. In a strange imitation of the earlier three-way all-in, Arieh 3-bet shoved AT only to be shown he was dominated by incel4life's AJ. The board couldn't save Arieh, and he finished in an impressive fourth place.
Next to fall was Linde, another victim of incel4life. The knock-out gave incel4life a 3:2 chip lead and around 100bb as the heads-up battle commenced against Eveslage
A remarkable final hand
With both players deep, the heads-up tilt saw plenty of postflop play and some interesting lines. The unusual out-of-position preflop click-back was used repeatedly by incel4life, who must have had a couple of minutes of terror when he disconnected from the server. Eveslage sportingly time-banked on his buttons, ensuring the bracelet was won for reasons other than a technical glitch.
Eveslage gradually fell behind in chips, leading to the all-in preflop shown below. The roller-coaster of the board run-out would have been epic had it occurred live and in front of an audience. Eveslage flopped a gutter to incel4life's top pair, got there on the turn, and then saw the crushing river that gave incel4life a full house and the high-roller title.
Featured image source: Twitter
