WSOP Event #48

The winner of Event #48, the Ace-to-Five Triple Draw Lowball World Championship was 27-year-old semi-professional player Rafit Amit, from Holon Israel. This was Amit’s second victory at the World Series of Poker. He won the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha championship in 2005, which was good for his first gold bracelet.

The tournament attracted 209 entries and was played over three days. Amit was second in chips when he arrived at the final table, where play lasted about five hours on the final day. First place paid $227,005.

Other than his two WSOP wins, Amit is perhaps best known for an unusual incident that took place when he won the first gold bracelet. Amit was upset at one point late in the tournament and was given a mandatory penalty for using inappropriate language at the table. He is the only player in WSOP history who has ever been given a 10-minute penalty during heads-up play. Amit was able to recover from that incident and stormed on to victory.

Amit has six tournament cashes on his poker resume. All occurred at the WSOP and this was his fourth final table appearance.

Amit is the second Israeli to win a title at this year’s World Series. Eli Elezra won his first gold bracelet last week. Eli Balas is the Israeli who holds the most WSOP wins, with three.

Englishman Jon Shoreman, from London, took fourth place. Shoreman created a website called www.pokerineurope.com as well as a successful heads-up poker tournament. — The 6th-place finisher was Mark Bartlog, from Certaldo Megognano, Italy. Aside from playing poker, Bartlog is an artist specializing in oil painting.

Andy Bloch, who was the runner up in the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. world championship last year (to Chip Reese) took 7 th place.

2000 world poker champion Chris "Jesus" Ferguson finished in 14th place. He currently ranks fifth on the all-time list for most WSOP lifetime cashes.

The Deuce-to-Seven Draw event has been absent from the WSOP menu in recent years. However, it was added to the schedule this year in response to player demand for a greater variety of games — including Lowball. In the early years of the WSOP, Lowball games constituted a substantial portion of the schedule, in large part because of the popularity of Lowball poker in California (Lowball games were the dominant games in California cardrooms until the late 1980s). However, Lowball’s popularity waned as increasing numbers of players gravitated towards Hold’em and Omaha.

Final results:
1. Rafi Amit, Holon, Israel, $227,005
2. Lenny Martin, Las Vegas, NV, $128,120
3. Anthony Lellouche, Paris, France, $84,812
4. Jon Shoreman, London, UK, $57,383
5. Eugene Ji, New York, NY, $41,504
6. Mark Bartlog, San Gimignano Italy, $27,068
7. Andy Bloch, Las Vegas, NV, $19,489
8. Ben Armstrong, Tulsa, OK, $19,489
9. Danny Fuhs, Long Beach, CA, $14,075